[Footnote 259: It is impossible to tell whether Coleridge formed his view independently, or adopted it from Schlegel. For there is no record of his having expressed his opinion prior to the time of his reading Schlegel's Lectures; and, whatever he said to the contrary, his borrowings from Schlegel are demonstrable.]
[Footnote 260: Clark and Wright well compare Polonius' antithesis of 'rich, not gaudy': though I doubt if 'handsome' implies richness.]
[Footnote 261: Is it not possible that 'mobled queen,' to which Hamlet seems to object, and which Polonius praises, is meant for an example of the second fault of affected phraseology, from which the play was said to be free, and an instance of which therefore surprises Hamlet?]
[Footnote 262: The extravagance of these phrases is doubtless intentional (for Macbeth in using them is trying to act a part), but the absurdity of the second can hardly be so.]
[Footnote 263: Steevens observes that Heywood uses the phrase 'guled with slaughter,' and I find in his Iron Age various passages indicating that he knew the speech of Aeneas (cf. p. 140 for another sign that he knew Hamlet). The two parts of the Iron Age were published in 1632, but are said, in the preface to the Second, to have 'been long since writ.' I refer to the pages of vol. 3 of Pearson's Heywood (1874). (1) p. 329, Troilus 'lyeth imbak'd In his cold blood.'
Vulcan that wrought it out of gadds of Steele With his Ciclopian hammers, never made Such noise upon his Anvile forging it, Than these my arm'd fists in Ulisses wracke.
For the same writer's ingenious theory (which is of course incapable of proof) regarding the relation of the player's speech in Hamlet to Marlowe and Nash's Dido, see Furness's Variorum Hamlet.]