Two Lines, Three Readers: Hamlet, TLN 1904—5

Author(s): Karen Newman

Source: Shakespeare Quarterly , Summer 2011, Vol. 62, No. 2, SURVIVING HAMLET
(Summer 2011), pp. 263-270
Published by: Oxford University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23025631

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 Two Lines, Three Readers: Hamlet, TLN 1904-5
Karen Newman

I BEGIN WITH ONE

dent evaluation, OF MYabout
a comment ALL-TIME FAVORITE
a midterm for Brit. QUOTATIONS from a Stu
Lit. I, the New York
University English departments survey required of majors: "What possible
importance," a student wrote, "could there be in a line and a half of poetry?"
I have taken to citing that remark in my introductory lecture for the course
and to observing that if a student doesn't in fact believe in the importance of a
line and a half of poetry, he or she has chosen the wrong class and the wrong
major. Although it is tempting to relegate such opinions to blogging, reality
TV-addicted, plugged-in, sleep-deprived students, over the last couple of years,
the English department at NYU has been engaged in an ongoing debate with
resonance for this question: on the one hand, colleagues who believe that liter
ary interpretation continues to be an important part of what we do as teachers
and scholars, and on the other, a contingent who contend that close reading is
pointless and dead, and that we need to be looking at large databases, graphs,
and trees—the shorthand reference would be to the work and manifestos of
Franco Moretti.1 But as Jonathan Crewe observes, the close reading I have in
mind is not "an unmediated encounter between the mind and the bounded text,"
but overdetermined by contingency, by contexts of many kinds, by assumptions
and presuppositions. At a recent NYU departmental colloquium on mediation,
in response to discussion about the value of reading any specific literary artifact
versus shuffling through hundreds of examples, John Guillory remarked wearily,
"I'm happy with just a line." Like Guillory, I'm happy with just a line.

Late in his essay "On Criticism" in the second series of Table Talk, William
Hazlitt offers a sketch of the perfect critic, one Joseph Fawcett, whom he praises
for his catholic taste and willingness to recognize the merits of good writing
unfettered by ego, partisan prejudice, or nit-picking. Fawcett, Hazlitt declares,
"gave a cordial welcome to all sorts, provided they were the best in their kind."

See Franco Moretti's series of articles originally published in the New Left Review ("Conjec
tures on World Literature" and "Graphs, Maps, Trees, Abstract Models for Literary History—1,
2, and 3"), reprinted in Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary Theory (London:
Verso, 2005).

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 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

Then in praise of the man he introduces as "the friend of my youth," Hazlitt

borrows from Hamlet to announce, "A heartier friend or honester critic I never
coped withal."2
Hamlet's lines at 3.2.52-53 are a tribute to Horatio; as his friend enters,
Hamlet calls out his name. At least in Q2 and the Folio texts, Horatio answers,
"Here, sweet lord, at your service" (51).3 The lines in question are Hamlet's
response: "Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man / As e'er my conversation coped
withal." These lines have not attracted a great deal of attention; for the most
part, editors have merely glossed "coped" or "coped withal," and not at length.
In Furness's Variorum edition, "coped withal" gets two entries. We learn that
Caldecott offers "encountered with," and Furness also cites Clarendon: "In Mer.
ofVen. IV, I, 412,'to cope' means to reward."4 The Riverside edition paraphrases
the second line prosaically: "my association with people has brought me into
contact with"; the Oxford puts "cope" in its glossary and covers the main bases:
"cope" means "sky, have to do with, encounter, recompense."5 The Arden editions,
both Jenkins's conflated text and the recent edition of the 1603 and 1623 texts,
say nothing about these lines. In short, many of our major scholarly and teaching
texts pass over these words.

