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The New Cambridge Shakespeare

general editor
Brian Gibbons

associate general editor

A. R. Braunmuller, University of California, Los Angeles

From the publication of the first volumes in 1984 the General Editor of the New Cambridge
Shakespeare was Philip Brockbank and the Associate General Editors were Brian Gibbons
and Robin Hood. From 1990 to 1994 the General Editor was Brian Gibbons and the Associate
General Editors were A. R. Braunmuller and Robin Hood.

HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK

Philip Edwards aims to bring the reader, playgoer and director of Hamlet into the closest pos­
sible contact with Shakespeare’s most famous and most perplexing play. In his Introduction
Edwards considers the possibility that Shakespeare made important alterations to Hamlet as it
neared production, creating differences between the two early texts, quarto and Folio. Edwards
concentrates on essentials, dealing succinctly with the huge volume of commentary and con­
troversy which the play has provoked and offering a way forward which enables us once again
to recognise its full tragic energy.
For this updated edition, Robert Hapgood has added a new section on prevailing critical and
performance approaches to the play. He discusses recent film and stage performances, actors of
the Hamlet role as well as directors of the play; his account of new scholarship stresses the role
of remembering and forgetting in the play, and the impact of feminist and performance studies.

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The New Cambridge Shakespeare

All’s Well That Ends Well, edited by Russell Fraser

Antony and Cleopatra, edited by David Bevington
As You Like It, edited by Michael Hattaway
The Comedy of Errors, edited by T. S. Dorsch
Coriolanus, edited by Lee Bliss
Cymbeline, edited by Martin Butler
Hamlet, edited by Philip Edwards
Julius Caesar, edited by Marvin Spevack
King Edward III, edited by Giorgio Melchiori
The First Part of King Henry IV, edited by Herbert Weil and Judith Weil
The Second Part of King Henry IV, edited by Giorgio Melchiori
King Henry V, edited by Andrew Gurr
The First Part of King Henry VI, edited by Michael Hattaway
The Second Part of King Henry VI, edited by Michael Hattaway
The Third Part of King Henry VI, edited by Michael Hattaway
King Henry VIII, edited by John Margeson
King John, edited by L. A. Beaurline
The Tragedy of King Lear, edited by Jay L. Halio
King Richard II, edited by Andrew Gurr
King Richard III, edited by Janis Lull
Love’s Labour’s Lost, edited by William C. Carroll
Macbeth, edited by A. R. Braunmuller
Measure for Measure, edited by Brain Gibbons
The Merchant of Venice, edited by M. M. Mahood
The Merry Wives of Windsor, edited by David Crane
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, edited by R. A. Foakes
Much Ado About Nothing, edited by F. H. Mares
Othello, edited by Norman Sanders
Pericles, edited by Doreen DelVecchio and Antony Hammond
The Poems, edited by John Roe
Romeo and Juliet, edited by G. Blakemore Evans
The Sonnets, edited by G. Blakemore Evans
The Taming of the Shrew, edited by Ann Thompson
The Tempest, edited by David Lindley
Timon of Athens, edited by Karl Klein
Titus Andronicus, edited by Alan Hughes
Troilus and Cressida, edited by Anthony B. Dawson
Twelfth Night, edited by Elizabeth Story Donno
The Two Gentlemen of Verona, edited by Kurt Schlueter
The Two Noble Kinsmen, edited by Robert Kean Turner and Patricia Tatspaugh
The Winter’s Tale, edited by Susan Synyder and Deborah T. Currren-Aquino

the early quartos

The First Quarto of Hamlet, edited by Kathleen O. Irace
The First Quarto of King Henry V, edited by Andrew Gurr
The First Quarto of King Lear, edited by Jay L. Halio
The First Quarto of King Richard III, edited by Peter Davison
The First Quarto of Othello, edited by Scott McMillan
The First Quarto of Romeo and Juliet, edited by Lukas Erne
The Taming of a Shrew: The 1594 Quarto, edited by Stephen Roy Miller

