The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 19.0078 Sunday, 10 February 2008
Date: Friday, 8 Feb 2008 17:01:27 -0600
Subject: Solid Flesh
What is the property of the flesh that Hamlet would like to melt? The
Folio says 'solid', the second quarto says 'sallied', and many editors
emend to 'sullied.' Does Shakespeare's use of 'solid' in other passage
help with settling this crux?
In 2 Henry IV, the king, in an unusually reflective and nostalgic moment
O God! that one might read the book of fate,
And see the revolution of the times
Make mountains level, and the continent,
Weary of solid firmness, melt itself
Into the sea! (2 Henry IV 3.1.45-49)
'Weary', 'solid', and 'melt' occur in the same line. In Hamlet's first
soliloquy we find
O, that this too too [sallied|solid] flesh would melt,
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
If we follow the Folio, we have 'solid' and 'melt' in the same line and
'weary' within five lines. As Fluellen might say, "the situations, look
you, is both alike." (Henry V, 4.7.26) King Henry is no Hamlet, but if
he ever is in a Hamlet moment, this would be it. Even something like
suicide crosses his mind as he contemplates the "happiest youth" and how
such a youth would respond to a full knowledge of the contingencies of
the future (2 Henry IV 3.1.54-56).
There are two other occurrences of 'solid' in Shakespeare. In Ulysses'
speech on degree, water does not quite dissolve the globe but turns it
into a 'sop':
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And, hark what discord follows! each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores
And make a sop of all this solid globe:
In Othello, Lodovico wonders:
Is this the noble Moor whom our full senate
Call all in all sufficient? Is this the nature
Whom passion could not shake? whose solid virtue
The shot of accident, nor dart of chance,
Could neither graze nor pierce?
There is no water in this passage, but 'solid' is associated with
dissolution or destruction in an oddly negative way.
There is an unusually high number of lexical echoes between Hamlet and
Othello, and I believe E. A. Honigman made an argument that the
composition of those two plays overlapped. If he was right, the
occurrences of 'solid' in Shakespeare cluster within a space of less
than five years. At a maximum, they cluster within eight years. But it
is the strong resemblances between King Henry at an
uncharacteristically, and Hamlet at a characteristically, reflective
moment, supported strongly if not decisively by other occurrences, that
makes me wonder whether 'solid' should be considered as the most
plausible reading in this famous passage.
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