informs her of Hamlet's escape from the ship bound for England, and of his safe arrival in Denmark; of which scene the later issues have no traces whatsoever. All this fully ascertains that the play must have undergone a thorough revisal after the making up of the copy from which the first quarto was printed. But, what is not a little remarkable, some of the passages met with in the folio, but not in the enlarged quartos, are found in the quarto of 1603; which shows that they were omitted in the later quartos, and not added afterwards.

With such and so many copies before us, it may well be asked, where the true text of Hamlet is to be found. The quarto of 1603, though furnishing valuable aid in divers cases, is not of any real authority: this is clear enough from what has already been said about it. On the other hand, it can hardly be questioned that the issue of 1604 was as authentic and as well authorized, as any that were made of Shakespeare's plays while he was living. We therefore take this as our main standard of the text, retaining, however, all the additional passages found in the folio of 1623. Moreover, the folio has many important changes and corrections which no reasonable editor would make any question of adopting. Mr. Knight indeed, who, after the true style of Knight-errantry, everywhere gives himself up to an almost unreserved championship of the folio, takes that as the supreme authority. But in this case, as usual, his zeal betrays him into something of unfairness for wherever he prefers a folio reading (and some of his preferences are odd enough), he carefully notes it; but in divers cases, where the quarto readings are so clearly preferable that he dare not reject them, we have caught him adopting them without making any note of

them.

The next question to be considered is, at what time was the Tragedy of Hamlet originally written? On this point we find it extremely difficult to form a clear judgment. Thus much, however, is quite certain, that either this play was one of the Poet's very earliest productions, or else there

was another play on the same subject. This certainty rests on a passage in an Epistle by Thomas Nash, prefixed to Greene's Arcadia: "It is a common practice nowa-days, among 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 endeavors of art, that could scarcely latinize their neckverse, 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 entreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls, of tragical speeches." The words, "trade of Noverint," show that this squib was pointed at some writer of Hamlet, who had been known as an apprentice in the law; and Shakespeare's remarkable fondness for legal terms and allusions naturally suggests him as the person referred to. On the other hand, Nash's Epistle was written certainly as early as 1589, probably two years earlier, though this has been disputed. In 1589 Shakespeare was in his twenty-sixth year, and his name stood the twelfth in a list of sixteen, as a sharer in the Blackfriars play-house. The chief difficulty lies in believing that he could have been known so early as the author of a tragedy having Hamlet for its hero; but this difficulty is much reduced by the circumstance, that we have no knowledge how often or how much he may have improved a piece of that kind even before the copy of 1603 was made up.

Again: It appears from Henslowe's accounts that a play of Hamlet was performed in the theater at Newington Butts on June 9, 1594. At this time, "my lord admirell men and my lord chamberlen men" were playing together at that theater; the latter of whom was the company to which Shakespeare belonged. At the performance of Hamlet, Henslowe sets down nine shillings as his share of the receipts; whereas in case of new plays he commonly received a much larger sum. Besides, the item in question is without the mark which the manager usually

prefixed in case of a new play; so that we may conclude the Hamlet of 1594 had at that time lost the feature of novelty. The question is, whether the Hamlet thus performed was Shakespeare's? That it was so, might naturally be inferred from the fact that the Lord Chamberlain's men were then playing there; besides, it has at least some probability, in that on the 11th of the same month Henslowe notes The Taming of a Shrew as having been performed at the same place. Whether this latter were Shakespeare's play, is sufficiently considered in our Introduction to The Taming of the Shrew.

The next particular, bearing upon the subject, is from a tract by Thomas Lodge, printed in 1596, and entitled Wit's Misery, or The World's Madness, discovering the incarnate Devils of the Age; where one of the devils is said to be "a foul lubber, and looks as pale as the vizard of the Ghost, who cried so miserably at the theatre, Hamlet, revenge." All these three notices are regarded by Malone and some others as referring to another play of Hamlet, which they suppose to have been written by Thomas Kyd; though their only reason for thinking there was such another play, is the alleged improbability of the Poet's having so early written on that subject.

