Discussion Groups / English Usage / February 2008

At the risk of merely starting a regress, it is a reference to the lines
in Hamlet (Act 3, Scene 1, lines 120-129 in Riverside,123-132 in Oxford,
121-130 in Pelican):
[Oxford text]
Hamlet: "Get thee to a nunnery.  Whay wouldst thou be a breeder of
sinners?  I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of
such things that it were better my mother had not borne me.  I am very
proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have
thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act
them in.  What should such fellows as I do crawling between heaven and
earth?  We are arrant knaves, all.  Believe none of us.  Go thy ways to
a nunnery? Where's your father?"

I find your gloss less clear than the original.

No, I would think it means that it was supposed that a flat iron was
used to create the effect.  That, at least, is the plain meaning of the
language.

No, it means why should 'such fellows as he' (ObAUE - not 'him'?) -
poeple as bad as this guy is - exist in the universe.  'How should he
have the cheek to be between Heaven and Earth?'

No.  A flat iron here is just the sort of iron you use for ironing
clothes - the wearer of the stocking is looking for a casual look - a
casual look, however, which is achieved by very very carefully ironing
a crease into the stocking in exactly the correct place.  The stocking
wearer is a guy, but I wonder if Dickens knew this poem:

A SWEET disorder in the dress  
Kindles in clothes a wantonness:-  
A lawn about the shoulders thrown  
Into a fine distraction,-  
An erring lace, which here and there         5
Enthrals the crimson stomacher,-  
A cuff neglectful, and thereby  
Ribbands to flow confusedly,-  
A winning wave, deserving note,  
In the tempestuous petticoat,-         10
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie  
I see a wild civility,-  
Do more bewitch me, than when art  
Is too precise in every part.

though that's not as cool for raw sex as

WHENAS in silks my Julia goes  
Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows  
That liquefaction of her clothes.  
 
Next, when I cast mine eyes and see  
That brave vibration each way free;         5
O how that glittering taketh me!

Both Robert Herrick (1591-1674).

DC

...

http://www.dickens-literature.com/Great_Expectations/30.html

It refers to this passage:

OPHELIA    My lord, as I was sewing in my closet,
    Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced;
    No hat upon his head; his stockings foul'd,
    Ungarter'd, and down-gyved to his ancle;
    Pale as his shirt; his knees knocking each other;
    And with a look so piteous in purport
    As if he had been loosed out of hell
    To speak of horrors,--he comes before me.

(Thanks to
http://www.it.usyd.edu.au/~matty/Shakespeare/texts/tragedies/hamlet .)

Pip is telling us that actors of the time represented Hamlet's sloppy
stocking by putting one neat fold in it, which he suspects was done
with an iron.

--
Jerry Friedman

It's part of Hamlet's ACt III, scene i speech to Ophelia:
"Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am
myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that
it were better my mother had not borne me. I am very proud, revengeful,
ambitious; with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put
them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What
should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are
arrant knaves all; believe none of us."

No, simply that the fold has been carefully set in place; one fold,
carefully positioned and ironed into the stocking to indicate that it is
"disordered". Of course, that's not disordered at all, but it seems that
it was a standard practice on stage a the time.

The actor is a former priest, so now he is 'crawling between earth and
heaven'.
His audience is aware of this, and challange him to apply Hamlet's
rhethorical  question to himself.
My two c.
GHT