Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/383

 in his controversy with Dekker and his friends. But such a conclusion is otherwise uncorroborated. The general references subsequently made by Shakespeare (Hamlet, act ii. sc. ii. l. 354 seq.) to the interest taken by the public in a pending controversy between poets and players, and to the jealousy existing between men-actors and boy-actors, were doubtless suggested by Jonson's quarrel, but indicate that their author maintained a neutral attitude. Probably the ‘purge’ that Shakespeare was alleged to have given Jonson, who was perhaps in this instance credited with a jealousy in excess of the fact, meant no more than that Shakespeare had signally outstripped Jonson in popular esteem, possibly as the author of ‘Julius Cæsar,’ a subject peculiarly in Jonson's vein.

At any rate in 1602 Shakespeare finally left Jonson and all friends and foes lagging far behind. In that year he produced ‘Hamlet,’ with Burbage in the title-rôle. The story of the prince of Denmark had been popular on the stage in a lost dramatic version by another writer as early as 1589, and to that version Shakespeare's tragedy doubtless owed much. But the story was also accessible in the ‘Histoires Tragiques’ of Belleforest, who adapted it from the ‘Historia Danica’ of Saxo Grammaticus. An English translation of Belleforest's ‘Hystorie of Hamblet’ appeared in 1608 (cf., Hamlet-Quellen, Leipzig, 1881).

The bibliography of ‘Hamlet’ offers a puzzling problem. On 26 July 1602 ‘A Book called the Revenge of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, as it was lately acted by the Lord Chamberlain his Servants,’ was entered on the ‘Stationers' Registers,’ and it was published in quarto next year (for N[icholas] L[ing] and John Trundell). The title-page stated that it had been ‘acted divers times in the city of London, as also in the two universities of Cambridge and Oxford and elsewhere.’ In all probability this crude production was a piratical and carelessly transcribed copy of Shakespeare's first draft of the play, in which he drew largely on the older piece. A revised version appeared with the company's assent in 1604 as ‘The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, by William Shakespeare, newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much again as it was, according to the true and perfect copy’ (by I[ames] R[oberts] for N[icholas] L[ing]). The concluding words—‘according to the true and perfect copy’—of the title-page of the second quarto stamp its predecessor as surreptitious. But the second quarto was itself printed from a copy which had been curtailed for acting purposes. A third version (long the textus receptus) figured in the folio of 1623. Here some 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 followed an acting copy which had been curtailed in a different fashion from that adopted in the second quarto (cf. Hamlet—parallel texts of the first and second quarto, and first folio—ed. Wilhelm Vietor, Marburg, 1891; The Devonshire Hamlets, 1860, parallel texts of the two quartos; Hamlet, ed. George Macdonald, 1885, a study with the text of the folio).

Humorous relief is supplied to the tragic theme by Polonius and the gravediggers, and if the topical references to contemporary theatrical history (. 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 ‘Hamlet’ is mainly a philosophical effort, a masterly study of the reflective temperament in excess. The action develops slowly; at times there is no movement at all. Except ‘Antony and Cleopatra,’ which exceeds it by sixty lines, the piece is the longest of Shakespeare's plays, while the total length of Hamlet's speeches far exceeds that of those allotted by Shakespeare to any others of his characters. Yet the interest excited by the character of the hero carries all before it, and amply accounts for the position of the play in popular esteem. ‘Hamlet’ was the only drama by Shakespeare that was acted in his lifetime at the two universities. Its popularity on the stage 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, lends signal testimony to the eminence of Shakespeare's dramatic instinct.

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. On 7 Feb. 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 (, iii. 226). Roberts printed the second quarto of ‘Hamlet’ and others of