Page:Hamlet - The Arden Shakespeare - 1899.djvu/25

 the reason for the omission seems to me obvious—Denmark is spoken of as a prison, or as one of the worst dungeons in the prison of the world, and Denmark was the native country of the English Queen.

The Folio text was evidently cut for the purpose of stage representation, and generally it may be described as more theatrical, but less literary, than the text of 1604. The greater part of IV. iv., including Hamlet's very important soliloquy, is deleted; so are his meditations before the entrance of the Ghost in I. iv.; Horatio's description of the prodigies in Rome before the fall of Caesar, I. i.; Claudius's remarkable words to Laertes, in IV. vii., on the wearing effect of time on passion; Hamlet's reflections on the monster Custom, III. iv.; Hamlet's lines about the courtiers and his resolve to hoist the enginer with his own petar, III. iv.; and much of his mockery of Osric, V. ii. Oaths and sacred words are altered to avoid the legal offence of profanity. Some actors' additions are introduced, such as the unhappy "O, o, o, o" of the dying Hamlet, following his words "The rest is silence." And there is a desire evident in the editors of the Folio text to modernise certain words which were regarded as old-fashioned.

The duration of the action in the play presents difficulties. It opens at midnight with the change of sentinels. Next day Horatio and Marcellus, with Bernardo, inform Hamlet of the appearance of the Ghost; it cannot be the forenoon, for Hamlet salutes Bernardo with "Good even, sir." On the night of this day Hamlet