The following is the review of Payne and Foss’s edition
that appeared in The Gentleman’s Magazine April number. It is interesting to
see what attracted attention early on, before the standard critical works began
lay down the lines that subsequent scholarship would follow. I suspect that
some of what is said will be familiar. But some will at least refresh the
reader’s memory. The ways in which the more primitive text served as a gloss
upon problematical lines from the 2nd Quarto and Folio might come
as a surprise.
Who H.R.D. was, I cannot say.
THIS Play is a meagre and short outline of the noble work so
well known; and the part of Polonius (Corambis as he is here called) is the
only one which is in the old and new editions nearly the same. The old play is so
hurried on, that the player-scenes, the scenes after the voyage to England, and
many others, are quite unnaturally introduced. Almost all the speeches are inferior
in wording and sentiment to the work as it has been amended. The famous speech,
“To be, or not to be ;” and the beautiful speech to Horatio by Hamlet, ‘‘Nay,
do not think I flatter,” &c. are most miserably inferior to those speeches
as we know them; in short, the old work is merely a poor and hasty ground-work,
upon which the Poet has worked up the noble tragedy of Hamlet. The acts are not
divided in the old work, and the Queen is informed by Horatio of the attempt to
get Hamlet put to death in England, and seems to feel and to resent the
villainy of her new husband. One passage struck us greatly, as it has been much
the subject of dispute, and called forth a variety of explanations which must
now shew the soundness of Mrs. Glass’s precept, “‘first catch your fish.” In
the grave-scene struggle with Laertes, Hamlet's words, “Wilt drink up Essil,
eat a Crocadile?” has left us to a world of surmise as to the real meaning of
Essil; some insisting that it signifies vinegar, and some that it alludes to
the River Essil or Yssil; but the old work puts all this at rest; the words in
it are,
‘Wilt drinke up vessels, eat a crocadile ?”
The sequel of the speech likewise is very strangely
different from the modern copies, and as it introduces a mountain in place of
Pelion, Olympus, &c. which we never heard of before, we shall state the
passage :
Wilt fight, wilt fast, wilt pray,
Wilt drinke up vessels, eat a
crocadile; Ile doot ;
Com’st thou here to whine ?
And when thou talk’st of burying the
alive,
Here let us stand; and let them throw
on us
Whole hills of earth, till with the
height thereof
Make Oosell as a wart.
It may be added, that all the passages of any consequence
are as different from, and as inferior to the amended play, as this one is. The
last leaf being lost, the reprint concludes exactly as Hamlet finishes a very
poor dying speech; this is of no great consequence, as the modern copies have
but little to interest in the short summing up, after Hamlet’s death. This
reprint, (if the debasement in which it shews the noble work of Shakspeare, is
not entirely owing to a very vicious and incorrect mode of editing the play in
1603,) must give room for a long train of reflection; and shew that the
beauties of our immortal Bard have been the results of much contemplation, and of
laboured revision and correction, at moments most favourable for inspiration;
at the same time, the want of correctness in the editor is evident in many
passages where the lines run in twelve and eight syllables, the first line retaining
two of the syllables belonging to the second. These blunders are visible
through the whole play. At least it would seem that Shakspeare has, at some
period subsequent to the acting of his plays, (which were perhaps got up in a
hurry to suit the convenience of the moment,) had leisure to work out the plots
and speeches upon the first rough sketch; this may have been done either in his
casual or final retreats to the town of his birth; and if the first edition of
1603 was really emitted by Shakspeare, as the second was, we think it has
thrown more light on his mode of working upon his noble dramas, than has yet
been obtained by all the cavils and dissertations on words and phrases which so
often leave obscure and ridiculous what without so much ingenuity would appear plain
and perspicuous.
The reprint contains not only a long series of readings and
speeches which have not before been known, but many words which we believe are
not to be found in other plays of Shakspeare. There is no Dramatis Personae; and we must
dissent from the Editor’s notice; for, while there are hardly any of the
perfect beauties which the tragedy now contains, we really have found little or
nothing beautiful or fine which the common copies do not contain.
H.R.D.
Also at Virtual Grub Street:
- More on Thomas North as Shakespeare and author of Arden of Feversham. June 14, 2021. “This is also the reason why the title pages included the address of the shop that was selling the book.”
- A 1572 Oxford Letter and the Player’s Speech in Hamlet. August 11, 2020. “The player’s speech has been a source of consternation among Shakespeare scholars for above 200 years. Why was Aeneas’ tale chosen as the subject?”
- Gutenberg, proto-Hack Writers and Shakespeare. May 26, 2020. “A less well known effect of the Reformation was that many young Catholic men who had taken religious orders in order to receive an education began to lead lives at large from monastic discipline. Like Erasmus and Rabelais they took up the pen.”
- Shakespeare’s Funeral Meats. May 13, 2020. “Famous as this has been since its discovery, it has been willfully misread more often than not. No mainstream scholar had any use for a reference to Hamlet years before it was supposed to have been written.”
- Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
- Check out the Letters Index: Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford for many letters from this fascinating time, some related to the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
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