SHAKSPEARE Hamlet MSN U
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FRANKLIN CHAFFEE AND KATHARINE CHAFFEE THB GHOST IN HAMLET (T. R. GOULD). SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGEDY OF HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK, EDITED, WITH NOTES, WILLIAM J. ROLFE, LITT. D., iLY HEAD MASTER OF THE HIGH SCHOOL, CAMBRIDGE, MASS. WITH ENGRA VINGS. tfEW YORK : CINCINNATI : CHICAGO AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY ENGLISH CLASSICS. LITT. D. EDITED BY WM. J. ROLFE, Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, 66 cents per volume. The Merchant of Venice. Richard III Othello. Henry VII.. Julius Csesar. King Lear. A Midsummer-Night's Dream. The Taming of the Shrew. Macbeth. All 's Well that Ends Well. Hamlet Coriolanus. M uch Ado about Nothing. The Comedy of Errors. Romeo and Juliet Cymbeline. As You Like It. Antony and Cleopatra. The Tempest. Measure for Measure. Twelfth Night. Merry Wives of Windsor. The Winter's Tale. Love's Labour 's Lost. King John. Two Gentlemen of Verona. Richard II. Timon of Athens. Henry IV. Part I. Troilus and Cressida. Henry IV. Part II. Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Henry V. The Two Noble Kinsmen. Henry VI. Part I. Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, etc. Henry VI. Part II. Sonnets. Henry VI. Part III Titus Andronicus. GOLDSMITH'S SELECT POEMS. BROWNING'S SELECT POEMS. GRAY'S SELECT POEMS. BROWNING'S SELECT DRAMAS. MINOR POEMS OF JOHN MILTON. MACAULAY'S LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME. WORDSWORTH'S SELECT POEMS. LAMBS' TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE'S COMEDIES. LAMBS' TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGEDIES EDITED BY WM. J. ROLFE, LITT. D. Illustrated. Cloth, 12mo, BO cents per voluuia. Copyright, 1878 and 1808, by HARPER & BROTHI Copyright, iyo6, by WILLIAM J. KOLFE. P of Denmark. 94 PREFACE. THE text of this edition of Hamlet is based upon a careful collation of the quarto of 1604 and the folio of 1623 with the other early editions and the leading modern ones. All the important variae lectiones are given in the Notes; so that the reader, if he considers my text too " conservative," has all the materials necessary for making one to suit himself. In the Notes my indebtedness to Furness is acknowledged on almost every page, and yet is by no means fully recorded. His edition furnishes an abstract and epitome of the vast literature of Hamlet, and is indis- pensable to the teacher and the critical scholar. He found it no easy task to condense his material into two octavo volumes; and in carrying out my more modest plan I have found a like difficulty in keeping within my limited space. The play is one of the longest (about twice as long as Macbetti), and the amount that has been written about it far exceeds that on any other of Shakespeare's works. Furness does not exaggerate " when he says : No one of mortal mould (save Him 'whose blessed feet were nailed for our advantage to the bitter cross') ever trod this earth, commanding such absorbing interest as this Hamlet, this mere creation of a poet's brain. No syllable that he whispers, no word let fall by any one near him, but is caught and pondered as no words ever have been, except of Holy Writ. Upon no throne built by mortal hands has ever 'beat so fierce a light' as upon that airy fabric reared at Elsinore." 2023919 THB CLOPTON MONUMBNT, STRATFOKD CHURCH, CONTENTS. PAGB INTRODUCTION TO HAMLET 9 I. THE HISTORY OF THE PLAY 9 II. THE SOURCES OF THE PLOT .... 12 III. CRITICAL COMMENTS ON THE PLAY 14 HAMLET 39 ACT 1 41 II 70 "HI , 93 IV 122 * V 144 NOTES ., 167 INTRODUCTION TO HAMLET. I. THE HISTORY OF THE PLAY. THE earliest known edition of Hamlet appeared in quarto in form 1603, with the following title-page : THE Historic of HAMLET Prince Den- | Tragicall | | of marke William As it hath beene diuerse \ By Shake-speare. | times acted his ser- uants in the Cittie of by Highnesse | London : as also in the two V- niuersities of and | Cambridge and else-where At London for N. L. and Oxford, | printed Trundell. John | 1603. 