Nero, who put to death his mother who had poisoned her husband. This
passage is surely remarkable. And so are the later words (III. iv. 28):

A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother,
As kill a king, and marry with his brother.

Are we to understand that at this time he really suspected her of
complicity in the murder? We must remember that the Ghost had not told
him she was innocent of that.]

[Footnote 59: I am inclined to think that the note of interrogation put
after 'revenged' in a late Quarto is right.]

[Footnote 60: III. iii. 1-26. The state of affairs at Court at this
time, though I have not seen it noticed by critics, seems to me
puzzling. It is quite clear from III. ii. 310 ff., from the passage just
cited, and from IV. vii. 1-5 and 30 ff., that everyone sees in the
play-scene a gross and menacing insult to the King. Yet no one shows any
sign of perceiving in it also an accusation of murder. Surely that is
strange. Are we perhaps meant to understand that they do perceive this,
but out of subservience choose to ignore the fact? If that were
Shakespeare's meaning, the actors could easily indicate it by their
looks. And if it were so, any sympathy we may feel for Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern in their fate would be much diminished. But the mere text
does not suffice to decide either this question or the question whether
the two courtiers were aware of the contents of the commission they bore
to England.]

[Footnote 61: This passage in _Hamlet_ seems to have been in Heywood's
mind when, in _The Second Part of the Iron Age_ (Pearson's reprint, vol.