in order
that she may be unable to reveal the outrage. She reveals it, however,
by taking a staff in her mouth, guiding it with her arms, and writing in
the sand, 'Stuprum. Chiron. Demetrius.' Titus soon afterwards says:

I will go get a leaf of brass,
And with a gad of steel will write these words,
And lay it by. The angry northern wind
Will blow these sands, like Sibyl's leaves, abroad,
And where's your lesson then?

Perhaps in the old _Hamlet_, which may have been a play something like
_Titus Andronicus_, Hamlet at this point did write something of the
Ghost's message in his tables. In any case Shakespeare, whether he wrote
_Titus Andronicus_ or only revised an older play on the subject, might
well recall this incident, as he frequently reproduces other things in
that drama.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 258: The reader will observe that this suggestion of a
_further_ reason for his making the note may be rejected without the
rest of the interpretation being affected.]

NOTE E.

THE GHOST IN THE CELLARAGE.

It has been thought that the whole of the last part of I. v.,
from the entrance of Horatio and Marcellus, follows the old
play closely, and that Shakespeare is condescending to the
groundlings.

Here again, whether or no he took a suggestion from the old
play, I see no reason to think that he wrote down to his
public. So far as Hamlet's state of mind is concerned, there
is not a trace of this. Anyone who has a difficulty in
understanding it should read Coleridge's note. What appears
grotesque is the part taken by the Ghost, and Hamlet's
consequent removal from one part of the stage to another. But,
as to the former, should we feel anything grotesque in the
four injunctions 'Swear!' if it were not that they come from
under the stage--a fact which to an Elizabethan audience,
perfectly indifferent to what is absurdly called stage
illusion, was probably not in the least grotesque? And as to
the latter, if we knew the Ghost-lore of the time better than
we do, perhaps we should see nothing odd in Hamlet's insisting
on moving away and proposing the oath afresh when the Ghost
intervenes.

But, further, it is to be observed that he does not merely
propose the oath afresh. He first makes Horatio and Marcellus
swear never to make known what they have _seen