The arden shakespeare co.., p.121
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works, page 121
Scholars have accepted both Q2 and F as authorial versions, with recent opinion inclining towards seeing F as Shakespeare’s revision of Q2. The most significant of F’s ‘cuts’ is the omission of the whole of 4.4 after the first 8 lines, including Hamlet’s last soliloquy, but there are other major omissions in 1.1, 1.4, 3.4, 4.7 and 5.2. Most editions of Hamlet virtually ignore Q1 but include all the lines from both Q2 and F, providing a composite or ‘conflated’ text. Some recent editions bracket the Q2-only lines, or even consign them to an appendix.
The play is usually dated around 1600, just after Julius Caesar, whose story is mentioned in 1.1, 3.2 and 5.1. Shakespeare’s Brutus in some ways prefigures his Hamlet and presumably the same actor, Richard Burbage, played both roles. Shakespeare’s previous tragedies at this point were Titus Andronicus and Romeo and Juliet, both of which share Hamlet’s revenge theme; he went on to write Othello, King Lear and Macbeth over the next six years. Hamlet was an immediate and enduring success. Its story derives ultimately from a twelfth-century history of Denmark written in Latin by Saxo Grammaticus, but Shakespeare also seems to have used a 1580 French version by François de Belleforest and a lost play on the topic, now referred to as the Ur-Hamlet, and probably written by Thomas Kyd, whose Spanish Tragedy has many features in common with Hamlet.
Hamlet has a relatively unbroken history of performance, not only in England but virtually throughout the world; there have been over fifty films based on it. It was heavily cut in the Restoration but not, like most of the other plays, radically adapted or rewritten. Nevertheless it has of course inspired many spin-offs, sequels, prequels and parodies. The title-role has always attracted and challenged actors (including a large number of women). The play is endlessly quoted, and some key moments -the appearance of the Ghost on the battlements, the man in black holding a skull, the drowning of Ophelia - are instantly recognizable from countless illustrations. The character of the hero has been taken as representative of the spirit of entire countries, particularly Germany and Russia, while its political situation has been seen to parallel that in countries as different as Romania and South Africa.
Generally hailed until very recently as Shakespeare’s ‘greatest play’, Hamlet is still performed and studied more often than its only rival, King Lear. The annual bibliographies published by the American journal Shakespeare Quarterly show that around 400 items (editions, translations, books and essays) appear on Hamlet every year, as compared with around 200 on Lear. It remains to be seen whether a mid-twentieth-century shift in taste towards Lear will be sustained or whether Hamlet will reassert its preeminence.
The Arden text is based primarily on the 1604-5 Second Quarto, but also draws on the 1623 First Folio and includes the Folio-only passages.
LIST OF ROLES
HAMLET
Prince of Denmark
KING Claudius
King of Denmark, Hamlet’s uncle
GHOST
of the late king, Hamlet’s father
QUEEN Gertrude
the Queen, Hamlet’s mother, now wife of Claudius
POLONIUS
councillor of State
LAERTES
Polonius’ son
OPHELIA
Polonius’ daughter
HORATIO
friend and confidant of Hamlet
courtiers, former schoolfellows of Hamlet
FORTINBRAS
Prince of Norway
Danish councillors, ambassadors to Norway
members of the King’s guard
OSRIC
a foppish courtier
REYNALDO
a servant of Polonius
Players
GENTLEMAN
of the court
PRIEST
GRAVE-DIGGER
The OTHER grave-digger
CAPTAIN
in Fortinbras’ army
English Ambassadors
Lords, Ladies, Soldiers, Sailors, Messengers and Attendants
Hamlet
1.1 Enter BARNARDO and FRANCISCO, two sentinels.
BARNARDO Who’s there?
FRANCISCO
Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.
BARNARDO Long live the King!
FRANCISCO Barnardo?
BARNARDO He.
5
FRANCISCO You come most carefully upon your hour.
BARNARDO
’Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisco.
FRANCISCO
For this relief much thanks. ’Tis bitter cold,
And I am sick at heart.
BARNARDO Have you had quiet guard?
10
FRANCISCO Not a mouse stirring.
BARNARDO Well, good night.
If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,
The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.
FRANCISCO I think I hear them.
Enter HORATIO and MARCELLUS.
Stand, ho! Who is there?
15
HORATIO Friends to this ground.
MARCELLUS And liegemen to the Dane.
FRANCISCO Give you good night.
MARCELLUS
O, farewell honest soldier, who hath reliev’d you?
FRANCISCO
Barnardo hath my place. Give you good night. Exit.
