_Hamlet_. What coachman--my ladye's coach! for shame! Her ladiship's readie to come down.
_Potkinne_. 'Sfoote! Hamlet, are you madde? Whither run you nowe? You should brushe up my olde mistresse!
Thereupon neighbours come together, all impelled by the greatest curiosity 'to see her take coach,' and wishing to congratulate her.
_Gertrud_. Thank you, good people! My coach for the love of Heaven, my coach! In good truth, I shall swoune else.
_Hamlet_. Coach, coach, my ladye's coach! [_Exit_ Hamlet.
After a little conversation between mother and daughter, which we must leave out, Hamlet enters again:
_Gertrud_. That's well said. Now Heaven! methinks I am eene up to the knees in preferment.... But a little higher, but a little higher, but a little higher! There, there, there lyes Cupid's fire!
_Mrs. Touchstone_. But must this young man (Hamlet), an't please you, madam, run by your coach all the way a foote?
_Gertrud_. I by my faith, I warrant him; hee gives no other milke, as I have another servant does.
_Mrs. Touchstone_. Ahlas! 'tis eene pittie meethinks; for God's sake, madam, buy him but a hobbie horse; let the poore youth have something betwixt his legges to ease 'hem. Alas! we must doe as we would be done too.
That is all we dare to quote from this comedy; but it quite suffices to characterise the meanness of the warfare which Jonson's clique carried on against Shakspere.
However, the lofty ideas contained in 'Hamlet' could not be lowered by such an attack; they became the common property of the best and noblest. Those ideas were of too high a range, too abstract in their nature, to be easily made a sport of before the multitude. A few pleasantries, used by Shakespeare in a moment of easy-going style, were laid hold of maliciously, and caricatured most indecently, by his antagonists, in order to entertain the common crowd there with. Innocent children, moreover, were made to act such satires: 'little eyases, that cry out on the top of the question, and are most tyrannically clapped for't: these are now the fashion, and so berattle the common stages.'
Not less than in 'Volpone,' the tendency of 'Hamlet' as regards religious questions is, in the most evident manner, ridiculed in John Marston's 'Malcontent.' Although this satire (so the play is called in the preface 'To the Reader') appeared before 'Volpone,' we yet thought it more useful first to speak of Jonson's comedy being the work of Shakspere's most formidable adversary.