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Meaning, Using, Translating, and Editing1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Extract

Thus Horatio on the ghost of Hamlet's father. Good dramatic poetry; but here it must serve a baser turn, as an illustration of my theme. My question is this: when the spirit is being extravagant and erring, just what is it being ? The editors are quite willing to tell us. For example, Dowden, in the Arden Shakespeare, has the following notes: extravagant] wandering out of bounds, vagrant; ‘erring’, straying; and the Variorum Shakespeare takes a similar view. So Hamlet's father's ghost is simply wandering about away from the nether world to which it must return at daybreak.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1974

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References

page 41 note 1 This is, of course, not all that is lost; but it is all that I have space to discuss here.

page 44 note 1 ‘Inferior’ on the assumption that, when one is engaged in philosophical exposition, even in a poem, the demands of philosophical clarity should take precedence over poetical and rhetorical effects in all cases where there is a clash between the two.

page 48 note 1 For co-operative and competitive excellences, see my Merit and Responsibility (Oxford, 1960), 3 ff.Google Scholar

page 49 note 1 For others, see Merit and Responsibility, 77 ff.Google Scholar