Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! Ah fie! 't is an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely.

The scene between Hamlet and Horatio (act i. sc. 4), which in both
texts is about the same, contains an innovation in which the Prince's
mistrust of nature is even more sharply expressed. These lines are new:--

This heavy-headed revel east and west
Makes us traduced and tax'd of other nations--

as far as--

... The dram of eale (evil)
Doth (drawth) all the substance of a doubt
To his own scandal.

The contents of this interpolated speech may concisely be thus given:
that the virtues of man, however pure and numerous they may be, are
often infected by 'some vicious mole of Nature,' wherein he himself
is guiltless; and that from such a fault in the chance of birth a stamp
of defect is impressed upon his character, and thus contaminates the
whole.

These innovations are evidently introduced for the purpose of making