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Hamlet

Prince of Denmark

Edited by Philip Edwards

An international team of scholars offers:

. modernized, easily accessible texts

• ample commentary and introductions

. attention to the theatrical qualities of each

play and its stage history

. informative illustrations

Hamlet

Philip Edwards aims to bring the reader,

playgoer and director of Hamlet into the

closest possible contact with Shakespeare's

most famous and most perplexing play.

He concentrates on essentials, dealing

succinctly with the huge volume of

commentary and controversy which the

play has provoked and offering a way

forward which enables us once again to

recognise its full tragic energy.

Cover design by Paul Oldman, based on a draining by David Hockney, reproduced by permission of tlie

The introduction and commentary reveal

an author with a lively awareness of the

importance of perceiving the play as a

theatrical document, one which comes to

life, which is completed only in

performance.' Review of English Studies

For this updated edition, Robert Hapgood

has added a new section on prevailing

critical and performance approaches to

Hamlet. He discusses recent film and stage

performances, actors of the Hamlet role as

well as directors of the play; his account of

new scholarship stresses the role of

remembering and forgetting in the play,

and the impact of feminist and

performance studies.

C A M B R I D G E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S www.cambridge.org

THE NEW CAMBRIDGE SHAKESPEARE

All's Well That Ends Well, edited by Russell Fraser Antony and Cleopatra, edifedjby David Bevington As You Like It, edited by Michael Hattaway The Comedy ofErro'fs, edited by T. S. Dorsch Coriolanus, edited by Lee Bliss Hamlet, edited by Philip Edwards Julius Caesar, edited by Marvin Spevack King Edward III, edited by Giorgio Melchiori The First Part of King Henry IV, edited by Herbert Weil and Judith Weil The Second Part of King Henry IV, edited by Giorgio Melchiori King Henry V, edited by Andrew Gurr The First Part of King Henry VI, edited by Michael Hattaway The Second Part of King Henry VI, edited by Michael Hattaway The Third Part of King Henry VI, edited by Michael Hattaway King Henry VIII, edited by John Margeson King John, edited by L. A. Beaurline King Lear, edited by Jay L. Halio King Richard II, edited by Andrew Gurr King Richard III, edited by Janis Lull Macbeth, edited by A. R. Braunmuller Measure for Measure, edited by Brian Gibbons The Merchant of Venice, edited by M. M. Mahood The Merry Wives of Windsor, edited by David Crane A Midsummer Night's Dream, edited by R. A. Foakes Much Ado About Nothing, edited by F. H. Mares Othello, edited by Norman Sanders Pericles, edited by Doreen DelVecchio and Antony Hammond The Poems, edited by John Roe Romeo and Juliet, edited by G. Blakemore Evans The Sonnets, edited by G. Blakemore Evans The Taming of the Shrew, edited by Ann Thompson The Tempest, edited by David Lindley Titus Andronicus, edited by Alan Hughes Troilus and Cressida, edited by Anthony B. Dawson Twelfth Night, edited by Elizabeth Story Donno The Two Gentlemen of Verona, edited by Kurt Schlueter

THE EARLY QUARTOS The First Quarto of Hamlet, edited by Kathleen O. Irace The First Quarto of King Henry V, edited by Andrew Gurr The First Quarto of King Lear, edited by Jay L. Halio The First Quarto of King Richard III, edited by Peter Davison The Taming of a Shrew, edited by Stephen Roy Miller The First Quarto of Othello, edited by Scott McMillin

HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK

Updated edition

Edited by

PHILIP EDWARDS

King Alfred Professor of English Literature University of Liverpool

CAMBRIDGE

UNIVERSITY PRESS

THE NEW CAMBRIDGE SHAKESPEARE

The New Cambridge Shakespeare succeeds The New Shakespeare which began publication in 1921 under the general editorship of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch and John Dover Wilson, and was completed in the 1960s, with the assistance of G. I. Duthie, Alice Walker, Peter Ure and J. C. Maxwell. The New Shakespeare itself followed upon The Cambridge Shakespeare, 1863-6, edited by W. G. Clark, J. Glover and W. A. Wright. The New Shakespeare won high esteem both for its scholarship and for its design, but shifts of critical taste and insight, recent Shakespearean research, and a changing sense of what is important in our understanding of the plays, have made it necessary to re-edit and redesign, not merely to revise, the series. The New Cambridge Shakespeare aims to be of value to a new generation of playgoers and readers who wish to enjoy fuller access to Shakespeare's poetic and dramatic art. While offering ample academic guidance, it reflects current critical interests and is more attentive than some earlier editions have been to the realisation of the plays on the stage, and to their social and cultural settings. The text of each play has been freshly edited, with textual data made available to those users who wish to know why and how one published text differs from another. Although modernised, the edition conserves forms that appear to be expressive and characteristically Shakespearean, and it does not attempt to disguise-the fact that the plays were written in a language other than that of our own time. Illustrations are usually integrated into the critical and historical discussion of the play and include some reconstructions of early performances by C. Walter Hodges. Some editors have also made use of the advice and experience of Maurice Daniels, for many years a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Each volume is addressed to the needs and problems of a particular text, and each therefore differs in style and emphasis from others in the series. PHILIP BROCKBANK Founding General Editor

What is he that builds stronger than either

the mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter?

To the memory of my great-grandfather

R O B E R T E D W A R D S

i829-

Sexton of St John's Church, Rhydymwyn, Flintshire

VI

ILLUSTRATIONS

1 Suggested Elizabethan staging of the Ghost scenes (1.4 and 1.5). Drawing by C. Walter Hodges page 44 2 Henry Irving as Hamlet and Ellen Terry as Ophelia in the ' nunnery ' scene (3.1), as painted by Edward H. Bell, 1879 (Mander and Mitchenson Theatre Collection) 4c 3 Suggested Elizabethan staging of the play-within-the-play (3.2). Drawing by C. Walter Hodges 51

4. 'Now might I do it pat' (3.3.73). One of a series of lithographs of the play published by Eugène Delacroix in 1844 (Trustees of the British Museum) 53 5 Possible Elizabethan staging of the graveyard scene (5.1). Drawing by C. Walter Hodges 57 6 'Do you not come your tardy son to chide?' (3.4.106). Redrawn by Du Guernier for the 1714 edition of Rowe's Shakespeare 65 7 J. P. Kemble as Hamlet, by Sir Thomas Lawrence (Royal Academy, 1801) (Tate Gallery) 68 8 'Go on, I'll follow thee' (1.4.86). Forbes Robertson as Hamlet in a 1913 film (Mander and Mitchenson Theatre Collection) 69 9 The burial of Ophelia (5.1). Modern-dress production at the London Old Vic, 1938 (Mander and Mitchenson Theatre Collection) 70 10 Kenneth Branagh's film of Hamlet 1996, with Branagh in the title role between Claudius (Derek Jacobi) and Gertrude ( J u n e^ Christie) (Photofest) 73 11 Simon Russell Beale as Hamlet, with Yorick's Skull, National Theatre, 2001 (Photo: Zoe Dominic) 75

