Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Citations are from Albert Cohn, Shakespeare in Germany; and Early Modern German Shakespeare, vol. I, eds. Lukas Erne and Kareen Seidler.
2. Saint Patrick oversees Purgatory in some accounts.
3. I was introduced to Bacon’s essay by a web-browser search of “simulation and dissimulation”
4. I credit Steve Roth’s conjecture that Hamlet interpolated lines for the “player queen,” posted to http://shaksper.net, SHK 26.033, Friday, 23 January 2015; “Some dozen or sixteen lines.”
5. See the analogous error at 1.2.132, where sealfe was misread: “Or that the euerlasting had not fixt/His cannon gainst seale slaughter … ” (1.2.131–32).
6. Dr. S. A. Tannenbaum: “paiock” misreads putock (“I chose an eagle, and did auoid a puttock;” Cymb. 1.1.140). Hamlet alludes to the now proven murderer, but has no ad hoc rhyme for was.
7. This conversation appears to be with one character only, though Horatio is present.
8. In respect of the afterlife, “conscience makes cowards.” (3.1.83); F wrongly adds, “of us all.” Explicitly, “is it not to be damned to let [the King] come in further evil?” Hamlet is concerned less with “flesh” than his independently assured “something after death,” unsure as it may be.