Page:Hamlet - The Arden Shakespeare - 1899.djvu/128

I'll tent^{[b 1]} him to the quick; if he but^{[a 1]} blench^{[b 2]}
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil;^{[a 2][b 3]} and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy, 640
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses^{[b 4]} me to damn me. I'll have grounds
More relative^{[b 5]} than this. The play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

[Exit.

ACT III

SCENE I.—A Room in the Castle.

Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz,
and Guildenstern.

King. And can you, by no drift of circumstance,^{[a 3][b 6]}
Get from him why he puts on this confusion,

1. 636. he but] F, a doe Q.
2. 638. May be the devil] F, be a deale Q (deale repeated again in this line in Q).
3. 1. circumstance] F, conference Q.

1. 636. tent] probe, as in Cymbeline, III. iv. 118.
2. 636. blench] flinch, quail; used specially of the eyes.
3. 638. devil] Coleridge quotes from Browne's Religio Medici, Part I. § 37, to show that he held the belief that ghosts are often devils abusing men to damn them. See on this subject Spalding's Elizabethan Demonology.
4. 642. Abuses] deceives, deludes, as in Tempest, V. i. 112.
5. 643. relative] closely related, to the purpose, conclusive; used only here by Shakespeare.
6. 1. drift of circumstance] Clar. Press explain: "roundabout method," referring to "circumstance" in I. v. 127, "drift" in II. i. 10, and both words (but not in connection) in Troilus and Cressida, III. iii. 113, 114. May it mean tendency or significance of incidental facts?