These lines mark an interlude between Hamlet's scene of instruction to the

players and the play scene proper. And as Crewe notes, they mark the distinc
tion both Hamlet and the play make between the social institution of theater as
represented by the players, and the insistent theatricality of court life. Horatio,
he points out, "serves Hamlet as something of a bulwark against absorption into
the theatricalized world of the court that Claudius manages so masterfully"
(267). The interlude is perhaps best known for its extended praise of Horatio:
in response to Hamlet's tribute initiated in our lines, Horatio begins to demur,
but Hamlet insists, "do not think I flatter, / For what advancement may I hope
from thee / That no revenue hast but thy good spirits" (54-56). What follows
is the famous "Stoic" description of Horatio as one who "in suffering all" "suffers
nothing," "A man that Fortune's buffets and rewards / Hath ta'en with equal

2 William Hazlitt, Table Talk: Opinions on Books, Men, and Things, 2nd ser., part 2 (New
York: Wiley and Putnam, 1845), 64-78, esp. 77.
3 William Shakespeare, "Hamlet": The Texts of 1603 and 1623, ed. Ann Thompson and Neil
Taylor (London: Thomson Learning, 2006). All references to the play are from this this edition
and to the Folio text (unless marked Q).
4 Horace Howard Furness, ed., "Hamlet": A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare, 10th ed.,
2 vols. (1877; repr., Mineola, NY: Dover), 1:233.
5 G. Blakemore Evans, gen. ed., The Riverside Shakespeare, 2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mif
flin, 1997), 1162n55.

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 TWO LINES, THREE READERS: HAMLET, TLN 1904-5

thanks" and so forth (11.64-66). Hamlet cuts short his commendation, breaki
off in midcourse with, "Something too much of this" (72). In Charles Cow
Clarke's judgment, Hamlet's "genuine manliness" is revealed in "this little
tence," which for Clarke shows us Hamlet checking himself, "conscious that
has been carried away by fervor of affectionate friendship into stronger prot
tion than mayhap becomes the truth and simplicity of sentiment between m
and man."6 Alan Bray and Jeffrey Masten have taught us otherwise. As Mast
writes of conversing relationships between male friends in his discussion of
epithet sweet, "Such relationships were both celebrated by and constituti
the broader social fabric, in ways that were, as Bray demonstrates in his
humous volume, The Friend, not necessarily at odds with or separable from
system of cross-sex patriarchal marriage. Together with conversing, a term
links speaking together, dwelling with, and conversion, sweetness is a pa
the syntax of male relations."7 Of the word conversation and its relation to
friendship in the period, we have learned a great deal in the last decade f
the work of Wendy Wall, Laurie Shannon, and others, but particularly f
Masten himself.8 Much could be said about male friendship, conversation
the intimacies these lines might imply: Hamlet's "my conversation" encompa
a host of meanings for the word conversation as recorded in the Oxford Eng
Dictionary (OED), some of which are now obsolete, and not just the sec
definition which, given recent interest in the history of sexuality and same
relations, has come to dominate our sense of this word: "consorting or ha
dealings with others; living together; commerce, intercourse, society, intimac
Both Bray and Masten explore the various possibilities offered by that defin

6 Quoted in Furness, ed., 233n69. Clarke reads this speech's "sobriety of expression even
all its ardor" as proof positive that Hamlet's mind, although "afflicted with melancholi
hypochondria" is not "in the very slightest degree disordered" (233n69).
Jeffrey Masten, "Toward a Queer Address: The Taste of Letters and Early Modern
Friendship," GLQ 10 (2004): 367-84, esp. 371; and Alan Bray, Homosexuality in Renais
England (New York: Columbia UP, 1995), and The Friend (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 20
On the important philosophical context of sweet, see Mary Carruthers, "Sweetness," Specu
81 (2006): 999-1013.
On converse and conversation as keywords in male-male friendship, see Jeffrey Ma
"Playwrighting: Authorship and Collaboration" in A New History of Early English Dra
ed. John D. Cox and David Scott Kastan (New York: Columbia UP, 1997), 357-82. See a
Wendy Wall, The Imprint of Gender: Authorship and Publication in the English Renais
(Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1993); and Laurie Shannon, Sovereign Amity: Figures of Friendship in
spearean Contexts (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2002). On male friendship, see Jonathan Goldb
foundational Sodometries: Renaissance Texts, Modern Sexualities (Stanford: Stanford UP, 19
9 OED Online (Oxford: Oxford UP; online ed., March 2011), http://www.oed.com/v
Entry/40748?rskey=Unxn02&result=l&isAdvanced=false (accessed 29 March 2011)
"conversation, 2.

