"It shows a will most incorrect to heaven;
A heart unfortified, or mind impatient;
An understanding simple and unschool'd:
For what we know must be, and is as common
As any the most vulgar thing to sense,
Why should we, in our peevish opposition,
Take it to heart? Fie! 't is a fault to heaven,
A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
To reason most absurd; whose common theme
Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,
From the first corse, till he that died to-day,
This must be so."

In the last scene, all after Horatio's speech; "Now cracks a noble
heart," etc., is struck out. Who will believe that any man in his
senses, making corrections for which he meant to claim the deference
due to a higher authority than the printed test, would make such and so
numerous erasures? In fact, no one does so believe.

But the collations of "Hamlet" furnish in these erasures one other very
important piece of evidence. In Act II., Sc. 1, the passage from and
including Reynaldo's speech, "As gaming, my Lord," to his other speech,
"Ay, my Lord, I would know that," is crossed out. But the lines are not
only crossed through in ink, they are "also marked in pencil." Now it
is confessed by the accusers of Mr. Collier that these erasures are the
marks of an ancient adaptation of the text to stage purposes, which were
made before the marginal corrections of the text; otherwise they must
needs have maintained the preposterous position just above set forth.
And besides, it is admitted, that, in the numerous passages which are
both erased and corrected, the work itself shows that the corrections