The First Quarto Edition of Shakespeare's " Hamlet" By Frank
G. Hubbard. (Madison : University of Wisconsin. 60 cents.)—Professor Hubbard has reprinted the First Quarto of Hamlet, modernizing the spelling and adding the modern stage directions. In a lengthy introduction he traverses the view of Mr. A. W. Pollard and others that this First Quarto of 1603 was a piracy and that the text is manifestly careless and corrupt because it was taken down surreptitiously by a shorthand writer and revised by an actor. Professor Hubbard contends very reasonably that we must consider the First Quarto by itself, that there is nothing suspicious about its publication, and that the text, though much shorter than that of the Second Quarto of 1604 and the First Folio, is coherent and not specially inaccu- rate. It is well to have the other side in the Hamlet controversy stated in this scholarly fashion, and the cheap reprint of the much-abused First Quarto is worth reading.
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