• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 19299 0

the textus receptus) figured in the Folio of 1623. Here many passages, not to be found in the quartos, appear for the first time, but a few others that appear in the quartos are omitted. The Folio text probably came nearest to the original manuscript; but it, too, followed an acting copy which had been abbreviated somewhat less drastically than the Second Quarto and in a different fashion. Theobald in his ‘Shakespeare Restored’ (1726) made the first scholarly attempt to form a text from a collation of the First Folio with the Second Quarto, and Theobald’s text with further embellishments by Sir Thomas Hanmer, Edward Capell, and the Cambridge editors of 1866, is now generally adopted.

Popularity of ‘Hamlet.’

‘Hamlet’ was the only drama by Shakespeare that was acted in his lifetime at the two Universities. It has since attracted more attention from actors, playgoers, and readers of all capacities than any other of Shakespeare’s plays. Its world-wide popularity from its author’s day to our own, when it is as warmly welcomed in the theatres of France and Germany as in those of England and America, is the most striking of the many testimonies to the eminence of Shakespeare’s dramatic instinct. At a first glance there seems little in the play to attract the uneducated or the unreflecting. ‘Hamlet’ is mainly a psychological effort, a study of the reflective temperament in excess. The action develops slowly; at times there is no movement at all. The piece is the longest of Shakespeare’s plays, reaching a total of over 3,900 lines. It is thus some nine hundred lines longer than ‘Antony and Cleopatra’—the play by Shakespeare that approaches ‘Hamlet’ more closely in numerical strength of lines. At the same time the total length of Hamlet’s speeches far exceeds that of those allotted by Shakespeare to any other of his characters. Humorous relief is, it is true, effectively supplied to the tragic theme by Polonius and the grave-diggers, and if the topical references to contemporary theatrical history (II. ii. 350-89) could only count on an appreciative reception from an Elizabethan audience, the pungent censure of actors’ perennial defects is calculated to catch the ear of the average playgoer of all ages. But it is not to these subsidiary features that the universality of the play’s vogue can be attributed. It is the intensity of interest which Shakespeare contrives to excite in the character of the hero that explains the position of the play in popular esteem. The play’s unrivalled power of attraction lies in the pathetic fascination exerted on minds of almost every calibre by the central figure—a high-born youth of chivalric instincts and finely developed intellect, who, when stirred to avenge in action a desperate private wrong, is foiled by introspective workings of the brain that paralyse the will.

‘Troilus and Cressida.’

Although the difficulties of determining the date of ‘Troilus and Cressida’ are very great, there are many grounds for assigning its composition to the early days of 1603. In 1599 Dekker and Chettle were engaged by Henslowe to prepare for the Earl of Nottingham’s company—a rival of Shakespeare’s company—a play of ‘Troilus and Cressida,’ of which no trace survives. It doubtless suggested the topic to Shakespeare. On February 7, 1602-3, James Roberts obtained a license for ‘the booke of Troilus and Cresseda as yt is acted by my Lord Chamberlens men,’ i.e. Shakespeare’s company. Roberts printed the Second Quarto of ‘Hamlet’ and others of Shakespeare’s plays; but his effort to publish ‘Troilus’ proved abortive owing to the interposition of the players. Roberts’s ‘book’ was probably Shakespeare’s play. The metrical characteristics of Shakespeare’s ‘Troilus and Cressida’—the regularity of the blank verse—powerfully confirm the date of composition which Roberts’s license suggests. Six years later, however, on January 28, 1608-9, a new license for the issue of ‘a booke called the history of Troylus and Cressida’ was granted to other publishers, Richard Bonian and Henry Walley, and these publishers, more fortunate