master. In cruel, unnatural manner, for no object whatever, he
murders poor Polonius. Then he begins to speak daggers in such a
manner as to get into a perfect ecstasy. Nor need any priest have
been ashamed of the sermon he preaches to his own mother.

In the first edition of 'Hamlet,' the scene between mother and son is
rather like a sketch in which most things are merely indicated, not
worked out. Only the part of the Ghost, with the exception of the line:--

Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works,

which is wanting in the first edition, and Hamlet's address to the
Ghost, are in both quartos the same. Even as in the first act, so this
time also, Hamlet, on seeing the Ghost, calls upon the saints:--

Save me, and hover o'er me with your wings,
You heavenly guards!

This was the usual course on the occasion of such doubtful apparitions,
of which one did not know whether they were 'airs of heaven' or 'blasts
from hell.'

A new intercalation is (in the first quarto there is no vestige of it),
that Hamlet reproaches his mother with having degraded 'sweet religion'
to 'a rhapsody of words;' that he says 'the Devil hath conquered her at
hoodman blind ;' that she should confess herself to Heaven, and 'assume
a virtue if she have it not;' that 'virtue itself of vice must pardon
beg in the fatness of these pursy times, yea, curb and woo, for leave
to do him good.' So also is the Queen's question new:--