.. No, sir, nor devour
Soft prodigals. You shall have some will swallow
A melting heir as glibly as your Dutch
Will pills of butter, and ne'er purge for it; [10]
Tear forth the fathers of poor families
Out of their beds, and coffin them alive
In some kind clasping prison, where their bones
May be forthcoming, when the flesh is rotten:
But your sweet nature doth abhor these courses;
You lothe the widow's or the orphan's tears
Should wash your pavements, or their piteous cries
Ring in the roofs, and beat the air for vengeance.
We have here an allusion to Hamlet, [11] where he asks the Ghost why
the sepulchre has opened its 'ponderous and marble jaws' to cast him
up again; also to the Queen and whilom widow; and, furthermore, to
the orphans, Ophelia and Laertes, and to the tears shed by the latter
at his sister's death. The cry of vengeance refers to the similar
utterances of the Ghost, of Hamlet, and of Laertes, who all seek revenge.
Mosca, with a view of preparing for his master a pleasure more suitable
to his taste than that which a play like 'Hamlet,' we suppose, could
afford him, brings in the three gamesters:--Nano, a dwarf; Castrone,
a eunuch; and Androgyne, a hermaphrodite. [12] The latter is meant to
represent Shakspere; for he is introduced by Nano as a soul coming from
Apollo, which migrated through Euphorbus and Pythagoras (Meres uses
these two names in his eulogy of the soul of Shakspere).
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