o_.]

[Footnote 2: It is well here to recall the modes of the word _leave_:
'_Give me leave_,' Polonius says with proper politeness to the king and
queen when he wants _them_ to go--that is, 'Grant me your _departure_';
but he would, going himself, _take_ his leave, his departure, _of_ or
_from_ them--by their permission to go. Hamlet means, 'You cannot take
from me anything I will more willingly part with than your leave, or, my
permission to you to go.' 85, 203. See the play on the two meanings of
the word in _Twelfth Night_, act ii. sc. 4:

_Duke_. Give me now leave to leave thee;

though I suspect it ought to be--

_Duke_. Give me now leave.

_Clown_. To leave thee!--Now, the melancholy &c.]

[Footnote 3: It is a relief to him to speak the truth under the cloak of
madness--ravingly. He has no one to whom to open his heart: what lies
there he feels too terrible for even the eye of Horatio. He has not
apparently told him as yet more than the tale of his father's murder.]

[Footnote 4: _Above, in Quarto_.]

[Footnote 5: In this and all like utterances of Hamlet, we see what worm
it is that lies gnawing at his heart.]

[Footnote 6: This is a slip in the _Quarto_--rectified in the _Folio_:
his daughter was not present.]

[Page 90]

newes is not true.[1] [2] Let me question more in particular:
what haue you my good friends, deserued
at the hands of Fortune, that she sends you to
Prison hither?

_Guil_. Prison, my Lord?

_Ham_. Denmark's a Prison.

_Rosin_. Then is the World one.

_Ham_. A goodly one, in which there are many
Confines, Wards, and Dungeons; _Denmarke_ being
one o'th'worst.

_Rosin_. We thinke not so my Lord.

_Ham_. Why then 'tis none to you; for there is
nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it
so[3]: to me it is a prison.

_Rosin_. Why then your Ambition makes it one:
'tis too narrow for your minde.[4]

_Ham_. O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell,
and count my selfe a King of infinite space; were
it not that I haue bad dreames.

_Guil_. Which dreames indeed are Ambition:
for the very substance[5] of the Ambitious, is meerely
the shadow of a Dreame.

_Ham_. A dreame it selfe is but a shadow.

_Rosin_. Truely, and I hold Ambition of so ayry
and light a quality, that it is but a shadowes shadow.

_Ham_. Then are our Beggers bodies; and our
Monarchs and out-stretcht Heroes the Beggers
Shadowes: shall wee to th'Court: for, by my fey[6]
I cannot reason