The Tain of Hamlet [1 ed.] 9781443869928, 9781443847698

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The Tain of Hamlet

The Tain of Hamlet

By

Laurie Johnson

The Tain of Hamlet, by Laurie Johnson This book first published 2013 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2013 by Laurie Johnson All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-4769-0, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-4769-8

For Angie, Charlotte, and TJ “Where’s the last piece goes?”

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations ................................................................................... viii Foreword .................................................................................................... ix Acknowledgements .................................................................................... xi Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 “Tain’t Not Thy Minde” Chapter One............................................................................................... 28 Hamlets Before Hamlet Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 95 Patrons, Printers, and Play Texts Chapter Three .......................................................................................... 171 Updating Amleth: Elsenoure and Such Conclusion............................................................................................... 272 Notes........................................................................................................ 278 Bibliography ............................................................................................ 310 Index........................................................................................................ 332

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1.1 1.2 2.1 2.2

2.3 2.4 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4

Title page to the Q1 Hamlet (1603). Title page to Kemps Nine Daies Wonder (1600). Title page of Q2 Hamlet (1604). Second fly-leaf to the Stationers’ Register, Book C. Reproduced with permission of the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers. “Lopez Compounding to Poyson the Queene,” in George Carleton, A Thankfull Remembrance of Gods Mercie (London, 1630): 164. Title page to the Q1 Titus Andronicus (1594). “Coronerburgum,” in Civitates Orbis Terrarum by Georg Braun and Frans Hogenborg (1588): Book 4, Map no. 26. Engraving of Tycho Brahe by Jacob de Gheyn II (1586). Reproduced with permission © Trustees of the British Museum. Sir Julius Caesar: Master of the Rolls. Obit. 1636 (London: Robert Wilkinson, 1810). Queen Elizabeth Dancing with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester by Marcus Gheeraerts, circa 1580.

FOREWORD

This book began as part of a book on symmetry in Hamlet, a project to which I expect to be able to return some day. As I began writing what was intended to be a short historical background chapter for that book, I found that the standard history of Shakespeare’s most famous play refused to sit easily in my mind. On what basis had generations of scholars and students been allowing to drift into orthodoxy the idea that Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a reworking of a lost play (the so-called ur-Hamlet) by Thomas Kyd? The reference by Thomas Nashe in 1589 to “whole Hamlets” was something I had been acquainted with for some time, but I had presumed there must be more to the historical record in support of this attribution, since so many fine scholars seemed so sure of it. Before I could repeat the attribution in my book, I wanted to be sure there was more to go on than a speculative interpretation of a set of cryptic taunts against “English Seneca” by Nashe. The search for more evidence in support of Kyd’s authorship of a Hamlet play proved bootless. As one who has long had a penchant for completing puzzles—jigsaws, crosswords, brainteasers, anything designed to test the mind, but also for which a clear solution is achievable—this missing piece caused me no end of consternation and sleepless nights. Notwithstanding the absence of any direct reference to the authorship or origins of the play to which Nashe refers, could the historical record be scoured for any other kinds of evidence? And, importantly, might the vagaries of the so-called “bad” Quarto of 1603 contain any clues to the early origins of the play? I felt obliged, then, to seek to solve the puzzle of Hamlet’s origins in two different fields of textual inquiry: examination of the historical records in correspondences, official documents, diaries, and such like on one hand and close textual analysis of the Q1 Hamlet on the other hand, with both complemented by the wealth of existing groundwork. A couple of years further along the track in this direction, it became clear to me that I was no longer writing the book on symmetry in Hamlet, as the mysteries of the play’s origins, its variant texts, and its atypical pathway to publication had overtaken me and demanded a book of their own. Following this realisation, I was involved in a very long but enjoyable discussion with Brett Hirsch at the 2010 conference of the Australian and New Zealand Shakespeare Association, causing us to miss two sessions in a row. The question of method had been raised. We were both quite sure