V l l l

PREFACE

The vastness of the commentary on Hamlet gives an editor of the play a rather special freedom. Even if he could read them all, he could not accommodate within the covers of a book an account of the multitude of theories and ideas generated by the play; and to attempt to sum up even the enduring contributions would so overload the work that it would defeat the main purpose of an edition, which is to make an author's work more accessible. This edition of Hamlet is selective in its account of what has gone before, and the view of the play presented in the Introduction, the Commentary - and the text - is personal without I hope being idiosyncratic. Everything that I consider essential to the meaning of the play I have endeavoured to discuss ; where I consider problems insoluble, or not central, I have avoided prolonged debate. The text of Hamlet presents great difficulties, and any discussion of it affects and is affected by our understanding of the play. I have not therefore been able to separate my account of the text from the main part of the introduction, as is the custom in this series. In trying to offer help towards the understanding of this great and perplexing play, it is essential to make clear at the outset that there is more than one Hamlet we might be talking about. Most of the work for this edition was completed before the appearance of Harold Jenkins's masterly edition in the New Arden series in the spring of 1982. It has nevertheless been of immense benefit to have his work before me since that time, as my commentary frequently acknowledges. All students of Hamlet are in debt to Harold Jenkins for the results of his patient and exacting research. Some of the material in the critical account of the play in the Introduction appears also in an essay, 'Tragic balance in Hamlet ', in Shakespeare Survey 36 (1983); I am grateful to the editor of Shakespeare Survey for accepting this overlap. In acknowledging assistance in this edition of Hamlet, I ought to start with John Waterhouse in 1942 and Allardyce Nicoll in 1945, from whom I learned so much about the play. In recent times, my greatest debt is to Kenneth Muir, an untiring lender of books, a patient listener, and a generous adviser. John Jowett gave me great help in checking parts of my typescript, and in sifting through recent writings on the play. I am grateful to Joan Welford for typing the Commentary. This edition was prepared during a period of rather heavy administrative duties in the University of Liverpool. I am most grateful to the University for two periods of leave, and to the University of Otago, the British Academy and the Huntington Library for enabling me to make the most of them. P.E. University of Liverpool, 1984

IX

XI Abbreviations and short titles

Q2 The Tragical! Historié of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke, by William Shakespeare, 1604, 1605 (second quarto) Q 1611, Q 1676 Quarto editions of those dates RES Review of English Studies Ridley Hamlet, éd. M. R. Ridley, 1934 (New Temple Shakespeare) Rowe The Works of Mr William Shakespear, ed. Nicholas Rowe, 1709, v Schmidt Alexander Schmidt, Shakespeare-Lexicon, 2 vols., 1874-5; 2 n^ ^ e c m^ , 1886 SD stage direction SH speech heading Spencer Hamlet, éd. T. J. B. Spencer, 1980 (New Penguin Shakespeare) SQ Shakespeare Quarterly Staunton The Plays of Shakespeare, ed. Howard Staunton, 1858-60, reissued 1866, m Steevens The Plays of William Shakespeare, ed. Samuel Johnson and George Steevens, 1773, x Steevens^2 The Plays of William Shakespeare, ed. Samuel Johnson and George Steevens, 2nd edn, 1778, x Steevens^3 The Plays of William Shakespeare, ed. Samuel Johnson and George Steevens, 4th edn, 1793, xv Sternfeld F. W. Sternfeld, Music in Shakespearean Tragedy, 1963 Theobald Lewis Theobald, Shakespeare Restored, 1726 Theobald^2 The Works of Shakespeare, ed. Lewis Theobald, 1733, vu Theobald^3 The Works of Shakespeare, ed. Lewis Theobald, 1740, vm Tilley Morris Palmer Tilley, A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, 1950 [references are to numbered proverbs] TLS The Times Literary Supplement Verity The Tragedy of Hamlet, ed. A. W. Verity, 1904 Walker William Sydney Walker, A Critical Examination of the Text of Shakespeare, 3 vols., i Warburton The Works of Shakespear, ed. William Warburton, 1747, vm White The Works of William Shakespeare, ed. Richard Grant White, 1857-66, XI Wilson Hamlet, ed. J. Dover Wilson, 1934; 2nd edn, 1936, reprinted 1968 (New Shakespeare)

