Note 32 — THE HANDLING OF THE SUPERNATURAL ELEMENT
Reading edition
In Hamlet I, I, 113 seq. we read.
Hor.
A mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye. In the most high and palmy state of Rome, A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead, Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets; As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood, Disasters in the sun; and the moist star Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands, Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse. And even the like precurse of fierce events— As harbingers preceding still the fates, And prologue to the omen coming on,— Have heaven and earth together demonstrated Unto our climatures and country men.—
The text is obviously corrupt. These lines do not appear in the Folio, nor is there any trace of them in the earliest quarto. It has been conjectured that the poet suppressed this passage in representation, after he had written “Julius Caesar.” Certainly the similarity to Pescetti is striking. The “dews of blood” are again mentioned; also the eclipse of the moon, neither occurring in Plutarch.