in the epistle prefixed to Poems by a Printer, 1604. Douce's Illust. II. 265, as it is in I. Heywood's Hierarchie of Angels, fo. 1635, p. 265. "Mellifluous Shake-speare." This then is a most uncalled for and certainly not very "mellifluous" innovation: but it is not its harshness and dissonance that is most offensive; it is the injury done to all confidence in the transmission of the terms of any document. The course is as unwarrantable, as in the case of quotation it is altogether unprecedented. If such landmarks may be thus silently removed or falsified, what assurance can posterity have in any thing delivered down? The letters O. C. i. e. old copies, in the margin always signify the quartos, and the folio of 1623; and generally, but not necessarily, that of 1632. The additions from the quartos are put within brackets. October, 1832. PRELIMINARY REMARKS. THE original story on which this play is built, may be found in Saxo Grammaticus, the Danish historian. From thence Belleforest adopted it in his collection of novels, in seven volumes, which he began in 1564, and continued to publish through succeeding years. From this work, The Hystorie of Hamblett, quarto, bl. 1. was translated. I have hitherto met with no earlier edition of the play than one in the year 1604, though it must have been performed before that time. In the books of the Stationers' Company, this play was entered by James Roberts, July 26, 1602, under the title of " A booke called The Revenge of Hamlett, Prince of Denmarke, as it was lately acted by the Lord Chamberlain his servantes." The frequent allusions of contemporary authors to this play sufficiently show its popularity. Thus, in Decker's Bel-man's Night-walkes, 4to. 1612, we have-" But if any mad Hamlet, hearing this, smell villainie, and rush in by violence to see what the tawny diueils [gypsies] are dooing, then they excuse the fact," &c. Again, in an old collection of Satirical Poems, called the Night-Raven, is this couplet : "I will not cry Hamlet, Revenge my greeves, "But I will call Hangman, Revenge on thieves." As to the date of this drama, see Dr. Farmer's Essay, p. 85, 86, second edition : "Greene, in the Epistle prefixed to his Arcadia, hath a lash at some vaine glorious tragedians,' and very plainly at Shakspeare in particular. I leave all these to the mercy of their mother-tongue, that feed on nought but the crums that fall from the translators trencher.-That could scarcely latinize their neck verse if they should have neede, yet English Seneca, read by candlelight yeelds many good sentences-hee will afford you whole Hamlets, I should say, handfuls of tragicall speeches.'—I cannot determine exactly when this Epistle was first published; but, I fancy, it will carry the original Hamlet somewhat further back than we have hitherto done: and it may be observed, that the oldest copy now extant, [the quarto 1604] is said to be ' enlarged to almost as much againe as it was.' STEEVENS. A play on this subject, I believe by Thomas Kyd, had been exhibited before the year 1589; on which, and on the bl. 1. Historie of Hamblet, this tragedy was, I conjecture, constructed. The prose-narrative I have seen, was printed in 1608, but it undoubtedly was a republication. This play, notwithstanding some circumstances which seem to assign an earlier date to it, was written, if my conjecture be well founded, in 1600. See an Attempt to ascertain the Order of his Plays. MALONE. There has lately been produced an edition of this play of the year 1603. As to its date, or the time, at which it was written, it appears from Mr. Malone's Attempt at Chronological Order, &c. in Johnson and Steevens' editions of 1778 and 1803, and 1813, that he conjectured it to have been written in 1596; while Chalmers assigned it to 1597: but in his Life of our Author, 1821, he conjectures it to have been written in 1600: and he again prints the whole of the plays according to the new conceptions he had formed, though many of them varied no less than eight or nine years from his previous computation. Now if upon such grounds and so unsettled a state of things, editors not even agreeing with themselves, the order, in which these dramas are presented to the public, is to undergo a change on every republication, the confusion will be endless. With the reader and the public it must be an object to have ready and certain means of reference to the leading passages of a great author: and it thence seems highly desirable, that there should be some settled or understood course, by which at all times in one form the dramas of Shakespeare should be presented. As the time when they were respectively brought upon the stage or first committed to the press, must now be mere matter of conjecture, and is indeed by all late editors stated so to be, no course seems to be in any respect so well adapted to this end, as that of his contemporary editors, trustees and brothers of the craft. The principle too of their distribution into the three classes of Comedy, History and Tragedy, of each of which there is nearly an equal portion, at the same time that it is most natural and commodious, is more likely to be, as to these classes respectively, chronologically correct than any thing that modern research, as judicious as indefatigable, can effect. At present there are no means for an amateur or student to refer to any volume or page quoted without stating the edition; and the editions are numberless: few readers have many, and none have all. PERSONS REPRESENTED. Claudius, King of Denmark. * Hamlet, son to the former, and nephew to the present King. Polonius, Lord Chamberlain. Horatio, friend to Hamlet. Laertes, son to Polonius. Osrick, a courtier. Another courtier. A Priest. Marcellus, Barnardo, } Officers. Francisco, a soldier. Reynoldo, servant to Polonius. Gertrude, Queen of Denmark, and mother of Hamlet. Lords, Ladies, Officers, Soldiers, Players, Gravediggers, Sailors, Messengers, and other Attendants. SCENE, Elsinore. * i. e. Amleth: the h being transferred from the end to the beginning of the name. STEEVENS. |