Hamlet 2

Between Saxo Grammaticus and Hamlet lies a French version of Saxo's story by

François de Belleforest, published in his Histoires Tragiques in 1570 (followed by many

later editions). It does not appear that the Hamlet story was translated into English

until 1608. Belleforest is most conscious of the unchristian savagery of the tale and

pointedly remarks that it all happened in pre-Christian times. His account is long,

wordy and sententious, but in the incidents of the story he follows the stark version

of Saxo closely except in two important respects relating to the queen. She and Feng,

or Fengon as he now is, have an adulterous liaison before the king is murdered ; Fengon

'used her as his concubine'. Secondly, after Hamlet has convinced his mother of the

error of her ways (following the death of the eavesdropper), the queen encourages

Hamlet in his vengeance, promises to keep his secret, and hopes to see him enjoy his

right as king of Denmark. None of this collaboration between Gertrude and Hamlet

is in Shakespeare's play, but it does feature in the first quarto, which we shall be

looking at shortly.

As for Hamlet's revenge, Belleforest does not acclaim it as enthusiastically as Saxo

does, and clearly recognises that some justification is needed. Hamlet argues that his

vengeance is neither felony nor treason, but the punishment of a disloyal subject by

a sovereign prince (Bullough, vu, 100). And on the death of Fengon, Belleforest states

that this is an occasion when vengeance becomes justice, an act of piety and affection,

a punishment of treason and murder.

The most important changes which appear in Hamlet are as follows :

1 The murder becomes secret;

2 A ghost tells Hamlet of the murder and urges revenge;

3 Laertes and young Fortinbras are introduced;

4 Ophelia's role is extended and elevated;

5 The players and their play are introduced;

6 Hamlet dies as he kills the king.

To be added to this list is a more general change of great significance. The setting

of the story is moved from the pre-Christian times where Belleforest deliberately

placed it to a courtly, modern-seeming period, in which, though England still pays

tribute to Denmark, renaissance young men travel to and fro to complete their

education in universities or in Paris.

How many of these changes did Shakespeare himself originate? It is impossible

to say, because of our ignorance about the Elizabethan Hamlet which preceded

Shakespeare's. The earliest reference to this play is in a scornful attack by Thomas

Nashe on the Senecan dramatists of the day in 1589. 'English Seneca read by

candlelight 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.'^1 Five years later, at the end of the disastrous plague

period of 1592-4, Philip Henslowe recorded a short season of plays at Newington Butts

(south of the Thames) shared by the Lord Admiral's men and the emerging company

of the Lord Chamberlain's men, Shakespeare's company, during which, on 9 June

(^1) Preface to Greene's Menaphon; Nashe, Works, ed. McKerrow, 1904-10, m, 315.

3 Introduction

1594, a play of Hamlet was performed.^1 In 1596, Thomas Lodge wrote of one who

'walks for the most part in black under cover of gravity, and looks as pale as the vizard

of the ghost who cried so miserably at the Theatre like an oyster-wife, Hamlet,

revenge!'^2

It may be that this old play was not immediately supplanted and driven from the

stage when Shakespeare wrote his version. One of the characters in Dekker's

Satiromastix (written late in the year 1601) says 'My name's Hamlet revenge; thou

hast been at Paris Garden, hast not?' (4.1.121-2); the reference is probably to the

older play. The authorship of the earlier play (often called the Ur-Hamlet) is not

known. Nashe's attack of 1589 on the 'sort of shifting companions' who bleed the

English translations of Seneca dry in order to create their dismal tragedies seems to

include three glancing references to Thomas Kyd, the author of The Spanish Tragedy.

