Virtual Grub Street: Stratfordian scholars reject out of hand, in spite…

Stratfordian scholars reject out of hand, in spite of all of the considerable evidence, that Shakespeare can have written an early version of Hamlet before 1590. The coarser, more Senecan elements, they aver, are nothing like Shakespeare would ever have written. They must have been retained from the work of an earlier, coarser playwright.[1]

While published in 1601, more than one scholar has dated the 1^st Quarto of Hamlet — The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke — to 1593 or thereabouts. Others, of course, have declared it to be nothing but a shorthand transcription from a performance of the play as it appears in the 1603 2^nd Quarto thus explaining the comparatively crude text. They “believe” in a Shakespeare who never underwent an apprenticeship of any sort. Any version of him that is not “Shakespearean” in the sense the word has taken since the late 18^th century cannot possibly be legitimate.

The following text is taken from the gravedigger’s scene of the 1^st Quarto. The general tenor and humor of the final version, in the First Folio, is already present. The 2^nd Quarto will advance a bit further toward the final version, giving the wordplay even more effective timing.

The main impetus for the improvement from version to version is the increasing sophistication of the craft. Reading and watching a great many Elizabethan plays by the better playwrights makes the progress and its various attendant patterns clear. Style can be quite helpful as a tool to assist in determining composition dates of plays.

Hamlet. …Lets question yonder fellow.

Now my friend, whose graue is this?

Clowne. Mine sir.

Ham. But who must lie in it?

Clowne. If I should say, I should, I should lie in my throat sir.

Ham. What man must be buried here?

Clowne. No man sir.

Ham. What woman?

Clowne. No woman neither sir, but indeede

One that was a woman.

Ham. An excellent fellow by the Lord Horatio,

This seauen yeares haue I noted it: the toe of the pesant,

Comes so neere the heele of the courtier,

That hee gawles his kibe, I prethee tell mee one thing,

How long will a man lie in the ground before hee rots?

Clowne I faith sir, if hee be not rotten before

He be laide in, as we haue many pocky corses,

He will last you, eight yeares, a tanner

Will last you eight yeares full out, or nine.

Ham. And why a tanner?

Clowne. Why his hide is so tanned with his trade,

That it will holde out water, thats a parlous

Deuourer of your dead body, a great soaker.

Looke you, heres a scull hath bin here this dozen yeare,

Let me see, I euer since our last king Hamlet

Slew Fortenbrasse in combat, yong Hamlets father,

Hee that's mad.

Ham. I mary, how came he madde?

Clowne. I faith very strangely, by loosing of his wittes.

Ham. Vpon what ground?

Clowne A this ground, in Denmarke.

Ham. Where is he now?

Clowne Why now they sent him to England.

Ham. To England! wherefore?

Clowne Why they say he shall haue his wittes there,

Or if he haue not, t'is no great matter there,

It will not be seene there.

Ham. Why not there?

Clowne Why there they say the men are as mad as he.

Ham. Whose scull was this?

Clowne This, a plague on him, a madde rogues it was,

He powred once a whole flagon of Rhenish of my head,

Why do not you know him? this was one Yoricke' s scull.

Ham. Was this? I prethee let me see it, alas poore Yoricke

I knew him Horatio,

A fellow of infinite mirth, he hath caried mee twenty times

vpon his backe, here hung those lippes that I haue Kissed a

hundred times, and to see, now they abhorre me: Wheres

your iests now Yoricke? your flames of meriment: now go

to my Ladies chamber, and bid her paint her selfe an inch

thicke, to this she must come Yoricke.

Perhaps it will be of interest to know that the scene did not appear in the 1589 version of the play. Nor did Ophelia’s funeral. In that version, Ophelia’s death was announced at the beginning of the duel between Hamlet and Leonardus. Oh yes! Ophelia’s brother was named Leonardus, not Laertes.

I go into all of that in considerable depth in my Back When Ophelia Jumped Off a Cliff: the Hamlet of 1589. An early German translation of the English Hamlet of 1589 was discovered in the 18^th century. After remaining in only slightly less obscure obscurity for another 100 years, the translation appeared in Albert Cohn’s Shakespeare in Germany in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1865) together with a literal English translation of the translation.

There is a great deal to learn from the plays in Mr. Cohn’s book. A great deal more than meets the eye. They mark the point of embarkation for a number of journeys through England, Europe and the classical world. I describe those journeys in my Back When Ophelia Jumped Off a Cliff.

[1] Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Back When Ophelia Jumped Off a Cliff: the Hamlet of 1589 (2022). 60. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09WC94FGW