170. GOONIGHT: A colloquial slurred version of goodbye from the regulars.
171. TA TA: A uniquely British, generally working-class goodbye, closing out this section and beginning to introduce the next. See note 172.5 for the recurrence of song syllables, especially in Part III.
172. OPHELIA’S FAREWELL, if not quite her final words, are alluded to here. See Shakespeare*, Hamlet 4.5.70-73:
“And so I thank you for your good counsel. Come, my coach! Good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies; good night, good night.”
And thus ends the air section. Ophelia has a few more lines in the play, but already she has lost her mind and the air about her is dying. Her words, mourning her father’s death at the hands of Hamlet, become fragmentary and nonsensical as she wanders off, and soon it will be reported that she had fallen into shallow waters and drowned. See the Queen’s report in Shakespeare*, Hamlet 4.7.164-181:
“There is a willow grows askant the brook
That shows his hoary leaves in the glassy stream.
Therewith fantastic garlands did she make
Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them.
There on the pendent boughs her crownet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke,
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide
And mermaid-like awhile they bore her up.
...But long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.”
For additional looks at the collection of flowers, see notes 74 and 214.
Ophelia’s death by water is further alluded to by lines 173-174 (“The river's tent is broken; the last fingers of leaf / Clutch and sink into the wet bank”). See also note 42 for a list of the other watery deaths in this poem.
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* see note 0.1
