A History of English Literature

presented on the stage.
16. 'HAMLET' AS A REPRESENTATIVE TRAGEDY. Four days, with written
discussion. Students can get much help from good interpretative
commentaries, such as: C. M. Lewis, 'The Genesis of Hamlet,' on which the
theories here stated are partly based; A. C. Bradley, 'Shakspearean
Tragedy,' pp. 89-174; Edward Dowden, 'Shakspere Primer,' 119 ff.; Barrett
Wendell, 'William Shakspere,' 250 ff.; Georg Brandes, 'William
Shakespeare,' one vol. ed., book II, chaps. xiii-xviii; F. S. Boas,
'Shakespeare and his Predecessors,' 384 ff.; S. T. Coleridge, 'Lectures on
Shakspere,' including the last two or three pages of the twelfth lecture.
The original version of the Hamlet story is a brief narrative in the
legendary so-called 'Danish History,' written in Latin by the Dane Saxo the
Grammarian about the year 1200. About 1570 this was put into a much
expanded French form, still very different from Shakspere's, by the
'novelist' Belleforest, in his 'Histoires Tragiques.' (There is a
translation of Belleforest in the second volume of the 'Variorum' edition
of 'Hamlet'; also in Hazlitt's 'Shakespeare Library,' I, ii, 217 ff.)
Probably on this was based an English play, perhaps written by Thomas Kyd,
which is now lost but which seems to be represented, in miserably garbled
form, in an existing text of a German play acted by English players in
Germany in the seventeenth century. (This German play is printed in the
'Variorum' edition of 'Hamlet,' vol. II.) This English play was probably
Shakspere's source. Shakspere's play was entered in the 'Stationers'
Register' (corresponding to present-day copyrighting) in 1602, and his play
was first published (the first quarto) in 1603. This is evidently only
Shakspere's early tentative form, issued, moreover, by a piratical
publisher from the wretchedly imperfect notes of a reporter sent to the
theater for the purpose. (This first quarto is also printed in the
'Variorum' edition.) The second quarto, virtually Shakspere's finished
form, was published in 1604. Shakspere, therefore, was evidently working on
the play for at least two or three years, during which he transformed it
from a crude and sensational melodrama of murder and revenge into a
spiritual study of character and human problems. But this transformation
could not be complete--the play remains bloody--and its gradual progress,
as Shakspere's conception of the possibilities broadened, has left
inconsistencies in the characters and action.
It is important to understand the situation and events at the Danish court
just before the opening of the play. In Saxo the time was represented as
being the tenth century; in Shakspere, as usual, the manners and the whole
atmosphere are largely those of his own age. The king was the elder Hamlet,
father of Prince Hamlet, whose love and admiration for him were extreme.
Prince Hamlet was studying at the University of Wittenberg in Germany; in
Shakspere's first quarto it is made clear that he had been there for some
years; whether this is the assumption in the final version is one of the
minor questions to consider. Hamlet's age should also be considered. The
wife of the king and mother of Prince Hamlet was Gertrude, a weak but
attractive woman of whom they were both very fond. The king had a brother,
Claudius, whom Prince Hamlet had always intensely disliked. Claudius had
seduced Gertrude, and a few weeks before the play opens murdered King
Hamlet in the way revealed in Act I. Of the former crime no one but the
principals were aware; of the latter at most no one but Claudius and
Gertrude; in the first quarto it is made clear that she was ignorant of it;
whether that is Shakspere's meaning in the final version is another
question to consider. After the murder Claudius got himself elected king by
the Danish nobles. There was nothing illegal in this; the story assumes
that as often in medieval Europe a new king might be chosen from among all