PREFACE. I. THE earliest edition of HAMLET appeared in 1603, with the following title-page: THE | Tragicall Historie of | HAMLET | Prince of Denmarke | By William Shake-speare. | As it hath beene diuerse times acted by his Highnesse ser- | uants in the Cittie of London: as also in the two Vniuersities of Cambridge and Oxford, and else-where | At London printed for N: L. and Iohn Trundell. | 1603. We refer to it as (Q.). A copy of this edition belonged to Sir Thomas Hanmer, though he does not appear to have mentioned it in his notes to Shakespeare or in his correspondence, and its existence was not known till his library came into the possession of Sir E. H. Bunbury in 1821. In a copy of the Reprint of 1825, now at Barton, Sir E. H. Bunbury wrote the following note: 'The only copy of this edition of Hamlet (1603) which is known to be in existence was found by me in the Library at Barton when it came into my possession in 1821. The Hamlet was bound up with ten others of the small 4to editions of Shakespeare's Plays (1598 to 1603) and with The Two Noble Kinsmen (1634). Most of these 1824 for £180 were complete. I sold the volume in Dec. to Messrs Payne and Foss, who resold it to the Duke of Devonshire for £230.' This copy wanted the last leaf containing the 22 concluding lines. A second copy, wanting the title-page but otherwise perfect, was discovered in 1856 by Mr W. H. Rooney of Dublin. 'It was bought,' says Mr Timmins, 'by Mr Rooney from a student of Trinity College, Dublin, who had brought it from Nottinghamshire with his other books. After reprinting the last leaf, Mr Rooney sold the pamphlet to Mr Boone for £70, from whom Mr J. O. Halliwell bought it for £120, and it is now in the British Museum.' We have reprinted this edition, and recorded in footnotes the few discrepancies which are found between the two copies. An extremely accurate reprint was made from the Devonshire copy in 1825, and it was lithographed in facsimile, with the addition of the missing leaf, in 1858, under the direction of Mr Collier and at the expense of the Duke. In 1860 Mr J. Allen, Junr., reprinted this edition and the Quarto of 1604, placing the corresponding passages as nearly as possible on opposite pages, with a preface by Mr Samuel Timmins. The edition of 1603 is obviously a very imperfect reproduction of the play, and there is every reason to believe that it was printed from a manuscript surreptitiously obtained. This manuscript may have been compiled in the first instance from short hand notes taken during the representation, but there are many errors in the printed text which seem like errors of a copyist rather than of a hearer. Compare for example lines 37, 38 of Scene III. of our Reprint, p. 205, with the corresponding lines of the more perfect drama as it was printed in the Quarto of 1604, Act I. Scene 3, lines 73, 74, p. 26. In the Quarto of 1603 the passage runs thus: 'And they in Fraunce of the best ranck and station, Or of a most select and generous, chiefe in that:' It is clear that the corruption in both passages is due to an error in the transcript from which both were copied. Probably the author had originally written: |