PR RDF 'EARE ;?x HAMiirr PRESENTED BY / tbeatb^s jEngUsb Clasgics THE TRAGEDY OF HAMLET PRINCE OF DENMARK EDITED BY E. K. CHAMBERS, BA. SOMETIME SCHOLAR OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD EDITOR OF " MACBETH " BOSTON, U. S. A. D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS 1895 Gift tdson L. Whitney 0£c 8, 1938 . GENERAL PREFACE. In this edition of Shakespeare an attempt is made to present the greater plays of the dramatist in their Hterary aspect, and not merely as material for the study of philology or grammar. Criticism purely verbal and textual has only been included to such an extent as may serve to help the student in the appreciation of the essential poetry. Questions of date and literary history have been fully dealt with in the Introductions, but the larger space has been devoted to the interpretative rather than the matter-of-fact order of scholar- ship. Aesthetic judgments are never final, but the Editors have attempted to suggest points of view from which the analysis of dramatic motive and dramatic character may be profitably undertaken. In the Notes likewise, while it is hoped that all unfamiliar expressions and allusions have been adequately explained, yet it has been thought even more important to consider the dramatic value of each scene, and the part which it plays in relation to the whole. These general principles are common to the whole series ; in detail each Editor is alone responsible for the play or plays that have been intrusted to him Every volume of the series has been provided with a Glossary, an Essay upon Metre, and an Index ; and Appen- dices have been added upon points of special interest, which could not conveniently be treated in the Introduction or the Notes. The text is based by the several Editors on that of the Globe edition : the only omissions made are those that are unavoidable in an edition likely to be used by young students. By the systematic arrangement of the introductory matter, and by close attention to typographical details, every effort has been made to provide an edition that will prove con- venient in use. Boston, August, 1895. CONTENTS. Page General Preface, iii Introduction, 7 Dramatis Person^e, 26 The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, - 27 Notes, 122 Appendices— A. The First Quarto of 1603, 188 B. The Pre- Shakespearian Hamlet, - - - - 192 c. ' Fratricide Punished', - - - - - - '94 D. The ' Travelling' of the Players, - - - - 195 e. 'Dido, Queen of Carthage', 197 f. Goethe and Coleridge on Hamlet, - - - - 198 201 Essay on Metre, - - - - - ' - - ^°7 Glossary, - - Index of Words, 22° - - ^^^ General Index, • ' — INTRODUCTION. I. LITERARY HISTORY OF THE PLAY. The early history of Hamlet affords one of the most diffi- cult problems with which Shakespearian scholarship has to deal. Three printed versions of the text have The critical Problem. come down to us. These present remarkable variations from each other, and one of them in particular, the earliest, appears to be fundamentally different from the other two. The most probable explanation is that the play underwent a process of revision after it was originally written and acted. If, then, we could determine the exact relation in which the three forms stand to one another, we should learn a good deal about Shakespeare's dramatic method as shown in the deliberate modification of his first ideas. Unfortu- nately this is not so easy. Scholars still disagree hopelessly as to the exact nature of the earliest version ; and the whole question is complicated by the probable existence of a pre- Shakespearian Hamlet^ which may have had a considerable .influence upon the later play. So that for the present one Tmust be content to bring together the facts, to indicate the conditions of the problem, and to suggest the most likely I ' hypothesis for its solution. -. The Registers of the Stationer's Company for The Stationers- 1602, amongst other entries of books 'allowed Registers. to be printed', contain the following; xxvjto Julij James Robertes. Entered for his copie vnder the handes of master Pasfield and master Waterson warden, A booke called ''the Revenge of HAMLETT Prince [(?