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266 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

of conversation, although not with reference to Haml

play in these lines are other meanings of the word
"the action of living or having one's being in a place o
tion or engagement with things, in the way of busine
condition of acquaintance or intimacy with a matte
company, society"; "manner of conducting oneself i
behavior, mode of life" and finally the word's most co
us, "interchange of thoughts; familiar discourse or talk
Yet another indication of Hamlet's intimacy with hi
second person familiar thou form that registers feelin
pronoun is also used in the period to address a social in
likely marks emotion, as it does in Horatio's only use o
play (missing from Ql), the well-worn lines spoken
night, sweet Prince, / And flights of angels sing thee
In the essay on sweet to which I have already referred
reference to Horatio's epithet and our lines at 3.2, how
of this rhetoric, the way that sweetness and the undi
friendship in the period seem to us strangely to jostle.
When Horatio's "sweet lord/' that is, Hamlet, declare
man / As e'er my conversation coped withal," it is hard
of Hamlet's earlier conversation with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in which
he asks his "dear friends" who are "in the beaten way of friendship""by the rights
of our fellowship" and "by the obligation of our ever-preserved love," "Were you
not sent for?" and implores them, "Come, deal justly with me" (2.2.267—85).
But Hamlet's encomium of the just" Horatio and his stoic virtues at 3.2 is also
deeply concerned with distinguishing, choosing, electing, and judgment—in
short, with criticism. He is, as Lars Engle demonstrates, disinterested. Hamlet
praises Horatio by insisting on his own powers of judgment—"Since my dear
soul was mistress of my choice / And could of men distinguish, her election /
Hath sealed thee for herself" (11. 61-63). By gendering his distinguishing soul
as feminine, Hamlet makes their male friendship a cross-sex union. But the
emphasis I have placed here on the prince's powers of judgment returns me to
the verb coped, which I would like to worry.

10 OED Online, s.v. "conversation, n." 1, 4-7.

11 On Shakespeare's use of thou and you, as well as a review of other work on the topic, see
Penelope Freedman, Power and Passion in Shakespeare's Pronouns: Interrogating "You" and "Thou"
(Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007). Thou could also be construed as Hamlet's address to a social
inferior, but in this context it more likely marked by emotional force, as in Horatio's lines at the
end of the play.
12 Masten, "Playwrighting," 372.

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 TWO LINES, THREE READERS: HAMLET, TLN 1904-5

