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Rh habit with him. Here are some more instances: ‘Thrift, thrift, Horatio’; ‘Indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles me’; ‘Come, deal justly with me: come, come’; ‘Wormwood, wormwood!’ I do not profess to have made an exhaustive search, but I am much mistaken if this habit is to be found in any other serious character of Shakespeare.

And, in the second place—and here I appeal with confidence to lovers of Hamlet—some of these repetitions strike us as intensely characteristic. Some even of those already quoted strike one thus, and still more do the following:

Is there anything that Hamlet says or does in the whole play more unmistakably individual than these replies?

(2) Hamlet, everyone has noticed, is fond of quibbles and word-play, and of ‘conceits’ and turns of thought such as are common in the poets whom Johnson called Metaphysical. Sometimes, no doubt, he plays with words and ideas chiefly