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I found this line in Hamlet by William Shakespeare.

An anchor's cheer in prison be my scope,

What does “anchor’s cheer” mean? How can an anchor be cheerful? Is “cheer” some part of an anchor? And what does “scope” mean here?

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  • Questions about obsolete language in Shakespeare would probably be better served at English Language & Usage. And if you're working your way through Hamlet you will probably be best served by investing in a good college-level student edition. There's so much demand that these are pretty cheap; the Pelican Hamlet, for instance, lists for about $6 and can be found for $2
    – StoneyB on hiatus
    Commented Mar 17, 2013 at 13:48

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Anchor here is a short form of anchorite, a hermit, a religious man who retreats from worldly affairs to spend his life in prayer.

Cheer has a variety of meanings in Elizabethan English, all of which are embraced here: joy, the hospitality extended to a guest, and the food included in that hospitality.

Scope in Elizabethan English has the sense freedom, the 'range' within which one may move and act.

So the Player Queen is saying "May my entire freedom be the hospitality which a hermit enjoys in prison."

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An annotated version of Hamlet includes a lengthy footnote on this topic. Briefly, “anchor” is an archaic form of anchorite (“One who lives in isolation or seclusion, especially for religious reasons”).

The footnote quotes a gloss by Samuel Johnson:

May my whole liberty and enjoyment be to live on hermit's fare in a prison. Anchor is for anchoret.

Note, scope thus corresponds to “my whole liberty and enjoyment”. “An anchor's cheer in prison” corresponds to “hermit's fare in a prison”.

Edmond Malone then comments “This abbreviation of the word anchoret is very ancient” and quotes several ancient references.

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