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Edited by Philip Edwards
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hamlet, Prince of Denmark

Updated edition

Edited by
Philip Edwards
King Alfred Professor of English Literature Emeritus
University of Liverpool

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Edited by Philip Edwards
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cambridge university press

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Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Tokyo, Mexico City

Cambridge University Press

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 8ru, UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

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© Cambridge University Press 1985, 2003

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 1985

Tenth printing 2001
Updated edition 2003
13th printing 2012

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Shakespeare, William.
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. – (The New Cambridge Shakespeare).
I. Title. II. Edwards, Philip. III. Series
822´.3´3   pr2807

isbn 978-0-521-82545-0 Hardback

isbn 978-0-521-53252-5 Paperback

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accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to
in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such
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The New Cambridge Shakespeare

The New Cambridge Shakespeare succeeds The New Shakespeare which began
publication in 1921 under the general editorship of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch and John
Dover Wilson, and was completed in the 1960s, with the assistance of G. I. Duthie,
Alice Walker, Peter Ure and J. C. Maxwell. The New Shakespeare itself followed upon
The Cambridge Shakespeare, 1863–6, edited by W. G. Clark, J. Glover and
W. A. Wright.
The New Shakespeare won high esteem both for its scholarship and for its design,
but shifts of critical taste and insight, recent Shakespearean research, and a changing
sense of what is important in our understanding of the plays, have made it necessary
to re-edit and redesign, not merely to revise, the series.
The New Cambridge Shakespeare aims to be of value to a new generation of
playgoers and readers who wish to enjoy fuller access to Shakespeare’s poetic and
dramatic art. While offering ample academic guidance, it reflects current critical
interests and is more attentive than some earlier editions have been to the realisation
of the plays on the stage, and to their social and cultural settings. The text of each
play has been freshly edited, with textual data made available to those users who wish
to know why and how one published text differs from another. Although modernised,
the edition conserves forms that appear to be expressive and characteristically
Shakespearean, and it does not attempt to disguise the fact that the plays were written
in a language other than that of our own time.
Illustrations are usually integrated into the critical and historical discussion of the
play and include some reconstructions of early performances by C. Walter Hodges.
Some editors have also made use of the advice and experience of Maurice Daniels,
for many years a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Each volume is addressed to the needs and problems of a particular text, and each
therefore differs in style and emphasis from others in the series.
philip brockbank
Founding General Editor

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What is he that builds stronger than either

the mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter?

To the memory of my great-grandfather

ROBERT EDWARDS
1829–1908

Sexton of St John’s Church, Rhydymwyn, Flintshire

vi

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Contents

List of illustrations page vii

Preface ix
Abbreviations and short titles x
Introduction 1
Source and dae 1
The play’s shape 8
The play and the critics 32
The action of the play 40
Hamlet and the actors 61
Names 70
Recent stage, film and critical
interpretations by Robert Hapgood 72
Note on the text 83
List of characters 86
The Play 87
Reading list 256

vii

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Illustrations

1 Suggested Elizabethan staging of the Ghost scenes (1.4 and 1.5). Drawing
by C. Walter Hodges page 44
2 Henry Irving as Hamlet and Ellen Terry as Ophelia in the ‘nunnery’ scene
(3.1), as painted by Edward H. Bell, 1879 (Mander and Mitchenson
Theatre Collection) 49
3 Suggested Elizabethan staging of the play-within-the-play (3.2). Drawing
by C. Walter Hodges 51
4 ‘Now might I do it pat’ (3.3.73). One of a series of lithographs of the play
published by Eugène Delacroix in 1844 (Trustees of the British
Museum) 53
5 Possible Elizabethan staging of the graveyard scene (5.1). Drawing by
C. Walter Hodges 57
6 ‘Do you not come your tardy son to chide?’ (3.4.106). Redrawn by Du
Guernier for the 1714 edition of Rowe’s Shakespeare 65
7 J. P. Kemble as Hamlet, by Sir Thomas Lawrence (Royal Academy, 1801)
(Tate Gallery) 68
8 ‘Go on, I’ll follow thee’ (1.4.86). Forbes Robertson as Hamlet in a 1913
film (Mander and Mitchenson Theatre Collection) 69
9 The burial of Ophelia (5.1). Modern-dress production at the London Old
Vic, 1938 (Mander and Mitchenson Theatre Collection) 70
10 Kenneth Branagh’s film of Hamlet 1996, with Branagh in the title role
between Claudius (Derek Jacobi) and Gertrude (Julie Christie)
(Photofest) 73
11 Simon Russell Beale as Hamlet, with Yorick’s Skull, National Theatre,
2001 (Photo: Zoe Dominic) 75

