PREFACE

By ISRAEL GOLLANCZ, M.A.

THE EARLY EDITIONS

The authorized text of Hamlet is based on (i) a Quarto edition published in the year 1604, and (ii) the First Folio version of 1623, where the play follows Julius Cæsar and Macbeth, preceding King Lear. The Quarto of 1604 has the following title-page:

"THE Tragicall Historie of HAMLET, Prince of Denmarke. By William Shakespeare. | Newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much againe as it was, according to the true and perfect | Coppie. | AT LONDON, Printed by I. R. for N. L. and are to be sold at his | shoppe vnder Saint Dunston's Church in Fleetstreet. 1604" (vide No. 2 of Shakespeare Quarto Facsimiles, issued by W. Griggs, under the superintendence of Dr. Furnival).

A comparison of the two texts shows that they are derived from independent sources; neither is a true copy of the author's manuscript; the Quarto edition, though very carelessly printed, is longer than the Folio version, and is essentially more valuable; on the other hand, the Folio version contains a few passages which are not found in the Quarto, and contrasts favorably with it in the less important matter of typographical accuracy (vide Notes, passim).

The two edition represent, in all probability, two distinct acting versions of Shakespeare's perfect text.

Quarto editions appeared in 1605, 1611, circa 16111637, 1637; each is derived from the edition immediately

preceding it, the Quarto of 1605 differing from that of 1604 only in the slightest degree.

THE FIRST QUARTO

The 1604 edition is generally known as the Second Quarto, to distinguish it from a remarkable production which appeared in the previous year:

"The Tragicall Historie of HAMLET | Prince of Denmarke | By William Shake-speare. | As it hath been diuerse timis acted by his Highnesse ser- uants in the Cittie of London: as also in the two V- | niuersities of Cambridge and Oxford, and else-where | At London printed for N: L. and John Trundell. | 1603."

No copy of this Quarto was known until 1823, when Sir Henry Bunbury discovered the treasure in "a small Quarto, barbarously cropped, and very ill-bound," containing some dozen Shakespearean plays. It ultimately became the property of the Duke of Devonshire for the sum of £230. Unfortunately, the last page of the play was missing.

In 1856 another copy was bought from a student of Trinity College, Dublin, by a Dublin book-dealer, for one shilling, and sold by him for £70; it is now in the British Museum. In this copy the title-page is lacking, but it supplies the missing last page of the Devonshire Quarto.1

In connection with the publication of the 1603 Quarto, reference must be made to the following entry in the Stationers' Register:

1 In 1858 a lithographed facsimile was issued by the Duke, in a very limited impression. The first serviceable edition, and still perhaps the best, appeared in 1860, together with the Quarto of 1604, "being exact Reprints of the First and Second Editions of Shakespeare's great Drama, from the very rare Originals in the possession of his Grace the Duke of Devonshire; with the two texts printed on opposite pages, and so arranged that the parallel passages face each other. And a Bibliographical Preface by Samuel Timmins. Looke heere vpon this Picture, and on this." Lithographic reprints were also issued by E. W. Ashbee and W. Griggs; the text is reprinted in the Cambridge Shakespeare, etc.

"[1602] xxvj to 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 [of] Denmarke' as yt was lateli Acted by the Lord Chamberleyne his servantes

vjd."

James Robertes, the printer of the 1604 edition, may also have been the printer of the Quarto of 1603, and this entry may have had reference to its projected publication; it is noteworthy that in 1603 "the Lord Chamberlain's Servants" became "The King's Players," and the Quarto states that the play had been acted "by His Highness' Servants." On the other hand, the entry may have been made by Robertes to secure the play to himself, and some “inferior and nameless printer" may have anticipated him by the publication of an imperfect, surreptitious, and garbled version, impudently offering as Shakespeare's such wretched stuff as this:—

"To be, or not to be, I there's the point,
To Die, to sleepe, is that all: I all?

No, to sleepe, to dreame, I mary there it goes,
For in that dreame of death, when wee awake,
And borne before an e'erlasting Judge;
From whence no passenger ever return'd,

The undiscoured country, at whose sight

The happy smile, and the accursed damn'd."

The dullest poetaster could not have been guilty of this nonsense: a second-rate playwright might have put these last words in Hamlet's mouth:

"Mine eyes have lost their sight, my tongue his vse:
Farewell Horatio, heaven receive my soule":

"The rest is silence"-Shakespeare's supreme test is here. A rapid examination of the first Quarto reveals the following among its chief divergences: (i) the difference in length; 2,143 lines as against 3,719 in the later Quarto; (ii) the mutilation, or omission, of many passages "distinguished by that blending of psychological insight with imagination and fancy, which is the highest manifestation

of Shakespeare's genius"; (iii) absurd misplacement and maiming of lines; distortion of words and phrases: (iv) confusion in the order of the scenes; (v) difference in characterization; e. g. the Queen's avowed innocence ("But as I have a soul, I swear by heaven, I never knew of this most horrid murder"), and her active adhesion to the plots against her guilty husband; (vi) this latter aspect is brought out in a special scene between Horatio and the Queen, omitted in the later version; (vii) the names of some of the characters are not the same as in the subsequent editions; Corambis and Montano, for Polonius and Reynaldo. What, then, is the history of this Quarto? In the first place it is certain that it must have been printed without authority; in all probability shorthand notes taken by an incompetent stenographer during the performance of the play formed the basis of the printer's "copy." Thomas Heywood alludes to this method of obtaining plays in the prologue to his If you know not me, you know no bodie:

"(This did throng the Seats, the Boxes, and the Stage

So much, that some by Stenography drew

The plot: put it in print: (scarce one word trew)."

The main question at issue is the relation of this piratical version to Shakespeare's work. The various views may be divided as follows:-(i) there are those who maintain that it is an imperfect production of an old Hamlet written by Shakespeare in his youth, and revised by him in his maturer years; (ii) others contend that both the First and Second Quartos represent the same version, the difference between the two editions being due to carelessness and incompetence; (iii) a third class holds, very strongly, that the First Quarto is a garbled version of an old-fashioned play of Hamlet, written by some other dramatist, and revised to a certain extent by Shakespeare about the year 1602; so that the original of Quarto 1 represented Shakespeare's Hamlet in an intermediate stage; in Quarto 2 we have for the first time the complete metamorphosis. All the