HENRY FROWDE, M.A.

PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK.

822.8

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HAMLET

PRINCE OF DENMARK

EDITED BY

W. G. CLARK, M.A.

Senior Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge,

AND

W. A. WRIGHT, M. A.

Bursar of Trinity College, Cambridge

SECOND EDITION

Oxford

AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

M DCCC LXXX

[All rights reserved]

PREFACE.

THE story of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, is told in the Historia Danica of Saxo Grammaticus, a writer who lived about A.D. 1150-1220, and wrote his work about 1180-1208. The earliest edition of it is that of Paris, 1514. The story as it there appears was incorporated in Belleforest's Histoires Tragiques, of which the earlier volumes contained translations from the Italian of Bandello, and amongst them the tragical history of Romeo and Juliet. The fifth volume of these Histoires, in which Hamlet first appears, was printed at Paris in 1570, and the story was thence translated into English. The only edition now extant of this translation is that of 1608, which is reprinted in Collier's Shakespeare's Library, vol. i., from the only perfect copy known, which is among Capell's books in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge. There were in all probability earlier editions, but none of these are known to have been preserved. The title of this book is 'The Hystorie of Hamblet. London: Imprinted by Richard Bradocke, for Thomas Pauier, and are to be sold at his shop in Corne-hill, neere to the Royall Exchange, 1608.'

Between the story of Hamlet as it appears in this 'Hystorie' and the story as it appears in Shakespeare there are very marked differences. Except in the case of Hamlet himself and his mother, who is called 'Geruth' in the 'Hystorie,' there is no resemblance whatever between the names of the characters in the 'Hystorie' and in the play. In the former, Hamlet's father is Horvendile, his uncle is Fengon, corresponding to Horvendillus and Fengo in Saxo Grammaticus. murder of Hamlet's father by his uncle, and the subsequent marriage of the latter with his brother's widow, the feigned madness of Hamlet, the various devices of the uncle to penetrate his secret, the death of Polonius, Hamlet's re

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monstrance with his mother, his voyage to England, his return and revenge, are all incidents of the original story, which goes on to relate how Hamlet after his uncle's death became King of Denmark, how he went again to England and married two wives, by one of whom he was betrayed on his return to Denmark into the power of another uncle, Wiglerus, his mother's brother, and was finally slain in battle. Long before the story assumed the shape in which it is familiar to us, it had in all probability been modified in ¿dapting it for the stage. There is evidence that as early as 1587 a drama on this subject had been written and performed in England. In the preface by Thomas Nash to Robert Greene's Menaphon, the first edition of which, according to Dyce, was printed in 1587, though no copy appears to be known of an earlier date than 1589, occurs a passage which certainly refers to a play of Hamlet, and has been thought to contain an attack on Shakespeare. We quote from the reprint of the edition of 1616 as it is given in Sir Egerton Brydges' Archaica, vol. i. 'It is a common practice now-a-days, amongst a sort of shifting companions, that run through every art and thrive by none, to leave the trade of noverint, whereto they were born, and busy themselves with the endeavours of art, that could scarcely latinise their neck-verse if they should have need: yet English Seneca read by candle-light yields many good sentences, as "Blood is a beggar," and so forth; and if you intreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets, I should say, handfulls of tragical speeches.' In Henslowe's Diary, under the date 9 June 1594, is mentioned the performance of a play 'Hamlet' at the Newington Theatre. Lodge, in his 'Wits Miserie, and the Worlds Madnesse,' printed in 1596, thus describes the fiend 'Hate-Virtue': 'He walks for the most part in black vnder colour of grauity, and looks as pale as the Visard of ye ghost which cried so miserally at ye Theator like an oister wife, Hamlet, reuenge. This last quotation would alone be sufficient to prove that the play in question was not the Hamlet of Shakespeare, and if the date (1587) which has been given to Greene's Menaphon be correct, it is difficult to imagine that the reference in Nash's