viii

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Preface

The vastness of the commentary on Hamlet gives an editor of the play a rather special
freedom. Even if he could read them all, he could not accommodate within the covers
of a book an account of the multitude of theories and ideas generated by the play;
and to attempt to sum up even the enduring contributions would so overload the work
that it would defeat the main purpose of an edition, which is to make an author’s
work more accessible. This edition of Hamlet is selective in its account of what has
gone before, and the view of the play presented in the Introduction, the Commentary –
and the text – is personal without I hope being idiosyncratic. Everything that I
consider essential to the meaning of the play I have endeavoured to discuss; where
I consider problems insoluble, or not central, I have avoided prolonged debate.
The text of Hamlet presents great difficulties, and any discussion of it affects and
is affected by our understanding of the play. I have not therefore been able to separate
my account of the text from the main part of the introduction, as is the custom in
this series. In trying to offer help towards the understanding of this great and
perplexing play, it is essential to make clear at the outset that there is more than one
Hamlet we might be talking about.
Most of the work for this edition was completed before the appearance of Harold
Jenkins’s masterly edition in the New Arden series in the spring of 1982. It has
nevertheless been of immense benefit to have his work before me since that time, as
my commentary frequently acknowledges. All students of Hamlet are in debt to Harold
Jenkins for the results of his patient and exacting research.
Some of the material in the critical account of the play in the Introduction appears
also in an essay, ‘Tragic balance in Hamlet’, in Shakespeare Survey 36 (1983); I am
grateful to the editor of Shakespeare Survey for accepting this overlap.
In acknowledging assistance in this edition of Hamlet, I ought to start with John
Waterhouse in 1942 and Allardyce Nicoll in 1945, from whom I learned so much about
the play. In recent times, my greatest debt is to Kenneth Muir, an untiring lender of
books, a patient listener, and a generous adviser. John Jowett gave me great help in
checking parts of my typescript, and in sifting through recent writings on the play.
I am grateful to Joan Welford for typing the Commentary.
This edition was prepared during a period of rather heavy administrative duties
in the University of Liverpool. I am most grateful to the University for two periods
of leave, and to the University of Otago, the British Academy and the Huntington
Library for enabling me to make the most of them.
P.E.
University of Liverpool, 1984

ix

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Abbreviations and short titles

All quotations and line references to plays other than Hamlet are to G. Blakemore Evans (ed.),
The Riverside Shakespeare, 1974.

