Ham. The king doth wake[b 1] to-night and takes his rouse,[b 2]
Keeps wassail,[a 1] and the swaggering up-spring[b 3] reels;
And as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down, 10
The kettle-drum[b 4] and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of his pledge.[b 5]
Hor. Is it[a 2] a custom?
Ham. Ay, marry, is't;
But[a 3] to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom 15
More honoured in the breach than the observance.
This[a 4] heavy-headed revel east and west
Makes us traduced and tax'd[b 6] of other nations;
They clepe[b 7] us drunkards, and with swinish phrase
Soil our addition;[b 8] and indeed it takes 20
From our achievements, though performed at height,
The pith and marrow of our attribute.[b 9]
So, oft it chances in particular men,
- ↑ 8. wake] hold a late revel; "so,in poets of a much earlier date, we find the words watch and watching employed as equivalent to 'debauch at night'" (Dyce, Glossary).
- ↑ 8. rouse] see I. ii. 127.
- ↑ 9. up-spring] Pope read "upstart," meaning the King. In Chapman's Alphonsus up-spring is named as a German dance. Elze shows that it was the Hüpfauf, "the last and consequently wildest dance at the old German merrymakings." The verb "reels" is taken by Staunton as a plural noun.
- ↑ 11. kettle-drum] Cleveland in Fuscara, or The Bee Errant, has the line "As Danes carowse by kettle-drums."
- ↑ 12. triumph of his pledge] his glorious achievement as drinker, Howell in his Letters tells of the Danish King Christian IV. (1588–1649) beginning thirty-five healths during a feast—"the King was taken away at last in his chair."
- ↑ 18. tax'd] censured; frequent in Shakespeare.
- ↑ 19. clepe] call, as in Macbeth, III. i. 94.
- ↑ 20. addition] something added by way of distinction, style of address, as in Lear, I. i. 138:"The name and all the additions to a King."
- ↑ 22. attribute] what is attributed; hence reputation, as in Troilus and Cressida, II. iii. 125: "Much attribute he hath."