"Cop'd" (Ql),"copt" (Q2), or'coap'd" (F) would certainly seem to be the pa

tense of the verb cope. In fact, the OED uses these lines as illustration of
of the verb's meanings: "to meet with; to come into contact, touch, or relatio
with; to have to do with," which it labels obsolete or archaic.13 Cope comes fr
the French couper or Old French colper (coper, couper), meaning "to strike" o
"to cut" Other meanings listed in the OED reveal that etymology: "to str
to come to blows, encounter, join battle, engage, meet in the shock of battle
tournament"; "to come to blows with, engage, encounter, contend, fight with
and "to contend with, face, encounter (dangers, difficulties, etc.). Often imply
a successful encounter."14 The dictionary distinguishes between definition 5 (
meet with; to come into contact, touch, or relation with; to have to do with"
which it uses our lines to exemplify, and the related entry 7, which it define
slightly differently: "to meet, meet with, come into contact (hostile or friend
with," a meaning also labeled obsolete.15 In meaning 5, the OED suggests,
violence or blows are implied, whereas in 7, the meeting or contact is qualifie
as either hostile or friendly. The earliest example adduced for meaning 5
line from Lucrece:" But she, that neuer cop'd with straunger eies, Could picke
meaning from their parling looks."16 But as "parling" reveals, engaging, cont
ing, fighting, and coming to blows may be part of the verb's meaning even in
lines from Lucrece. Of the sixteen uses of the verb "cope" listed in the Harva
Concordance, one is to the obsolete meaning of the word (to buy, bargain
exchange), but all the rest, even if one excludes our lines from Hamlet, the li
I've just cited from Lucrece, and possibly Duke Senior's vaunt concerning Jaqu
lamenting the death of a deer, "I love to cope him in these sullen fits," all ha
without question to do with strife, with coming to blows.17 And I include in t
general statement Shakespeare's only usage, from Othello, of the sexual mean
of the verb cope, Iago's boast in Act 4 that he will make Cassio "tell the tale a
/ Where, how, how oft, how long ago, and when / He hath and is again to co
your wife."18 That sexual meaning resonates with the meanings of conversati

13 OED Online (Oxford: Oxford UP; online ed., March 2011), http://www.oed.com/vie
Entry/41131?rskey=dlzN6B&result=6&isAdvanced=false (accessed 29 March 2011),
"cope, v5.
14 OED Online, s.v. "cope, v.2," 1, 2, 4a.
OED Online, s.v.'cope, v.2/' 7.
16 OED Online, s.v."cope, v.2" 5.
17 Marvin Spevack, Harvard Concordance to Shakespeare (Cambridge: Belknap Press
Harvard UP, 1973), 237.1 would paraphrase Duke Senior's line "I love to affront him," w
preserves the hint or suggestion of contention. See As You Like It, 2.1.67, as quoted in Spev
s.v. "cope."
18 William Shakespeare, Othello, ed. E. A.J. Honigmann (Walton-on-Thomas, UK: Thomas
Nelson and Sons, 1997), 4.1.85-87.

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 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

I have already adduced, and with the theme of male friendship, but it is also
worth mulling whether in our lines from Hamlet there is a residual violence of
blows and contention, a meaning only at odds with the sexual meaning of con
versation we have already considered, if we turn away from sexual intercourse in
its vigorous physicality. Hamlet's "conversation," that is, his consorting or having
dealings with others, his intimate intercourse, his action of living or having one's
being in a place or among persons, his occupation or engagement with things,
his company or society, his manner of conducting himself in the world—and
here I resume the several meanings of conversation that I have already cited—
has throughout the play been filled with contention, with threat of strife: with
Claudius, the Ghost, Ophelia, Polonius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and
even in the closet scene with Gertrude herself, where Hamlet's aggression is
such as to awaken the dead. Horatio is as just a man as ever Hamlet's "being in
the world, among persons" has contended with. Shakespeare's usage may reflect
a transitional moment in the verb's meaning as it shifts toward our sense of man
age or deal with, in which strife, blows and contention have been sublimated.19
But contained in "coped" is Hamlet's allusion, his admission, of his striving and
contending throughout the play for his rightful place.
Earlier, I observed that Hamlets lines mark the interlude between Hamlets
scene of instruction to the players and his critical observations about contem
porary drama, and the play scene proper in which the prince is determined to
determine Claudius's guilt. Having broken off his praise of Horatio with his
manly "Something too much of this," Hamlet admonishes Horatio:

There is a play tonight before the King—

One scene of it comes near the circumstance,
Which I have told thee, of my father's death.
I prithee, when thou seest that act afoot,
Even with the very comment of thy [Q2; my F] soul
Observe mine uncle....
Give him needful note,
For I mine eyes will rivet to his face
And after we will both our judgments join
To censure of his seeming.
(3.2.73-78, 82-85)