MARCELLUS Holla, Barnardo!
20
BARNARDO Say, what, is Horatio there?
HORATIO A piece of him.
BARNARDO
Welcome, Horatio. Welcome, good Marcellus.
HORATIO What, has this thing appear’d again tonight?
BARNARDO I have seen nothing.
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MARCELLUS Horatio says ’tis but our fantasy,
And will not let belief take hold of him,
Touching this dreaded sight twice seen of us.
Therefore I have entreated him along
With us to watch the minutes of this night,
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That if again this apparition come,
He may approve our eyes and speak to it.
HORATIO Tush, tush, ’twill not appear.
BARNARDO Sit down awhile,
And let us once again assail your ears,
That are so fortified against our story,
35
What we have two nights seen.
HORATIO Well, sit we down.
And let us hear Barnardo speak of this.
BARNARDO Last night of all,
When yond same star that’s westward from the pole,
Had made his course t’illume that part of heaven
40
Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,
The bell then beating one –
Enter Ghost.
MARCELLUS
Peace, break thee off. Look where it comes again.
BARNARDO
In the same figure like the King that’s dead.
MARCELLUS
Thou art a scholar, speak to it, Horatio.
45
BARNARDO
Looks a not like the King? Mark it, Horatio.
HORATIO
Most like. It harrows me with fear and wonder.
BARNARDO
It would be spoke to.
MARCELLUS Question it, Horatio.
HORATIO
What art thou that usurp’st this time of night,
Together with that fair and warlike form
50
In which the majesty of buried Denmark
Did sometimes march? By heaven, I charge thee speak.
MARCELLUS It is offended.
BARNARDO See, it stalks away.
HORATIO Stay, speak, speak, I charge thee speak.
Exit Ghost.
MARCELLUS ’Tis gone and will not answer.
55
BARNARDO
How now, Horatio? You tremble and look pale.
Is not this something more than fantasy?
What think you on’t?
HORATIO
Before my God, I might not this believe
Without the sensible and true avouch
60
Of mine own eyes.
MARCELLUS Is it not like the King?
HORATIO As thou art to thyself.
Such was the very armour he had on
When he th’ambitious Norway combated.
So frown’d he once, when in an angry parle
65
He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.
’Tis strange.
MARCELLUS
Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour,
With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.
HORATIO
In what particular thought to work I know not,
70
But in the gross and scope of my opinion,
This bodes some strange eruption to our state.
MARCELLUS
Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows,
Why this same strict and most observant watch
So nightly toils the subject of the land,
75
And why such daily cast of brazen cannon
And foreign mart for implements of war,
Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task
Does not divide the Sunday from the week.
What might be toward that this sweaty haste
80
Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day,
Who is’t that can inform me?
HORATIO That can I.
At least the whisper goes so: our last King,
Whose image even but now appear’d to us,
Was as you know by Fortinbras of Norway,
85
Thereto prick’d on by a most emulate pride,
Dar’d to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet
(For so this side of our known world esteem’d him)
Did slay this Fortinbras, who by a seal’d compact
Well ratified by law and heraldry
90
Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands
Which he stood seiz’d of to the conqueror;
Against the which a moiety competent
Was gaged by our King, which had return’d
To the inheritance of Fortinbras,
95
Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same cov’nant
And carriage of the article design’d,
His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
Of unimproved mettle, hot and full,
Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there
100
Shark’d up a list of lawless resolutes
For food and diet to some enterprise
That hath a stomach in’t, which is no other,
As it doth well appear unto our state,
But to recover of us by strong hand
105
And terms compulsatory those foresaid lands
So by his father lost. And this, I take it,
Is the main motive of our preparations,
The source of this our watch, and the chief head
Of this post-haste and rummage in the land.
110
BARNARDO I think it be no other but e’en so.
Well may it sort that this portentous figure
Comes armed through our watch so like the King
That was and is the question of these wars.
HORATIO A mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye.
115
In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets;
As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
120
Disasters in the sun; and the moist star,
Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands,
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.
And even the like precurse of fear’d events,
As harbingers preceding still the fates
125
And prologue to the omen coming on,
Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
Unto our climatures and countrymen.
Enter Ghost.
But soft, behold. Lo, where it comes again.
I’ll cross it though it blast me. [Ghost spreads its arms.]
Stay, illusion:
130
If thou hast any sound or use of voice,
Speak to me.
If there be any good thing to be done
That may to thee do ease, and grace to me,
Speak to me;
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If thou art privy to thy country’s fate,
Which, happily, foreknowing may avoid,
O speak;
