Hamlet himself also uses this generalized "your:" 
 
"Your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots; your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table--that's the end" (_Hamlet_. 3.3.21-25). 
 
It's a great dialogue, with Hamlet baiting Claudius so very effectively. Abbott describes this generalization interestingly: 'Your' in these sentences "is used to appropriate an object to a person addressed" (_A Shakespearean Grammar_. Macmillan & Co., 1870: 148.). I love the description, but I wish I knew a cool bit of terminology for it!
 
Paul D.
 "If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction" (_Twelfth Night_ 3.4.127-128). 




________________________________
From: Edmond Wright <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Friday, April 10, 2009 6:19:41 AM
Subject: Re: Adpositions in English

> ...'As You Like It' (Act V, sc.
iv, ll. 70-102):

... TOUCHSTONE:  ....  Your 'if'' is the only peacemaker;  much virtue in 'if.'

(This is a telling example of the Fool's wisdom.)

Incidentally, the use of 'your' in the last sentence as a generalizing word
has disappeared from English, both British and American.  See also its use
by the Gravedigger in 'Hamlet' (V, I, 176-7):  '. . . Your water is a sore
decayer of your whoreson dead body'.


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