Regardless of whether Horatio is to observe Claudius with the very comment

of his own soul (or as in the Folio, Hamlet's) Hamlet's request to his friend is
that Horatio observe his uncle critically. Comment means "the action of com

19 OED Online, s.v.'cope, v.2" 4b.

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 TWO LINES, THREE READERS: HAMLET, TLN 1904-5

menting; animadversion, criticism, remark." Having watched him closely

ing the performance of the play, afterwards they will their'judgments join /
censure." Immediately prior, Hamlet offers his critique of the theater and his
for its reform; Hamlet has coped with many, and he singles Horatio out f
those others with whom he has coped and had conversation; he then asks
Horatio also be a critic in his observation and commentary on Claudius. T
is a certain irony in these lines, then, for Horatio is the one character in the p
with whom Hamlet does not contend, the one on whom he calls to share
task of judging and observing.
To return to Hazlitts appropriation of Hamlet's line with which I began
seems to me far from haphazard—it is not simply that Hazlitt is praising
friend of his youth, the radical reformer and retired clergyman whom he m
even have considered memorializing in some sort of biography. In an 1806
ter to Hazlitt, Charles Lamb remarks, "You might dish up a Fawcettiad in thr
months, and ask 60L or 801. for it," a project Hazlitt seems never to have
ized.21 Instead, he appropriates our line from Hamlet in describing Fawcett, h
"friend," whom he met when he was eighteen and who was not only a friend,
someone with whom he seems to have had a sort of pedagogical relations
Hazlitt appropriates the line along with its critical context—the context of cr
tique, of criticizing—for Hazlitt is engaged not only in writing about criticis
but in critique itself. Although Hazlitt claims Fawcett is the perfect critic
tells us that his friend's "own style was laboured and artificial to a fault," "w
his character was frank and ingenuous in the extreme." Fawcett, Hazlitt decla
was a "man of disinterested taste and liberal feeling" who saw and acknowledg
"truth and beauty" wherever he found it, unlike men "of greater and more o
nal genius," by whom Hazlitt seems to have meant Wordsworth. Yet it is
not to imagine Hazlitt himself as this man "of greater and more original gen
and Fawcett the mentor or guide with whom he copes and converses.22 Fawce
is to Hazlitt as Horatio is to Hamlet.
In closing, I want to return to the NYU departmental colloquium on media
tion with which I began; as is so often the case, we spent some time talking
about the "media specificity" of literature—is it writing? is it print? For all the
interest in print culture and the history of the book, we agreed that literature is
not reducible to medial framing and that, for some of us at least, the necessity,

20 OED Online (Oxford: Oxford UP; online ed., March 2011), http://www.oed.com/view/
Entry/37054rrskey=drslZe&result=l&isAdvanced=false (accessed 29 March 2011), s.v.
"comment, 4.
21 Thomas Noon Talfourd, ed., The Works of Charles Lamb: To Which Are Prefixed His Let
ters, and a Sketch of his Life, 2 vols. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1838), 1:135.
22 Hazlitt, 77.

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 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

the obligation of interpretation can never be fully addressed or overcome. The

"definition" of literature that I found most appealing, which was proposed at our
colloquium by my colleague Lisa Gitelman, was the notion of "literature" as a
principle of thrift, of saying more with less, we might say.23 In Hamlet, Horatio is
the just man, the man of disinterested taste and liberal feeling with whom Ham
let shares his task of critical observation in 3.2. He is the man of thrift whom
in the final act of the play the prince famously asks to repeat the play, that is, to
tell Hamlet's story of murder, disappointment, strife, and political contention.

23 Defining literature as a "principle of thrift," of course, owes much to Foucault's conception

of the author as "the principle of thrift in the proliferation of meaning." See Michel Foucault,
"What Is an Author?" in Textual Strategies: Perspectives on Post-Structuralist Criticism, ed.Josue
V. Harari (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1979), 141-60, esp. 159.

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