PREFACE

THE plan of the preceding volumes of this edition has been followed in the preparation of the present volumes. It is modified only by the necessity of making the impossible attempt to condense within a certain number of pages a whole literature.

Of the imperfect success which has crowned the labour no one can be so fully aware as the Editor. Nevertheless, the work is given to the public in the trust that it will furnish some facilities to the study of this great poem, and aid in preparing the way for better editions than this.

The First Volume contains The Text, with a collation of the texts of the Quartos and Folios, and of some thirty modern editions, together with Notes and Comments from the Editors whose texts are collated, and, added to these, such verbal and grammatical criticisms from other quarters as seemed to be valuable; in some instances, notes are given that have little or no value, except as hints of the progress or of the madness of Shakespearian criticism.

As a general rule, in the Commentary preference is given to verbal over æsthetic criticism. Whenever editors whose texts are collated have indulged in æsthetic suggestions, these, in the main, have been retained. But in other cases æsthetic criticisms have been reserved for Volume II, except where the notes were of too brief and fragmentary a character to be separated from the context.

This difference in the treatment of verbal and æsthetic criticism is observed solely with reference to the arrangement of the mass of material, not because æsthetic criticism is inferior in value to verbal. Indeed, does not the value of the latter depend in many cases more or less directly upon the former?

There is a disposition abroad to disparage æsthetic criticisms of SHAKESPEARE. An excellent edition of the Poet, now issuing from the press, discards it wholly; the editor, whose opinions are entitled to great respect, regarding it as an impertinence, and stigmatising it generally assign-post criticism.' Unquestionably, there has been much commenting upon SHAKESPEARE, which, ignoring the humblest intelligence in the reader, is flat, stale, and unprofitable, a nuisance and a weariness of the flesh. But shall we ignore the possible existence of a keener insight than our own? Is the gift of reading between the lines, so essential to the appreciation of dramatic literature, universal ? Have the generality of us eyes to see what is there written? Who can fail to be enlightened and delighted with such fine criticism (as is given in Volume II, p. 167) of the very first scene of this tragedy, and which the Editor regrets did not come to his notice in time to be inserted in the Commentary, where it vitally belongs? Are we not to listen eagerly and reverently when COLERIDGE or GOETHE talks about SHAKESPEARE? Can we fail to prize the flashes of light (all too few) thrown here and there upon SHAKESPEARE by CHARLES LAMB, that genius, wasted in the South Sea House, whom, had England known the gift of God, she would have pensioned bountifully and set to recording the thoughts these plays evoked in him, that we might be brought into nearer communion with the great Poet than, with all our laborious verbal criticism, we have yet been able to reach?

To be sure, such commentators as these, and SCHLEGEL, and HazLITT, and Mrs JAMESON, and CHRISTOPHER NORTH, and GARRICK (such acting as his was æsthetic criticism of a high order) are rare, and exception may be made in favour of all master-minds like these. But the present Editor, in full memory of the many weeks and months spent in reading criticisms on Hamlet, fully agrees with a keen and eloquent critic in Blackwood's Magazine (more likely than not, THOMAS CAMPBELL) when he says: "We ask not for a picture of the 'whole landscape of the soul, nor for a guide who shall point out all its 'wonders. But we are glad to listen to every one who has travelled 'through the kingdoms of Shakespeare. Something interesting there 'must be even in the humblest journal; and we turn with equal pleasure 'from the converse of those who have climbed over the magnificence

'of the highest mountains there, to the lowlier tales of less ambitious 'pilgrims, who have sat on the green and sunny knoll, beneath the 'whispering tree, and by the music of the gentle rivulet.'

Moreover, the present Editor freely acknowledges the great interest he has taken in witnessing the power of SHAKESPEARE'S genius as shown in its stimulating effect upon minds of a high order. In the endeavour to solve the mystery of Hamlet, the human mind, not only in its clear radiance but in the sad twilight of its eclipse, has been subjected to the most searching analysis. This ideal character, Hamlet, has been assumed to be very nature, and if we fail to reach a solution of the problem it presents, the error lies in us and in our analysis; not in SHAKESPEARE. Such have been the revelations of the wisdom and genius of the First of Poets found in the works which attempt to ravel all this matter out, and from which extracts have been made in the second of these volumes, that the present Editor was not long in making up his mind to bear patiently, for the sake of these, the sea of troubles (sign-post criticisms) that he has been compelled to encounter in the prosecution of his work. To appreciate what is beautiful is one thing; to be informed of what it is that delights us is a different and an added pleasure. To vary the language of another: The worth of [Shakespeare] 'must rise as his grandeurs are comprehended, and our joy in 'his harmony and beauty will be heightened the more fully he is ' understood.

The Editor has availed himself of the liberty to form his own text afforded him by the fact that the texts of all the ancient authoritative editions are virtually printed on the same page. He has followed no other. If his text appears to follow the Cambridge Edition, it is merely because that edition has been used to print from.

It has been his settled principle, as it was that of Dr JOHNSON: 'that the reading of the ancient books is probably true, and there

....

'fore not to be disturbed for the sake of elegance, perspicuity, or 'mere improvement of the sense. For though much credit is not 'due to the fidelity, nor any to the judgement of the first publishers, 'yet they who had the copy before their eyes were more likely to 'read it right than we who read it only by imagination. . . . . My 'first labour is always to turn the old text on every side, and try if 'there be any interstice through which light can find its way. . . . 'I have adopted the Roman sentiment, that it is more honourable 'to save a citizen than to kill an enemy, and have been more 'careful to protect than to attack.'

A list of editions collated in the Textual Notes, and an explanation of the abbreviations and symbols there employed will be found at the close of the Appendix.

In the Second Volume is given, first: a Reprint of the Quarto of 1603. This earliest Quarto differs from the rest so materially that a full or intelligible record of its various readings in the form of foot-notes is simply impossible. In a note on The Date and the Text' will be found an account of the different theories respecting its origin.

Then follows The Hystorie of Hamblet, the story on which, perhaps, was founded either this tragedy or the lost original drama which SHAKESPEARE afterward changed to its present shape.

An

After this comes a translation of a curious old German tragedy called Fratricide Punished, or Prince Hamlet of Denmark. account of it will be found in a short prefatory note.

Then come the English Critics, and a discussion of the one great insoluble mystery of Hamlet's sanity. Without for one moment wishing to assume the responsibility of umpire, the present Editor thinks it no more than right to call attention to one fact which it seems to him should be kept in view on entering upon this discussion-viz. where the testimony of experts is invoked, and their testimony is unanimous, the speculations and opinions of others, laymen and inexpert, cannot be expected to carry much weight. In courts of justice, every day, the testimony of experts is accepted in cases involving liberty or confinement, life or death, and we