These men 'leave the trade of Noverint, whereto they were born', which fits Kyd

because his father was a 'noverint' or scrivener; Nashe speaks of'the Kid in Aesop';

and the phrase ' those that thrust Elysium into hell ' may well refer to The Spanish

Tragedy. But even if Kyd was one of the Senecans whom Nashe was abusing it does

not necessarily follow that Nashe meant he was the author of the early Hamlet. He

may have been. The relationship between Shakespeare's Hamlet and Kyd's Spanish

Tragedy is close and profoundly important. How far that relationship developed

through Shakespeare reworking a Kydean Hamlet is impossible to say. The Spanish

Tragedy is about the revenge of a father for his murdered son, and includes the

presence on stage of the ghost of a dead man, the hero's madness, and a crucial

play-within-the-play. The Ur-Hamlet, which was about the revenge of a son for his

murdered father, had a ghost urging Hamlet to take revenge, and must have included

the assumed madness of the hero, which is among the irreducible constituents of the

old story. It seems more likely that the old Hamlet would have preceded The Spanish

Tragedy than vice versa.^3 They were probably companion plays, the successor very

conscious of the predecessor, whether Kyd wrote both plays or not. For the Hamlet

story there is a quite definite literary source, as we have seen; for The Spanish Tragedy

there is no known source. If one play copies another, and one is based on a known

source and the other isn't, there is a strong argument that the play with a source is

the earlier. On this argument, the 'madness' of Hamlet in the old play, being part

of the traditional story, would be the original, and the madness of Hieronimo in The

Spanish Tragedy would be the copy. So we may say that Kyd or one of his

fellow-dramatists wrote an early version of Hamlet, that Kyd capitalised on its success

in The Spanish Tragedy, which borrowed many of its features, and that Shakespeare,

writing a new version of Hamlet which seems very attentive to Kyd's handling of

revenge, is influenced by the two similar earlier plays.

Returning then to our question of what changes in the traditional Hamlet story

were Shakespeare's, we see that he did not introduce the Ghost. A ghost urging Hamlet

to take revenge was an elemental part of the old play; it was what everyone

(^1) Henslowe's Diary, ed. R. A. Foakes and R. T. Rickert, 1961, p. 21. (^2) Wits Miserie, 1596, signature H4V (^) (text reads 'miserally'). 3 Argued by E. E. Stoll in Modern Philology 35 (1937-8), 3 2 - 3.

5 Introduction

finishing his play the success of the children and the plight of his own company suggested to Shakespeare an amplification of what he had already written about the Players turning up in Elsinore because of the troubled times in Denmark and a decline in their reputation (see the notes to 2.2.308-9 and following). If we could be sure of dating the height of the stage-quarrel in mid 1601 we should have a fairly precise date for Shakespeare finishing his play. A reference which has been much discussed in dating Hamlet is in the marginal note made by Gabriel Harvey in his copy of Speght's Chaucer, which runs :

The younger sort takes much delight in Shakespeares Venus, & Adonis, but his Lucrèce, & his tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke, have it in them, to please the wiser sort. ' The Chaucer was published in 1598 and Harvey signed his name in his copy with the date ' 1598'. His very long note, which is a kind of assessment of English literature in his time, refers to Spenser (died 1599) and Watson (died 1592) as with Shakespeare among 'our flourishing metricians', but mentions 'Owen's new epigrams' published in 1607. It also contains the statement, 'The Earl of Essex much commendes Albions England'-which certainly suggests that the Earl was alive; he was executed in February 1601. The sense of time is so confused in Harvey's note that it is really of little use in trying to date Hamlet. E. A. J. Honigmann (see note on p. 4) rightly argued that there is very strong evidence that Hamlet was written later than Julius Caesar, which was being acted in the summer of 1599. Just before the play-within-the-play there is this exchange between Hamlet and Polonius : HAMLET .. .My lord, you played once i'th'university, you say. POLONIUS That did I my lord, and was accounted a good actor. HAMLET And what did you enact? POLONIUS I did enact Julius Caesar. I was killed i'th'Capitol. Brutus killed me. HAMLET It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there. (3.2.87-93) Honigmann points out that it is usually assumed that John Heminges acted both the old-man parts, Caesar in the first play and Polonius in the second, and that Richard Burbage acted both Brutus and Hamlet. 'Polonius would then be speaking on the extra-dramatic level in proclaiming his murder in the part of Caesar, since Hamlet (Burbage) will soon be killing him (Heminges) once more in Hamlet.'' There does indeed seem to be a kind of private joke here, with Heminges saying to Burbage ' Here we go again! ' But there is also something much deeper - the identification of the two killers, Brutus and Hamlet. Once again, Burbage plays the part of the intellectual as well-intentioned assassin. In both Julius Caesar and Hamlet, a bookish, reflective man, honoured by his friends and associates, is summoned to a major political task requiring complete personal involvement and a violent physical assault. The assassination that is to purify Rome is quickly decided on and quickly carried out. The greater part of the play is devoted to the disastrous consequences of killing Caesar. In Hamlet,

