Learn English – Does “goodly” in this sentence in Hamlet mean “considerable” or “pleasing

early-modern-englishmeaningshakespeare

In Hamlet there is the following conversation:

GUILDENSTERN: Prison, my lord!

HAMLET: Denmark's a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ: Then is the world one.

HAMLET: A goodly one; in which there are many confines,
wards and dungeons, Denmark being one o' the worst.

What does "goodly" mean here? After consulting some dictionaries, I tend to think it means "considerable", "grand" in a sense of scale. However, I encountered an Italian translation (Google returns more than 500,000 entries for this search) which says

"È una bella prigione, il mondo",

It basically means "the world is a beautiful prison", which interprets "goodly" in the sense of "pleasing".

Is this just simply a mistranslation or might "goodly" also have this meaning here?

Best Answer

Although goodly at this point means "of considerable size", this was not the meaning that Shakespeare intended. Goodly has quite a few other archaic and rare definitions. I believe the Italian translation was accurate, and the intended (now archaic) sense was:

Of good or pleasing appearance; handsome, beautiful, good-looking; comely, fair.
OED (the premium version, since the free version is too brief)

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