9 10 HAMLET. In the preceding year (July 26, 1602) James Roberts the printer had entered in the Stationers' Register "A booke called the Revenge of HAMLETT Prince of Denmarke as yt was latelie acted by the Lord Chamberleyne his servantes" The quarto of 1603 may have been printed by Roberts, though his name does not appear on the title-page. He certainly " printed the second quarto, published by the same N. L." (Nicholas Ling) in 1604, with the following title-page: THE Historic of Prince Den- HAMLET, | of | Tragicall | marke. William and en- | Newly imprinted | By Shakespeare. to almost as much as it was, to the larged | againe according true and AT Printed I. R. | LONDON, | by perfect | Coppie. for N. L. and are to be sold at his vnder St. Dun- | shoppe stons Church in Fleetstreet. | 1604. The relation of the first quarto to the second has been much disputed. Collier, White, and some other critics be- lieve that the former is merely an imperfect report of the play as published in the latter; that it was printed, either from short-hand notes taken at the theatre, or from a stage- copy cut down for representation and perhaps corrupted by the insertion of stuff from an earlier play on the same subject. The second quarto, on the other hand, was an " authorized edition of the play from the true .and perfect copy." Other critics among whom are Caldecott, Knight, Staun- ton, and Dyce believe that the first quarto represents, though in a corrupt form, the first draught of the play, while the second gives it as remodelled and enlarged by the au- thor. It is not necessary to suppose that the former was written near the time when it was published; it was more likely an early production of the poet After the revision the original copy could be more easily obtained for surrep- titious publication, and it may have been printed in haste to " head off" an authorized edition of the remodelled play. Another theory, and a very plausible one, is that of Messrs, INTRODUCTION. II Clark and Wright, brought out in the "Clarendon Press" " edition of the that there was an old play ; namely, play on the story of Hamlet, some portions of which are still pre- in the of that about the 1602 served quarto 1603 ; year Shakespeare took this and began to remodel it, as he had done other that the of with plays ; quarto 1603 represents the play after it had been retouched by him to a certain ex- tent, but before his alterations were complete; and that in the quarto of 1604 we have for the first time the Hamlet of Shakespeare." For a resume, of the discussion of this interesting question (which will probably never be settled) see Furness's Hamlet, vol. ii. pp. 12-33. The third quarto, published in 1605, is a reprint of the second; the title-page being identical except in date, and the variations in the text slight and unimportant. A fourth quarto, "Printed for lohn Smethwicke" and "to be sold at his shoppe in Saint Dunstons church yeard in Fleetstreet," in 1611 and a was afterwards issued appeared ; fifth, undated, by the same publisher.* No other editions appeared during the lifetime of Shakespeare, or before the publication of the folio of 1623. The text of the latter varies considerably from that of the quartos, as will be seen by our Notes, in which the more important differences are recorded. Collier thinks that " if the Hamlet in the first folio were not composed from some hitherto unknown quarto, f it was derived from a manuscript * Malone believes that this edition was printed in 1607, and Halliwell is inclined to place it "before 1609;" but, as the Cambridge editors show, its orthography is more modern than that of the quarto of 1611, from which it was probably printed. fit is not impossible that there may have been such a quarto. No copy of the quarto of 1603 was known until 1823, when one was found by Sir Henry Bunbury. A second was picked up in 1856 by a Dublin bookseller, who paid a shilling for it. The former, which lacks the last page, was afterwards sold to the Duke of Devonshire tor 230; the lat- ter, which wants the title-page, was bought by Mr. Halliwell for 120, and 12 HAMLET. obtained by Heminge and Condell from the theatre." The standard text of the play is chiefly made up by a collation of the second quarto and the first folio. n. THE SOURCES OF THE PLOT. There was certainly an old play on the subject of Hamlet, and some critics believe that it was an early production of Shakespeare's. The first allusion to it that has been discov- ered is in an Epistle "To the Gentleman Students of both Universities," by Thomas Nash, prefixed to Greene's Mena- phon, printed in 1589. Referring to the playwrights of that " day, Nash says : It is a common practice now a daies amongst a sort of shifting companions,* that runne through every arte and thrive by none to leave the trade of Noverint\ whereto they were borne, and busie themselves with the in- devours of art, that could scarcelie latinize their necke-verse if they should have neede; yet English Seneca read by candle-light yeeldes manie good sentences, as Bloud is a begger, and so foorth : and if you intreate him faire in a frostie morning, he will affoord you whole Hamlets^ I should say Handfulls of tragical speaches." In Henslowe's Diary the following entry occurs : of 9 June 1594, Rd at hamlet .