The Texts of " Hamlet "
iThe Manuscript of Shakespeare's " Hamlet " and the Pro- blems of its Transmission. By J. Dover Wilson. Two volumes. (Cambridge University Press. his. ) PROFESSOR DOVER WILSON holds a unique position among Elizabethan scholars. A few are his equals in knowledge but none approach him in sheer facility of resource. In his hands no Shakespearian problem is too baffling not to be given at least a plausible solution, and though the expert is often put to the pin of his collar to find the flaws in his argument, the misfortune is that there are few of his highly ingenious theories which are without an Achilles' heel.
He tells us now with his usual confidence that when, in the late summer of 1601, Shakespeare delivered to the Chamber- lain's Men " a rather untidy manuscript " of Hamlet, the players made from it a prompt book but carefully preserved the original, and that it was the original, not the prompt book, which was sent to the press in 1604 for publication in the Second Quarto, undoubtedly the only authentic text of the play. The folio variant he wholly discredits, not so much from the fact that it was derived from a later revised prompt book as from the assumption that the copy for the printer ' was a slovenly transcript of that prompt book, made by some one attached to the Globe who was over-familiar with the play, and did his work as much from memory as from the book before him. But we have to ask ourselves how chanced it that Shakespeare's manuscript was so untidy— he who never had a blot on his papers—that it could not 'have been converted into a prompt book without tran- scription ? In those days, when a play was of single author- ship, it was ruled for economy's sake that the author should deliver a fair copy to the players ; and it was customary on delivery to send the copy to the Master of the Revels for licensing, and, on its return, to convert it into the prompt book.
For the establishment of his thesis, Professor Dover Wilson -finds it essential to maintain that the text of the Second Quarto was not of prompt-book origin, but one begins to harbour incredulity on finding that the quarto has several unmistakable prompt-book markings, and that one of these markings of an almost unique order recurs in Macbeth (a • fact which indicates that both books were marked by the same man). Moreover, the quarto cannot have been printed -from Shakespeare's original manuscript, even if. turned - into a prompt book, because it bears signs of serious revision after the original production of the play. Professor J. M. 'Manley and others have shown that the text presents-at least three material interpolations, added to which there is reason to believe that the Closet scene has been extended, and originally ended with " Thus bad begins but worse remains behind." It is also fairly well assured that the famous soliloquy, " To be or not to be," is not in its pristine position, and must have been originally written for delivery before Hamlet first saw the Ghost. Professor Dover Wilson has no suspicion of the fact that there was a period of some few years when Shakespeare was constantly tinkering with the text of the play. At the dictates of his line of argument, he is compelled to assume that at an early juncture the poet made corrections in the players' parts without troubling to see that they were transferred to the prompt book, " which, once the play had been committed to memory," we are told, " would be little consulted except for the stage directions." This is an extraordinary pronouncement. Players in those days required frequent prompting and the bookholder had always to be on the alert, since, seeing that there were then no consecutive performances of any play, memories were apt to prove treacherous. It was imperative that all corrections should be in the book.
Other references are equally amazing. Despite the old tradition that Shakespeare originally played the Ghost of Hamlet's father, we are assured that Shakespeare took no interest in the rehearsal of his play or in its sub- sequent performance, and that the company had a special producer. But Mr. J. Isaacs, in his valuable paper in the Shakespeare Association miscellany, Shakespeare and the Theatre, has advanced clear evidence showing that in the Elizabethan era it was the business of the author to cast the play and superintend its rehearsal, and it is certain that that practice was consistently followed until the eighteenth century. One is getting a little tired of Shakespeare being made in all matters a law unto himself.
But to have done with the debit side of the account. The remarkable thing is that, notwithstanding the untenability of Professor Dover Wilson's main arguments, he has fashioned an indispensable tool for addition to the Shakespearian scholar's general equipment. His discussion of the many and various textual cruxes is illuminative and of the first importance. Students of Hamlet will neglect his book at
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