seems impossible to believe that they are the result of INTROmere coincidence. In the third act we have:

'HAMLET. Ha, ha! are you honest ?

OPHELIA. My lord?

HAMLET. Are you fair?

OPHELIA. What means your lordship?

HAMLET. That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should

admit no discourse to your beauty.

OPHELIA. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty ? '

And Pettie gives us the following:

Ad hereto that bewty breedeth temptation, temptation dishonour for it is a matter almost impossible, and sieldome seene, that those two great enimies, bewty and honesty agree togither... And though it fall out often that bewty and honesty are joyned togither, yet it falleth out sieldome, but that exquisite bewty is had in suspition' (Bk. III. 10-11).

On the next page of Pettie we find :

'Those which use artificial means, displease God much, in altring his image, and please men never a whit, in going about to deceive them. I know no man of judgement, but setteth more, by ods, by a naturall bewty that sheweth but meanly, then by a painted artificial bewty that shineth most gallantly' (ib. 11). Then, a page further on:

'We will maintayne then, that a woman taking away and changing the coolour and complexion which God hath given her, taketh unto her that which belongeth to a harlot' (ib. 13).

Compare with these extracts Hamlet's words: 'I have heard of your paintings too, well enough: God hath 'given you one face, and you make yourselves another' (III. i.).

Again, when the Danish prince asserts: Be thou as

DUCTION

INTRO- 'chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape DUCTION calumny' (ib.), Pettie had already written: 'I never ' yet hitherunto knewe man so good and vertuous, which

had not been subject to the malice and slaunders of

some one' (Bk. 1. 106).

In a smaller way, we may compare Hamlet's' Denmark's a prison. . . To me it is a prison' (11. ii.) with Pettie's 'The Citie is to me a prison' (Bk. 1. 27).

On the subject of the gift of good delivery of speech,' and all that appertains to it, there are some most excellent admonitions contained in the dialogue at pages 128-32 of the Second Book. The extracts set out here are but examples of these instructions:

...

'It is muche in my opinion to keepe a certaine majestie in the jesture, which speaketh as it were by using silence, and constraineth as it were by way of commaundement the hearers, to have it in admiration and reverence. Yet herein is required such a moderation, that a man with too litle be not immoveable like an image, neither with too much, too busie like an Ape . . . it is necessarie to use a meane, that the pronuntiation be neither too swift nor too slow. . . and therefore wee must speake freely, without supping up our woordes . . . We must likewise take heede we speake not out of the throate, like one that hath some meate in his mouth which is too hotte . . . Lastly, the voyce must be neither fainte like one that is sicke . neither shrill nor loud like a crier . . . [one should avoid] a playerlike kinde of lightnesse, whereby hee getteth discommendation . . . and see the woordes agree to the jesture. neither likewise doe I thinke it meete to admonishe the hearer to take heede . . . of whispering in any others eare, of laughing without occasion . . . of shewing him selfe greeved at the speakers wordes wee must imitate those which neither Saintlike are too ceremonious, neither Jugglerlike are too

...

...

quicke and too full of action . . . So great agreement is there INTRObetweene the words and the countenance, and the countenance DUCTION and the wordes.'

No Shakespearian student can read these extracts

and a good deal more that will be found in the textwithout at once being reminded of Hamlet's address to the Players:

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it . . . I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines . . . but use all gently; for in the very torrents, tempest . . . you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. . . . Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor; suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature. . . . Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve' (III. ii.).

At page 169 of Bk. 11., Anniball remarks: And there'fore in my opinion, those young men which eschue the 'companie of old, hyde their woundes, and make them 'to fester inwardly.' Hamlet, in a like vein, says:

'It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,

Whilst rank corruption, mining all within,

Infects unseen.'

(III. iv.)

It is worth noting here that Guazzo's original has the words le rendono ulcerose,' which would seem to suggest that Shakespeare occasionally consulted the Italian version.1

1 See The Nineteenth Century and After, Jan. and Feb. 1918, in which the present writer maintains that Shakespeare's knowledge of Italian was a good deal more extensive than the trivial acquaintance with that language generally attributed to him.

INTRO- I have not yet come across any Shakespearian critic DUCTION who has ventured to give us the name of the book that

Hamlet is reading when Polonius interrupts him in Act II. Sc. ii. with his 'What do you read, my lord?' It is true that Warburton suggested the Tenth Satire of Juvenal; but his quotation from that author does not go far towards confirming the guess. Be that as it may, the Prince replies :

Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and plum-tree gum, and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams: . . . for you yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if, like a crab, you could go backward.'

Hamlet ends the interview with a muttered These tedious old fools!'

When we find in Pettie's Guazzo such words as: ' But 'I wil say unto you, that many olde folke complaine without cause, that their age is smally regarded or reverenced, and perswade themselves, for that they have a whyte 'beard, for that they are bald, bleareyed, toothless, crooked, 'trembling,... and many of them see not how voide they ' are of understanding . . wee see some olde doating fooles, who notwithstanding they feele their legges feeble and 'trembling under them, and see in their glasse their whyte heares,' closely followed by: Let us nowe make an ende ' of this matter, advising olde men to suffer their minde

6

...

to waxe olde together with their bodie . . . and when

' they are arived to their ende, not to seeke to turne backe . . .' (Bk. 11. 172-3), we can then begin to see that there is no

insuperable difficulty in believing that the actual volume INTROin the hands of Prince Hamlet was the Civile Conversation DUCTION and no other.

Further evidence of borrowing by the dramatist is afforded by Hamlet's interview with Osric in Act v. Sc. ii. When this too courtly courtier, bearing a message from the King, removes his cap before the Danish Prince, Hamlet bids him to put his bonnet to his right use, adding, ''tis for the head.' 'I thank your lordship,' Osric replies, ''tis very hot,' and more to the same effect. The origin of this excuse is surely to be found in Pettie's Guazzo :

'I will not say unto you, that for one which hath a good grace in these ceremonies, there are a thousand whom it becommeth so ill to use them, that it will make you sicke at the heart to see it. . . . As I have seene some talking with the Duke my maister, and seeing him bare headed, have taken his arme with both their handes, and made him put on his hat ANNIB. He should have put it of againe, to have shewed that he was not bare in respect of them, but because of the heate' (Bk. II. 165).

6

At Act III. Sc. iv. is, ' Thus bad begins and worse remains behind'; with which compare that a thing ill begun, will come to a worse ende' (Bk. 111. 47).

,

A good example of Shakespeare's transforming power is shown in his adaptation of Guazzo's somewhat commonplace this your rule is rather praysed then practised (Bk. 11. 24). In Hamlet it becomes, 'It is a custom More 'honour'd in the breach than the observance."

Hamlet in the Queen's apartment' protests against the idea that he is mad, and his words to the Queen are: