The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623

The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince
of Denmark - A Study with the
Text of the Folio of 1623

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Title: The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark A Study with the
Text of the Folio of 1623
Author: George MacDonald
Release Date: January 5, 2004 [EBook #10606]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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OF HAMLET ***

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THE TRAGEDIE OF HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARKE
A STUDY WITH THE TEXT OF THE FOLIO OF 1623
BY GEORGE MACDONALD

"What would you gracious figure?"

TO
MY HONOURED RELATIVE
ALEXANDER STEWART MACCOLL
A LITTLE LESS THAN KIN, AND MORE THAN KIND
TO WHOM I OWE IN ESPECIAL THE TRUE UNDERSTANDING
OF
THE GREAT SOLILOQUY
I DEDICATE
WITH LOVE AND GRATITUDE
THIS EFFORT TO GIVE HAMLET AND SHAKSPERE THEIR DUE
GEORGE MAC DONALD
BORDIGHERA
_Christmas_, 1884
Summary:
The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark: a study of the text of the
folio of 1623 By George MacDonald [Motto]: "What would you,
gracious figure?"
Dr. Greville MacDonald looks on his father's commentary as the "most
important interpretation of the play ever written... It is his intuitive
understanding ... rather than learned analysis--of which there is yet
overwhelming evidence--that makes it so splendid."
Reading Level: Mature youth and adults.

PREFACE
By this edition of HAMLET I hope to help the student of Shakspere to
understand the play--and first of all Hamlet himself, whose spiritual
and moral nature are the real material of the tragedy, to which every
other interest of the play is subservient. But while mainly attempting,
from the words and behaviour Shakspere has given him, to explain the
man, I have cast what light I could upon everything in the play,
including the perplexities arising from extreme condensation of
meaning, figure, and expression.
As it is more than desirable that the student should know when he is
reading the most approximate presentation accessible of what

Shakspere uttered, and when that which modern editors have, with
reason good or bad, often not without presumption, substituted for that
which they received, I have given the text, letter for letter, point for
point, of the First Folio, with the variations of the Second Quarto in the
margin and at the foot of the page.
Of HAMLET there are but two editions of authority, those called the
Second Quarto and the First Folio; but there is another which requires
remark.
In the year 1603 came out the edition known as the First
Quarto--clearly without the poet's permission, and doubtless as much to
his displeasure: the following year he sent out an edition very different,
and larger in the proportion of one hundred pages to sixty-four.
Concerning the former my theory is--though it is not my business to
enter into the question here--that it was printed from Shakspere's sketch
for the play, written with matter crowding upon him too fast for
expansion or development, and intended only for a continuous
memorandum of things he would take up and work out afterwards. It
seems almost at times as if he but marked certain bales of thought so as
to find them again, and for the present threw them aside--knowing that
by the marks he could recall the thoughts they stood for, but not
intending thereby to convey them to any reader. I cannot, with evidence
before me, incredible but through the eyes themselves, of the illimitable
scope of printers' blundering, believe all the confusion, unintelligibility,
neglect of grammar, construction, continuity, sense, attributable to
them. In parts it is more like a series of notes printed with the
interlineations horribly jumbled; while in other parts it looks as if it had
been taken down from the stage by an ear without a brain, and then yet
more incorrectly printed; parts, nevertheless, in which it most differs
from the authorized editions, are yet indubitably from the hand of
Shakspere. I greatly doubt if any ready-writer would have dared publish
some of its chaotic passages as taken down from the stage; nor do I
believe the play was ever presented in anything like such an unfinished
state. I rather think some fellow about the theatre, whether more rogue
or fool we will pay him the thankful tribute not to enquire, chancing
upon the crude embryonic mass in the poet's hand, traitorously pounced
upon it, and betrayed it to the printers--therein serving the