Text:
HAMLET (continued)
That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat,
Of habits devil, is angel yet in this,
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock or livery,
That aptly is put on. Refrain tonight,
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence: the next more easy;
For use almost can change the stamp of nature,
And either [shame? ] the devil, or throw him out
With wondrous potency. Once more, good night:
And when you are desirous to be blessed,
I'll blessing beg of you. For this same lord,
Pointing to POLONIUS
I do repent: but heaven hath pleased it so,
To punish me with this and this with me,
That I must be their scourge and minister.
Notes:
Hendiadys
Hendiadys (Greek for 'one through two') is a figure of speech whereby two ideas are combined to form a single image. A very simple example is a describing a cup of tea as "nice and hot". It features a great deal in the Bible, and indeed there are over sixty examples of it in Hamlet alone.
Confession
Confession was one of the sacraments that were no longer in use by the emergent Protestant church in England. Hamlet is a play that seems to straddle the divide between England’s Catholic past and Protestant future - here Hamlet is suggesting that Gertrude should repent her sins and maybe take the sacrament of confession, endeavouring to sin no more. Once she is prepared to do so, and thereby be blessed by a priest, he will be prepared to ask for her blessing again.
Quarto | Folio
Shakespeare's plays were printed in a variety of different printing formats. Some plays (Hamlet included) were first printed as quartos, or books in which the paper is folded in half twice, creating a smaller book. (Quarto because the page was folded into four smaller pages...) In 1623 the plays were edited and published as a folio, in which the pages are folded in half once. This volume, the First Folio, was put together by two actors, John Heminges and Henry Condell. The First Folio contains all of the canonical plays by Shakespeare with the exception of Pericles. Nonetheless, the Folio omits this segment of the text, so we have no way of knowing for sure just what word originally sat in the line we discussed this week. ‘Shame’ will have to suffice!