Mercutio's wit, gaiety, and courage, will always procure him friends
that wish him a longer life; but his death is not precipitated, he has
lived out the time allotted him in the construction of the play; nor do
I doubt the ability of Shakespeare to have continued his existence,
though some of his sallies are perhaps out of the reach of Dryden; whose
genius was not very fertile of merriment, nor ductile to humour, but
acute, argumentative, comprehensive, and sublime.
The Nurse is one of the characters in which the author delighted: he
has, with great subtilty of distinction, drawn her at once loquacious
and secret, obsequious and insolent, trusty and dishonest.
His comic scenes are happily wrought, but his pathetic strains are
always polluted with some unexpected depravations. His persons, however
distressed, _have a conceit left them in their misery, a miserable
conceit_.
HAMLET
(145,2) This play is printed both in the folio of 1623, and in the
quarto of 1637, more correctly, than almost any other of the works of
Shakespeare.
I.i.29 (147,7) approve our eyes] Add a new testimony to that of our
eyes.
I.i.33 (147,8) What we two nights have seen] This line is by Hanmer
given to Marcellus, but without necessity.
I.i.63 (149,9) He smote the sledded Polack on the ice] Polack was, in
that age, the term for an inhabitant of Poland: Polaque, French.
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