Adams Hamlet, ed. Joseph Quincy Adams, 1929

N. Alexander Hamlet, ed. Nigel Alexander, 1973 (Macmillan Shakespeare)
P. Alexander William Shakespeare, The Complete Works, ed. Peter Alexander, 1951
Bullough Geoffrey Bullough (ed.), Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare,
8 vols., 1957–75
Cambridge The Works of William Shakespeare, ed. William George Clark, J. Glover
and William Aldis Wright, 1863–6, viii; 2nd edn, 1891–2, vii (Cambridge
Shakespeare)
Capell Mr William Shakespeare, His Comedies, Histories and Tragedies, ed.
Edward Capell, 1767–8, x
Clark and Wright Hamlet Prince of Denmark, ed. William George Clark and William Aldis
Wright, 1872 (Clarendon Press Shakespeare)
Collier The Works of William Shakespeare, ed. J. Payne Collier, 1842–4, vii
conj. conjectured
Dowden The Tragedy of Hamlet, ed. Edward Dowden, 1899 (Arden Shakespeare)
Duthie George Ian Duthie, The ‘Bad’ Quarto of ‘Hamlet’: A Critical Study, 1941
Dyce The Works of William Shakespeare, ed. Alexander Dyce, 1857, v
f Mr William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies, 1623 (First
Folio) [see Introduction, p. 9]
Hanmer The Works of Shakespear, ed. Sir Thomas Hanmer, 1743–4, vi
Hoy Hamlet, ed. Cyrus Hoy, 1963 (Norton Critical Editions)
Jenkins Hamlet, ed. Harold Jenkins, 1982 (Arden Shakespeare)
Johnson The Plays of William Shakespeare, ed. Samuel Johnson, 1765, viii
Kittredge Hamlet, ed. George Lyman Kittredge, 1939
Knight The Pictorial Edition of the Works of Shakspere, ed. Charles Knight,
1838–43, i, ‘Tragedies’
MacDonald The Tragedie of Hamlet, ed. George MacDonald, 1885
Malone The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare, ed. Edmond Malone, 1790,
ix
MLN Modern Language Notes
MSH J. Dover Wilson, The Manuscript of Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’, 2 vols., 1934;
reprinted 1963
N&Q Notes and Queries
NV Hamlet, ed. Horace Howard Furness, 2 vols., 1877; reprinted 1963 (A New
Variorum Edition of Shakespeare)
OED The Oxford English Dictionary, 1884–1928, reprinted 1933
PMLA Publications of the Modern Language Association of America
Pope The Works of Shakespear, ed. Alexander Pope, 1723–5, vi
Pope2 The Works of Shakespear, ed. Alexander Pope, 2nd edn, 1728, viii
q1 The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke, by William Shake­
speare, 1603 (first quarto)

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xi Abbreviations and short titles

q2 The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke, by William

Shakespeare, 1604, 1605 (second quarto)
q 1611, q 1676 Quarto editions of those dates
RES Review of English Studies
Ridley Hamlet, ed. M. R. Ridley, 1934 (New Temple Shakespeare)
Rowe The Works of Mr William Shakespear, ed. Nicholas Rowe, 1709, v
Schmidt Alexander Schmidt, Shakespeare-Lexicon, 2 vols., 1874–5; 2nd edn, 1886
sd stage direction
sh speech heading
Spencer Hamlet, ed. T. J. B. Spencer, 1980 (New Penguin Shakespeare)
SQ Shakespeare Quarterly
Staunton The Plays of Shakespeare, ed. Howard Staunton, 1858–60, reissued 1866,
iii
Steevens The Plays of William Shakespeare, ed. Samuel Johnson and George
Steevens, 1773, x
Steevens2 The Plays of William Shakespeare, ed. Samuel Johnson and George
Steevens, 2nd edn, 1778, x
Steevens3 The Plays of William Shakespeare, ed. Samuel Johnson and George
Steevens, 4th edn, 1793, xi
Sternfeld F. W. Sternfeld, Music in Shakespearean Tragedy, 1963
Theobald Lewis Theobald, Shakespeare Restored, 1726
Theobald2 The Works of Shakespeare, ed. Lewis Theobald, 1733, vii
Theobald3 The Works of Shakespeare, ed. Lewis Theobald, 1740, viii
Tilley Morris Palmer Tilley, A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, 1950 [references are to numbered
proverbs]
TLS The Times Literary Supplement
Verity The Tragedy of Hamlet, ed. A. W. Verity, 1904
Walker William Sydney Walker, A Critical Examination of the Text of Shakespeare,
3 vols., 1860
Warburton The Works of Shakespear, ed. William Warburton, 1747, viii
White The Works of William Shakespeare, ed. Richard Grant White, 1857–66,
xi
Wilson Hamlet, ed. J. Dover Wilson, 1934; 2nd edn, 1936, reprinted 1968 (New
Shakespeare)

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