Mr. Theobald remarks:-"A sea of troubles, among the Greeks, grew into a proverbial usage. So that the expression figuratively means the troubles of human life, which flow in upon us, and encompass us round like a sea." Dr. Johnson observes :-" Mr. Pope proposed seige. I know not why there should be so much solicitude about this metaphor. Shakespeare breaks his metaphors often, and in this desultory speech there was less need of preserving them." Mr. Steevens says:-"A similar phrase occurs in Ryharde Morysine's translation of 'Ludovicus Vives's Introduction to Wysedome,' 1544: 'how great a sea of evills every day over-runneth,' etc." And Mr. Malone concludes his notes with-" One cannot but wonder that the smallest doubt should be entertained concerning an expression which is so much in Shakespeare's manner; yet to preserve the integrity of the metaphor, Dr. Warburton reads assail of troubles. Shakespeare might have found the very phrase that he has employed, in the tragedy of Queen Cordila, 'Mirrour of Magistrates,' 1575, which he undoubtedly had read : 'For lacke of frendes to tell my seas of giltlesse smart.” "Shuffled off this mortal coil-i.e., turmoil, bustle."- Warburton. "A most intelligent Shakespearian critic, Thomas Caldecott, remarks upon the word coil:- Coil is here used in each of its senses-that of turmoil or bustle, and that which entwines or wraps round.' "This muddy vesture of decay.' Those folds of mortality that encircle and entangle us. Snakes generally lie in folds like the coils of ropes; and it is conceivable that an allusion is here had to the struggle which that animal is obliged to make in casting his slough, or extricating himself from the skin that forms the exterior of this coil, and which he throws off annually.'"-J. H. H. "There's the respect-i.e., the consideration. See Troilus and Cressida, Act 2, sc. 2."-Malone. "The whips and scorns of Time.-The evils here complained of are not the product of time or duration simply, but of a corrupt age or manners. We may be sure, then, that Shakespeare wrote: -'the whips and scorns of th' time.' And the description of the evils of a corrupt age, which followed, confirms this emendation."- Warburton. "It may be remarked, that Hamlet, in his enumeration of miseries, forgets, whether properly or not, that he is a prince, and mentions many evils to which inferior stations only are exposed.”—Johnson. I think we might venture to read:-" The whips and scorns o' the times"-i.e., times satirical as the age of Shakespeare, which probably furnished him with the idea, etc., etc. Whips and scorns are surely as inseparable companions as public punishment and infamy. Quips, the word which Dr. Johnson would introduce, is derived, by all etymologists, from whips. Hamlet is introduced as reasoning on a question of general concernment. He therefore takes in all such evils as could befall mankind in general, without considering himself at present as a prince, or wishing to avail himself of the few exceptions which one in high place might have claimed. In part of "King James I.'s Entertainment, passing to his Coronation," by Ben Jonson and Decker, is the following line, and note on that line : "And first account of years, of months, of time. "This explanation affords the sense for which I have contended, and without change.”—Steevens. Time, for the times, is used by Jonson in "Every Man Out of His Humour :" "Oh, how I hate the 'monstrousness of time." So, in Basse's "Sword and Buckler," 1602: "If I should touch particularly all Wherein the moodie spleene of captious Time So, also, to give a prose instance, in "Cardanus Comfort," translated by Thomas Bedingfield, 1576, we have a description of the miseries of life, strongly resembling that in the text:-"Hunger, thurste, sleape not so plentiful or quiet as deade men have, heate in sommer, colde in winter, disorder of tyme, terroure of warres, controlement of parentes, cares of wedlock, studye for children, slouthe of servants, contention of sutes, and that (whiche is moste of all) the condicion of tyme wherein honestye is disdaynd, and folye and crafte is honoured as wisdome."— Boswell. The word whips is used by Marston in his "Satires," 1599, in the sense required here: "Ingenious Melancholy, Inthrone thee in my blood; let me intreat, "The PROUD man's contumely.-Thus the quarto. The folio reads 'the poor man's contumely; the contumely which the poor man is obliged to endure: 66 "Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se, Quam quod ridiculos homines facit."—Malone. Of DESI'IS'D love.-The folio reads, of dispriz'd love. So too,' Great deal disprizing the knight opposed.' (Troilus and Cressida, Act 4.)"-Steevens. Dispriz'd, the word found in the first folio (1623), has seemed to me the most suitable adjective in such connection; for the reason that as Love begets Love, and Hate his kind, so Love that finds itself despised, instead of returned, by its object, soon leaves the heart, and its place is not unapt to be filled by rank hatred; but, the pangs of disprized love are those of one whose spirit sinks and writhes under the pride-stung consciousness that the being towards whom their own heart yearns disprizes their irresistible affection. It is this species of love which disprized (unvalued, or unrequited, or entertained with indifference) cannot be diverted or superseded, or, as if despised, find a relief in hatred-but brooding over its own subtile mortification, produces that poignant melancholy, which, rankling within a proud soul, may stimulate to suicide. (See my quotation from this in my Correspondence with Hon. John Quincy Adams, 1839.) "Might his quietus make With a bare BODKIN."-The first expression probably alluded to the writ of discharge, which was formerly granted to those barons and knights who personally attended the king on any foreign expedition. This discharge was called a quietus. It is at this time the term for the acquittance which every sheriff receives on settling his accounts at the Exchequer. The word is used for the discharge of an account, by Webster, in his "Duchess of Malfy," 1623 : "And 'cause you shall not come to me in debt, Again: |