(^1) Gabriel Harvey's Marginalia, ed G. C. Moore Smith, 1013, p. 232. Sec the discussion by Jenkins, pp. 3-6 and 573-4, and Honigmann, 'Date of _Hamlet_ pp. 24-6.

Hamlet (^) 6

the deed which is to purify Denmark is extraordinarily delayed ; most of the play is devoted to disasters in the course of doing the deed. But both plays end in political failure. In neither Rome nor Denmark does the political future turn out as it was desired and planned by the hero. What spiritual triumph there is in both plays is muted. That Hamlet is a reworking of the basic underlying theme of Julius Caesar, namely the commitment of the philosopher-hero to violent action in order to remove an intruder from the government of the state and restore an ideal condition belonging to former times, seems to me undeniable. The unlocking of the beautifully controlled and articulated Roman play to produce the perturbed and bewildering tangle which is Hamlet Prince of Denmark may well seem a strange progression. It is a progression which shows up Shakespeare's sense of the increasing complexity and difficulty of the problems as he continued to think about them. Again, to move from the moral and constitutional problems of high Roman civilisation to the barbarities of nordic myth and the crudities of the Elizabethan revenge play may seem curious. Yet the resources of these less civilised traditions were perhaps what Shakespeare needed in order to take one step further the problem of commitment which both Julius Caesar and Hamlet present. In particular, the questioning of what relationship there may be between the divine will, retaliatory violence, and the achieving of justice is a constant factor in the revenge tradition as represented by Pickering's Horestes (1567) and The Spanish Tragedy. Although the supernatural has its place in Julius Caesar, and includes a ghost, it does not go near to suggesting an eternal world surrounding, enclosing and explaining the world of man. The figure of the summoning ghost in the old Hamlet (the one that cried like an oyster-wife) is what transforms the problem of Julius Caesar into the new guise of Hamlet. Because of this ghost, the decisions of men about killing are placed as Pickering and Kyd had placed them, within a vast transcendent world of shadowy figures and mysterious commands. The setting of Hamlet is not Elsinore but heaven, earth and hell. In the middle of Hamlet the actors remind us that they recently acted in the play Julius Caesar; they are now in a much more barbaric and untidy play which takes the problems of the earlier work into the perplexities of a spiritual dimension. If Hamlet is in some sense 'inspired' by Julius Caesar, it also shares its period of composition with one of Shakespeare's greatest comedies, Twelfth Night. T. W. Craik argues that Shakespeare started writing the latter in the middle of 1601 and completed it before the end of the year (New Arden edition, 1975, pp. xxxiv-xxxv). This would fit well with the view that Shakespeare had just finished Hamlet when the ' war of the theatres' had come to a head, taking the production of Jonson's Poetaster in the spring of 1601 to represent the high point of the quarrel. We must now look at the curious relationship between Shakespeare's Hamlet and Marston's Antonio's Revenge. This blood-bespattered and overcharged revenge-play was a main target for Jonson's ridicule in Poetaster, and it was probably staged in the winter of 1600-1.^1 It has many parallels with Hamlet. The ghost of a poisoned father appears, to tell his son of the concealed murder and urge him to take revenge.

(^1) See Reavley Gair's Revels Plays edition, 1978, pp. 14-15.