It is to be observed, further, that a copy of Speight's Chaucer once owned by Gabriel Harvey, and having his name written in it, together with the date of 1598, has, among others, the following manuscript note: ""The younger sort take much delight in Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis; but his Lucrece, and his Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, have it in them to please the wiser sort." This, however, does not seem to infer any thing with certainty as to time; since the name and date may have been written when Harvey purchased the book, and the note at some later period.

The only other contemporary notice to be quoted of the play, is an entry at the Stationers' by James Roberts, on July 26, 1602: "A Book,-The Revenge of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, as it was lately acted by the Lord

Chamberlain his Servants." As the quarto of 1604 was printed by James Roberts, we may reasonably conclude that this entry refers to the "enlarged" form of the play. Why the publication was not made till two years later, is beyond our reach: perhaps it was because no copy could be obtained for the press, until the maimed and stolen issue of 1603 had rendered it necessary to put forth an edition in self-defense, "according to the true and perfect copy.' In the spring of 1603 "the Lord Chamberlain's Servants" became "His Majesty's Servants"; or, as they are called in the title-page of 1603, "His Highness' Servants."

A piece of internal evidence fixes the date of the enlarged Hamlet soon after June 22, 1600. It is the reason assigned by Rosencrantz, in Act II, sc. ii, why the players have left the city and gone to traveling: “I think their inhibition comes by means of the late innovation." The passage just quoted is not in the copy of 1603: a different reason is there assigned why the players travel: "Novelty carries it away; for the principal public audience that came to them are turned to private plays, and the humour of children."

Plays were acted in private by the choir-boys of the Chapel Royal and of St. Paul's before 1590, several of Lyly's pieces being used in that way. It appears that in 1591 these juvenile performances had been suppressed; as in the printer's address prefixed to Lyly's Endymion, which was published that year, we are told that, "since the plays in Paul's were dissolved, there are certain comedies come to my hand." Nash, in his Have with You to Saffron Waldon, published in 1596, expresses a wish to see the "plays at Paul's up again"; which infers that at that time the interdict was still in force. In 1600, however, we find that the interdict had been taken off, a play attributed to Lyly being that year "acted by the children of Paul's." From this time forward these juvenile performances appear to have been kept up, both in private and in public, until 1612, when, on account of the abuses attending them, they were again suppressed.

It would seem, then, that the reason assigned in the text of 1603 refers to a period when the acting of children was only in private, and was regarded as a novelty; whereas at the time of the later text the qualities of novelty and privacy had been removed. And it appears not improbable, that the taking-off of the interdict before 1600, and the consequent revival of plays by children, was "the late innovation" by means of which the "inhibition" had been brought about. Howbeit, so far as regards the date of the older text, the argument is by no means conclusive, and we are not for laying any very marked stress upon it; but it seems, at all events, worth considering. Its bearing as to the time of the later text is obvious enough, and will hardly be questioned.

Knight justly remarks, that the mention of Termagant and Herod, which occurs in the quarto of 1603, refers to a time when those personages trod the stage in pageants and mysteries; and that the directions to the players, as given in the older text, point to the customs and conduct of the stage, as it was before Shakespeare had, by his example and influence, raised and reformed it. The following passage from the first copy will show what we mean: "And then you have some again, that keeps one suit of jests, as a man is known by one suit of apparel; and gentlemen quote his jests down in their tables before they come to the play, as thus: 'Cannot you stay till I eat my porridge?' and, 'You owe me a quarter's wages'; and, 'My coat wants a cullison'; and, 'Your beer is sour'; and, blabbering with his lips, and thus keeping in his cinquea-pace of jests, when, God knows, the warm clown cannot make a jest unless by chance, as the blind man catcheth a hare." From the absence of all this in the enlarged copy, we should naturally conclude that the evil referred to had at that time been done away, or at least much diminished. And indeed a comparison of the two texts in this part of the play will satisfy any one, we think, that, during the interval between them, the stage had been greatly elevated and improved: divers bad customs, no