/"] Den- inarke^ as y* was latelie Acted by the Lord Chamberleyne his seruantes. vjd. — — 8 HAMLET. No edition is known to have been published in 1602, but in 1603 appeared the perplexing First Quarto (Q i). In the ^. interval the Lord Chamberlain's players had ^, '^ The First -^ Quarto of passed under the direct patronage of James the 1603 i). (Q pii-st, and they are therefore entitled ' his High- ness' servants ' upon the title-page, which runs : Tragicall Hiftorie of The ] Prince Hamlet | Den- I of marke By William Shakefpeare. it \ | As hath beene diverfe times acted by his Highneffe fer- vants in | the Cittie of London : as alfo in the two niverfities V- | of Cambridge and Oxford, and elfe-where \yignette\ | \ At London printed for N. L. and lohn Trundell. | 1603. James Roberts' name is not here mentioned; but he may have printed the book for the publisher N[icholas] L[ing], ^, ^ , whose device forms the vignette. At any rate "^ The Second , ? . , . _ Quarto of 1604 he appears to ]y^w% done this in the case of the ^^'^'' Second Quarto (Q 2), which was published in 1604, with the following title-page : Tragicall Hiftorie of | Prince De?t- THE Hamlet, | I of marke. j By William Shakefpeare. imprint- | Newly ed and enlarged to almoft as much againe as it v»^as, according to the true and perfect Coppie Vignette\ | [ | j Printed for L. A T LONDON, \ by L R. N. and are to be fold at his fhoppe vnder Saint Dunfton's Church in | Fleet llreet. 1604. The First Quarto stands by itself; the later Quartos follow the second ; but an independent text is afforded by the First Folio (F i) edition of the collected plays issued Folio of 1623 after Shakespeare's death in 1623. Here Hamlet ^'' ^ is entitled a Tragedy, and no longer a Tragical History. In the order of the plays it follows Julius Ccesar and Macbeth, and immediately precedes King Lear. The modern text of Hamlet is based upon a combination of the Second Quarto and the First Folio, and it is therefore necessary briefly to compare the two with each other, and both with the First Quarto. The editors of the First Folio claim to have provided care- INTRODUCTION. 9 fully corrected texts of all plays whereof ' stolen and surrepti- tious copies' had been in circulation before. To Comparison of and F i. a certain extent this is justified as to Hatnlet. Q 2 The Second Quarto is very ill printed; it is disfigured by obvious mistakes and confusions;^ the punctuation is chaotic. The First Folio is not faultless in these respects, but it is a great improvement. Many of the errors of the Quarto have been avoided, and the minor details of presswork, the commas and colons, have been carefully attended to. More- over the Folio adds a few passages which are not found in the Quarto.^ But these advantages are more than compen- sated for by considerable and important omissions, espe- cially in the soliloquies.^ The Second Quarto was evidently printed from a longer and mpre qomplete manuscript than the Folio, and where divergencies of reading occur, and the compositor is not in fault, it s^enerally provides the better sense.*, The relation of the First Quarto to the later versions is a much more difficult matter. Most critics are agreed that, whatever may have been the case with the character of Second Quarto, the First, like the First Quarto Q ^• of Ro7iieo andJuliet^ was fairly to be put down by the editors of the 1623 folio as a 'stolen and surreptitious copy'. The publication of it was doubtless due rather to the enterprise of a piratical bookseller than to the wish of Shakespeare or his company. And in all probability it was founded upon hasty notes, taken in shorthand or otherwise, by some agent of this bookseller's during a performance at the theatre. This would account for the extreme shortness of the text, for its mutilated character, for the obvious gaps in the sense, 1 i. iii. iii. See notes on 3. 74, 76; i. 4. 36; i. 5. 56; ii. 2. 73; 2. 373 ; 4. 169; iv. 7. 22; V. 2. 283, &c. 2 See notes to ii. 2. 215, 244, 335, 352; iii. 2. 277; iv. 2. 32; iv. 5. 161; v. i. 37, 115; v. 2. 68; together with Appendix D and Mr. Furnivall's introduction to Griggs' facsimile of Q 2. 3 See notes to i. 1. 108; i. 2, 58; i. 4. 18, 75; iii. 4.«i68; iv. 4. 9; iv. 7. 69; v. 2. 203. 4 See notes to i. i. 65, 163; i. 2. 129, 248; ii. i. 39; ii. 2. 52, 442, 580; iv. 5. 145; v. I. 255, 269, &c. Sometimes F i substitutes a less archaic or unusual word for it finishing for that in Q 2 ; now and then may contain a touch [e.g. inumed interred in i. 4. 49). lo HAMLET. for the number of imperfect and wrongly arranged lines, and of misheard words and phrases. Some scholars have held that the note-taker's materials were pieced out, either from a sight of the prompter's copy or the actors' parts, or by the pen of a hack poet. But if this had been the case to any considerable extent, the defects would hardly have been so glaring as they are. I do not think that more has been done than just to transcribe the careless and incomplete notes, and perhaps here and there to fill up a line by the addition of a few words.