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Foreword

that neither of us were proponents of the New Historicism, at least not in the forms that it had taken in the 1980s and 1990s and which were now in decline as the new focus on materialism was in the ascendancy. Yet there remained for both of us a necessary question of the text or, to be precise, of the different kinds of texts through which we might hope to access the cultural and social contexts of plays in the early modern period. For my part, a certain affinity for cultural history had been in full bloom for many years, before I returned to Shakespeare Studies after a decade-long detour into the worlds of literary theory, phenomenology, and psychoanalysis. To the question of method, then, I suggested that my attempts to answer these mysteries of Hamlet’s origins and its different textual forms were adhering to methods derived from both cultural history and textual scholarship; the name I gave to what I was doing—and what I think a good many scholars are already doing exceedingly well in the wake of New Historicism—was textually-evidenced cultural history. The reader will find within the pages of this book an insistence that the extent to which Nashe’s diatribe could be seen as “evidence” of Kyd’s authorship, for example, must be subject to an examination of the purpose for which Nashe was writing. A notation made by Philip Henslowe of a performance of Hamlet at Newington Butts in 1594 is, I think, a more reliable source document by virtue of the kind of document it represents—an entrepreneur’s formal record of assets and returns—and an eye witness account by Thomas Lodge of a performance of Hamlet at The Theatre in 1596 also rates highly as a form of evidence. Nashe’s text drifts more obviously to the literary end of the spectrum, so we should be prepared to read it, accordingly, in terms of the way that it engages with the literary world in which it is produced. As for Hamlet, it too represents a form of evidence of its own history of having been made for some purpose that we seek on this side of history to discern. We do not seek some “authentic” form of Shakespeare’s play in a textually-evidenced cultural history; rather, my goal here after years of searching and no small measure of educated speculation is to explain how it might be possible that two very different versions of the play can co-exist while at the same time bearing witness within their words, their punctuation, their nomenclature, and their marginalia to a long history of theatrical revival and revision in writing. L.M.J.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The task of writing a book that seeks to question a number of long-held assumptions within Shakespeare Studies, especially those in relation to the play that most see as the pinnacle of Shakespeare’s achievement, can seem a somewhat solitary enterprise at times. Yet the solitary is always propped up by the solidarity of the collegial environment in which I have been able to work over the past six years on this project. My immediate gratitude is therefore extended to the membership of the Australian and New Zealand Shakespeare Association (ANZSA), many of whom have patiently talked through the ideas I propose here. In particular, my deep appreciation goes out to Gayle Allan, Darryl Chalk, Brett Hirsch, Mark Houlahan, and David McInnis for their unwavering support and generous friendship throughout. During this project, I have also found receptive audiences for my work at the biennial conferences of the Australasian Universities’ Languages and Literatures Association (AULLA) and, most recently, at the conference of the Perth Medieval and Renaissance Group (PMRG). As I write this, I am preparing to present some of the findings of this book at the 2013 meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America (SAA), and I graciously thank Kirk Melnikoff and Zachary Lesser for paving the way for the seminar on Patrons, Professional Drama, and Print Culture to be listed on the program at this event. At all such scholarly meetings, I am heartened by the number of people who, having no doubt referred to “Kyd’s Hamlet” at one time or another—indeed, I myself habitually used the phrase until undertaking this project—are nevertheless receptive to new arguments. For their sage counsel at various stages of this project, I would like to thank a number of inspirational scholars, including Mary Floyd-Wilson, Penny Gay, John Sutton, Lyn Tribble, Robert White, and Paul Yachnin. I also register here my everlasting debt to Lloyd Davis—who supervised my Masters level dissertation on New Historicism—for being among other things a good friend and an ideal role model in rigorous scholarship, professional conduct, and collegial hospitality. Lloyd passed away in 2005, but his enduring legacy continues to resonate with the growth of ANZSA and the strong Australasian presence at meetings of the SAA and the International Shakespeare Association (ISA). I hope that this book will be worthy of Lloyd’s memory.

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Acknowledgements

In addition to the community of scholars within Shakespeare Studies, I am thankful for the many colleagues and friends—too many to name here in person—who continue to make me feel that this research is valued and valuable. This project would not have been possible without the assistance in various forms of The Public Memory Research Cluster, the School of Humanities and Communication, and the Faculty of Arts at the University of Southern Queensland, including a period of funded academic leave in 2010 (although due to an internal restructure that is underway at present, by the time this book appears in print, none of these entities will exist as such any longer). I am especially grateful to Chris Lee for his ongoing material and intellectual support for my research and its many vicissitudes. I acknowledge as well the vital impetus given to my research by the staff and students who have contributed to the Shakespeare’s Audiences project within PMRC and to the USQ Shakespeare-in-the-Park Festival (for which material support is provided by the wonderful staff at Artsworx), along with all of the students to whom I have taught Shakespeare over the years. Finally, special mention goes to my wife, Angie, and my two adorable children, Charlotte and TJ, both for their unswerving belief in me and for providing joyous daily reminders that there are indeed many more glorious things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in my philosophy.

INTRODUCTION “TAIN’T NOT THY MINDE”

A question to begin: why “The Tain of Hamlet”? Perhaps this question presupposes another more direct question: what is a “tain”? Importantly, I begin with a presumption that no reader is likely to ask, “what is Hamlet?” This book assumes that its readers will possess some familiarity with the play—most people in the English-speaking world, and I suspect in many non-Anglophone parts of the world as well, will have at least heard of William Shakespeare’s play about the Prince of Denmark and his dead father, both of whom bear the name Hamlet. What, then, is this other possibly unfamiliar word doing in the title of this book, and what does it mean? “Tain” is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary thus: “thin tinplate; tinfoil for mirrors.” The word is French in origin, altered from étain (meaning tin) to refer to the thin tin backing developed within mirror production in Europe during the Renaissance. The tain of a mirror is thus the metallic coating placed on the reverse side, providing the mirror with its capacity to reflect light. Why “The Tain of Hamlet”, then? When we look at a mirror, we do not see the tain; instead, we see ourselves and our surrounds in reflected form. Despite the fact that the tain constitutes the whole of the space of the image we see in the mirror, it also recedes from us absolutely: the opposite of being out of sight, out of mind, the tain is wholly in sight but out of mind. The Ghost of old Hamlet might even use this word, if we accept that punctuation marks in the Second Quarto (Q2) of the play are not used in error. In any version with which the reader is perhaps more familiar—that is, in any version that has been edited or at least simply based on the First Folio (F) text—the Ghost reveals the nature of his death at the hands of his own brother, but then attempts to absolve his wife of any blame: But howsomever thou pursues this act Taint not thy mind nor let thy soul contrive Against thy mother aught; leave her to heaven (1.5.84-86)1

In the Q2 presentation of the same lines, the text is all but identical but additional punctuation is included on each line:

2

Introduction But howsomeuer thou pursues this act, Tain’t not thy minde, nor let thy soule contriue Against thy mother ought, leaue her to heauen,2

The editors of the Folio edition of 1623 removed the apostrophe, giving us the version that is now standard, but I am at least intrigued by its presence in the Q2 version. The reader might argue that the apostrophe creates confusion in the pentameter, since the resulting “Tain it not thy minde” creates one too many syllables, but I would counter that the following line is also one syllable too long, unless one elides the first vowel, and in any case an apostrophe would be used to elide the extra syllable in “Tain’t.” This change in punctuation also leads to a subtle but significant change in meaning. In the standard version, the Ghost tells Hamlet to neither taint his mind nor contrive his soul against his mother—two predicates; one noun—but the additional punctuation in Q2 changes the role of the verb significantly: however you pursue this act, tain not your mind with it, nor should you contrive your soul against your mother. In the Q2 version, if the apostrophe is deliberate, the Ghost is advising Hamlet not to back his mind with the act of revenge so completely that it will be reflected in all he sees. The word “tain” was almost certainly available to Shakespeare. As an abbreviated form of “obtain,” “tain” (“taygne”) existed in English by around the beginning of the sixteenth century.3 At this time, though, Venetian mirror manufacturing reached new heights, with refinements in tin backing, as described by Vannuci Beringaccio in De la Pirotechnia (1540).4 As a rival mirror manufacturing industry sprang up in France in the latter half of the century,5 the French “étain” became synonymous with the process. Public fascination with mirrors rose sharply, and extended to knowledge of the manufacturing process: in 1576, George Gascoigne’s poem “The Steele Glass” used a description of the mirror manufacturing process as an extended metaphor for contemporary society.6 Gascoigne did not actually use the word “tain” in his poem—he thrice instead uses the word “foil,” a word that was also commonly used at that time to refer to the backing of a mirror7—but this was not for want, and it is not hard to imagine the gregarious word hunter Shakespeare seeing the Anglophone form of the French term as a worthy term for his own mirror metaphor in Hamlet. As the framing word for this book, then, the Ghost’s imperative speaks directly to us. Indeed, this book adopts the view that the critical approaches to Shakespeare’s most famous play reveal that critics have invariably “tained” their mind with the play, causing it to appear fully reflective in their eyes. We have, in other words, spent so long reading the play for its capacity to reflect ourselves that we have lost sight of the thing itself.

“Tain’t Not Thy Minde”

3

This idea that the play is habitually read reflectively is nothing new, and indeed Martin Scofield begins The Ghosts of Hamlet: The Play and Modern Writers with the observation that this play “is a spectacular and ductile medium: it has reflected its readers and been used as material by other writers … for it is a mirror in which every man has seen his own face.”8 The “tain of Hamlet” is thus imagined as the play sans a reflective gaze. Such an approach is not without several attendant problems. We do a grave disservice to the history of literary criticism if we pretend that we can ever shake off the yoke of our situated knowledge in the encounter with literatures of the past. To the reader unfamiliar with such arguments, I shall not provide a detailed account here; rather, it might suffice to note that critics—as well as anthropologists, historians, sociologists, and many others—have long recognised that we always interpret the past through the lens of the present. The “lens” analogy is echoed deliberately, of course, because I want to make a distinction between two different types of optical device. When we say that we interpret the past through the lens of the present, we do not mean that the past is seen as a reflection of the present. Precisely because the past is past, we understand it through knowledge of what comes after it, and this includes ourselves. What we find in the past is thus in some degree a product of the kinds of questions we ask of the traces of the past at our disposal. The “lens of the present” is how we put the past into perspective or give it focus, to extend this optical analogy. The turn toward historicism in literary criticism in the past three decades has involved an acknowledgement of the role of historical understanding in shaping the image we have of the past. We should no longer ask, for example, what Shakespeare “meant” by a play or sonnet. The question was already anathema to critics in the days before the historicist turn, with the observation that appeals to the authority of what a writer “meant” fell into the trap of “intentional fallacy,” leading to concerns related to biography rather than to criticism.9 In literary historicism, the author is no longer anathema but is generally disregarded on the basis that we cannot know the mind of the dead, but also on the grounds that the attempt to know the mind of the dead does not bring us closer to understanding the literature of the past in a historical sense, as past. When we think of a reflective gaze, as distinct from a lens through which we seek to gain some sense of the past as past, on the other hand, we imagine a collapse of historicity. There is a distinction to be made here between reflectiveness and reflexivity. The reflexive view is conscious of the role of the viewer in shaping the object at which it looks, as is the case in a historicist approach, for example. Reflectiveness is not conscious of a viewer as a key agent in the construction of the image, so when the viewer

4

Introduction

appears in the object, it is assumed that this is a quality of the object rather than a product of the gaze through which the object is being seen. Let us consider the example of Hamlet’s most famous line: “to be or not to be,” he asks, and in an age when teen suicide occurs with alarming frequency, we find that Hamlet can speak directly to us. Indeed, his concerns reflect those of our own society. The question of whether or not Hamlet is in fact contemplating suicide in this soliloquy will be revisited later, as will many assumptions about what happens in this play, based as they tend to be on viewing the play via a reflective gaze, but at this point it is worth noting that Hamlet presents this dilemma that seems to reach out to us as if it were also ours. The historicity of our reading is in this fashion removed from view, and is collapsed into the immediacy of a reflection, like the one-to-one image in a mirror. The goal of this book is to get to the other side of the reflective Hamlet that has bedazzled us for so long, to seek to apprehend the play with a far fuller sense of its historical distinctness. In this introductory section, I will argue that even the most influential literary criticism has found Hamlet to be particularly resistant to anything except a reflective gaze, and the same could possibly be said of all of Shakespeare’s plays. Yet it is Hamlet that, to a greater extent than any of Shakespeare’s other plays, reinforces the point I am making about the nature of reflectiveness as it applies to plays in particular. One reason why the analogy of the reverse side of a mirror is a compelling approach to this play for me is that Hamlet uses the mirror analogy explicitly in relation to plays in setting up its central metatheatrical device, the play-within-the-play with which Hamlet determines to “catch the conscience of the King” (2.2.540). In Act 3, Scene 2, Hamlet prates at the players with instructions on how he would like The Murder of Gonzago, and especially the lines he has artfully inserted into the play, to be played: “anything so / o’erdone is from the purpose of playing whose end, / both at first and now, was and is to hold as ‘twere / the mirror up to Nature” (3.2.19-22). The Mousetrap, as Hamlet later calls it, should work as a trap to detect the King’s guilt for the murder of old Hamlet—and, for that matter, any degree of culpability on the part of Gertrude—just because plays do, according to their purpose, provide a reflection to the viewer. Yet the play also shows us that the “Nature” up to which The Murder of Gonzago holds a mirror is not completely straightforward. As many fine critics have argued, Claudius may not be impelled to flee purely by dint of his guilty conscience; rather, the text of the play and Hamlet’s glossing of the action lead Claudius to seriously suspect Hamlet of plotting to kill him in order to usurp the throne. 10 The one thing we never seem to entertain in relation to the play-within-the-play in Hamlet is what it means, on its own

“Tain’t Not Thy Minde”

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terms. Yet there are snatches of dialogue between the characters observing The Murder of Gonzago that should lead us to think there is some measure of interest in what the play really means: Ophelia asks of the dumb show, “what means this” (3.2.129) and Claudius asks if there is offence in “the argument” (3.2.226), for example. I suggest that the Mousetrap works as a trap because Hamlet is aware that the spectators will become distracted by wanting to know what the play means rather than being conscious in any reflexive way of their own gaze. Gertrude is asked how she likes the play and her response is of course to relate to the extent to which the character of the Queen “doth protest too much” (3.2.224), and Claudius sees himself in the character of the King (and not in Lucianus, importantly). The trap works by catching the spectators in the moment of seeing themselves in the play, even though they are unaware of being drawn into doing so. The play scene within Hamlet thus teaches us and its theatre audience a vital lesson about the nature of textual criticism: if we become too invested in knowing what a text really means, on its own terms, we blind ourselves to our own reflectiveness, and therein resides the trap of criticism. While this book seeks to reach back past a reflective gaze to examine Hamlet on its own terms, then, it will aim to avoid claims that hinge solely on an appeal to the authority of what the original “really means” and will be concerned with questions of how to bypass a reflective gaze, given that this approach to the play has become so deeply entrenched. The methods I employ will hinge on questioning assumptions, testing historical evidence, and treating interpretation as a starting point for new questions about the play rather than as the end of our investigation. What I offer, therefore, is not a conventional literary criticism, at least not if by that sobriquet the reader is given to think of an approach to the text in which reading “the play” and providing an elucidation of what “it means” are paramount. I will add a few more words on method toward the end of this introductory section, but for now I shall merely stake a claim for the methodological orientation within which inquiry will be framed. In what follows in this introductory section, I offer a brief history of the reflective gaze to come to some sense of the size of the basilisk. To avert our gaze sufficiently well to be able to glimpse the surface against which we have for so long projected our reflections, I suggest, we must attend to the minutiae of historical details relating to the play text’s production, for performance and print, but always with reference back to the text. The historical record provides crucial evidence about the nature of the play text, but also adds to our broader understanding of relevant historical contexts, enabling us to construct a rich cultural history around the practices of dramatists and writers, their patrons, and the printers whose legacy is the printed word

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Introduction

upon which we now gaze and from which a seemingly limitless range of interpretations and performances are extrapolated. The morass of details we can compile about the history of the text presents no obstacle to textual or dramatic interpretation; rather, it acts as a crucial reference point for our gaze, steering us away from reflectivity, enabling us to look awry.

A Brief Pre-History of the Reflective Gaze In Hamlet without Hamlet, Margreta de Grazia has paved the way for a treatment of Hamlet on its own terms, by developing a reading of the play which does not focus on the character of the Prince.11 This may strike the reader as a somewhat incredulous claim: that the play could be read on its own terms by removing the character whose name graces the title, who is on stage for the greater part of the performance, and about whom most of the other characters speak at some point. Indeed, the role of Hamlet would seem most obviously to demand our attention. This is true, that the role of Hamlet demands attention, so long as we attend to this role at least in part as a role. As de Grazia observes from the outset, the Hamlet she would do without is “the modern Hamlet, the one distinguished by an inner being so transcendent that it barely comes into contact with the play from which it emerges.”12 For at least two hundred years, criticism of the play has been focused on the character of the Prince, that is, his innermost qualities, his personality, his psychology, or as Hamlet himself proclaims: “that within which passes show” (1.2.85). For de Grazia, Hamlet is literally grounded in the play by virtue of the prominence placed on land and inheritance in the machinations of the plot, but the critical heritage begun at the turn of the eighteenth century disengaged the character of the Prince from this plot to focus on his modern characteristics. In de Grazia’s reading of the play, then, it is the earth—on which the characters walk, from whence they come and to which they shall return, which lay before them as domain or dominion, and the scale of which must be overcome in undergoing travel to distant lands—that provides a focus for reinterpretation. Importantly, de Grazia is as interested with the problem that staging the earth presents to the performers as with the conceptual or metaphorical significance of the land in Shakespeare’s own time. In the graveyard scene, the grave is not only the objective correlative of Hamlet’s ruminations on mortality; it is the locus of a good deal of the action, and must therefore be factored into stage design and blocking. Such considerations lend weight to a reading of the play on its own terms, within the context of its production. In many ways, the current book is positioned as the continuation of a trajectory that begins with de Grazia’s book. Yet I wish to re-orient this

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trajectory slightly by revising the picture that de Grazia paints of a critical heritage divided into two halves of roughly equal duration—the schism is identified as taking place around the turn of the eighteenth century, two hundred years after Hamlet is taken to have been written and some two hundred years before the current moment. The first two hundred years of the reception of Hamlet, de Grazia observes, typically involved viewing the play as somewhat outdated or behind the times, whereas from around 1790, culminating in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s highly influential lecture of 1811, the view emerged that it is in Hamlet’s character—which would later be defined as thoroughly modern—that Hamlet holds the greatest degree of interest.13 I do not dispute these observations: that the play was widely received as outmoded for much of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is clearly evident from the examples de Grazia provides as well as from other sources toward which she gestures; and it is without doubt that the play usually became either lauded or dismissed after 1811 based on criteria tied to modern conceptions of character, motivation, and so on. What I am inclined to question, however, is why the task of getting back to the plot and its premise should lead de Grazia to want primarily to cast off the post-1800 Hamlet alone. Does this not lead us still to confront the distortion created by two hundred years of reception from 1600 to 1800? The devil in de Grazia’s reading, rendering such concerns untenable, is in fact to be found in the detail. While the Acknowledgements articulate this concern with the post-1800 view—“I hold Hamlet responsible. I mean the modern metaphysical Hamlet”14—and this is echoed in the Introduction and in the title of Chapter One (“Modern Hamlet”), de Grazia’s readings of historical materials provide a far more fluid arrangement than the story of the schism circa 1800 portrays. In other words, while de Grazia frames her reading of Hamlet with this observation that there is a clear break in Hamlet criticism around 1800, her detailed account of the four hundred years of performances, reception, and criticism of the play shows that the break is not quite so abruptly schismatic after all. In his personal copy of the 1598 edition of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Works, Shakespeare contemporary Gabriel Harvey names Hamlet and other works among a series of marginal notes. Harvey’s notes are used by de Grazia to support two key points of interpretation: first, Harvey’s note that the play particularly appealed to “the wiser sort” supports the idea that Hamlet was already an old or dated play in the mind of its first audiences;15 second, in the list of the best works in English, “auncient & moderne,” Shakespeare’s works are included only in the latter category, meaning that by association Hamlet was understood by Harvey and his contemporaries to be a rather “modern” play.16 This is not a case of de Grazia contradicting herself; on

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Introduction

the contrary, the point of these opening forays in her chapter on the rise of the modern Hamlet is to establish that the term “modern” was very much in flux in Shakespeare’s time. I think we can add here that what looks like a potential contradiction in Harvey’s notes is a sign of what we have been calling the reflective gaze: if Harvey categorises the play as “modern” (in so far as it is not an “ancient” text for the purpose of his comparison), he is nevertheless making a claim about the modern audience to whom he feels the text will appeal and, in so doing, he makes an assessment of the nature of this audience. The next text cited in de Grazia’s history of the reception of Hamlet— Anthony Scoloker’s Daiphantus, or the Passions of Love (1604)—shows further evidence of a reflective gaze. Attribution of this poem to Scoloker is a matter of scholarly convention, since the author’s “An. Sc.” has never been conclusively linked to a historical personage, but then neither has any better alternative been proffered.17 The aspect of this poem that interests de Grazia most is its observation that Hamlet’s popularity hinges on the title character’s antics, and while Scoloker wishes for a similar degree of popularity for his own text, he wonders if it might be better to “displease all” instead.18 The poem’s fuller title is telling of possibly another level of reflection upon Shakespeare’s play: Daiphantus, or the Passions of Love, Comicall to Reade, But Tragicall to Act: As Full of Wit, as Experience.19 The title voices the idea that what seems comical in print is more likely to be deemed tragic in actuality or—noting the word “Act”—in performance. Here is the key role that Hamlet plays for Scoloker: he divulges his search for a suitable style, and finds favour in “Friendly Shake-speares Tragedies, where the Commedian rides, when the Tragedian stands on Tiptoe: Faith it should please all, like Prince Hamlet.”20 In Hamlet, for Scoloker, then, we find the perfect admixture of that which is comical to read but tragic to act. The character reaches out to Scoloker beyond its fictional moorings because it provides the best analogy he can locate for a description of his own and his hero’s love madness. It is an analogy that provides a model for overcoming the author’s anxieties about the discrepancy between print and life. In the first two decades of the seventeenth century, some of the best evidence we have of the popularity of Hamlet comes from references to the play in the work of other playwrights of the time. It is worth recording at this point that the Hamlet we believe to have been written in or around 1600 was, we also know, not the first play to have been performed under that name during Shakespeare’s life. As early as 1589, in his preface to Robert Greene’s Menaphon, Thomas Nashe lamented the rise of “English Seneca”—to wit, English playwrights who wrote plays after the manner of

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Greek tragedian Seneca—to whom he credits the capacity to write “whole Hamlets, I should say hand-fulls, of tragical speeches.”21 Based on a pun that Nashe uses on the word “Kidde” later in the same text, many scholars have attributed this play to Thomas Kyd, author of The Spanish Tragedy (presumably written before 1588).22 The diary of Philip Henslowe records a performance of Hamlet at Newington Butts in 1594 and Thomas Lodge wrote in Wit’s Misery in 1596 about a “ghost which cried so miserably at The Theatre like an oyster-wife, Hamlet, revenge.”23 More on these early references in Chapter One, in which we consider issues related to the date and sources for Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The problem of the earlier version of Hamlet, which some scholars call the “ur-Hamlet,” is that no text of it has survived, and there are continuing debates about its author, with Kyd being the most commonly cited candidate. Given the absence of the full text, we cannot know for sure if there are allusions to this earlier play in other work of the period. There are, however, numerous direct allusions to the Hamlet that we know in a number of plays after 1600: Yorrick’s skull is explicitly referenced both in Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton’s The Honest Whore (1604) and in Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy (1606); George Chapman, John Marston, and Ben Jonson parody some aspects of Hamlet in Eastward Ho! (1605); and as late as John Webster’s White Devil (1609-12) the madness of Cornelia shows signs of the continuing influence of the depiction of Ophelia’s decline.24 While Hamlet remained a target for parody, the fact remains that these parodies did not fade quickly. If, as de Grazia rightly asserts, the play was already old in its own time, it would nevertheless maintain its age well, and its influence on Shakespeare’s fellow playwrights was to endure for over a decade.25 Parody is not necessarily, of course, a sign of a reflective gaze; it is an index of endurance. Thus, we might conclude that for many years, aided possibly by a run of published versions of the play as well as revivals on stage, playwrights for the Jacobean stage could reference the play without their allusion missing its source text. Rather than seeing their own work in Hamlet, as would be true of the reflective gaze, the parodists nevertheless take up aspects of Hamlet into theirs. Where there is a continuous line of playwrights, particularly popular allusions will continue to be used by new generations, codifying into dramatic standards. In 1640, Abraham Wright penned a short assessment of “Hamlet. A Tragedie by Shakespeare,” in which he judged the play to be “indifferent,” although the part of Hamlet was good “for a madman”, and he added that the graveyard scene was “a good scene” but since bettered by The Jealous Lovers (the play by Thomas Randolph, first performed in 1632).26 That this well known scene was in Wright’s estimation since bettered does not diminish the possibility that

10

Introduction

Randolph is nevertheless also taking Shakespeare’s play as a source that is bound to be familiar to his audience. The gravedigger scene would in fact remain one of the dramatic standards of post-Caroline theatre, during the Interregnum period. Whereas the theatres in London were closed down in 1642, itinerant actors would continue to perform short plays illegally, with a version of the graveyard scene enacted around 1647 and later under the name of The Grave-Makers.27 As Peter Holland observes about these short plays or “drolls,” abbreviated performances “resonantly echo the complete texts to which they bear witness, but they also signify that these drolls are aimed, at least in part, at an audience that is fully aware of their sources.”28 Only a few years after Wright proclaims Randolph’s graveyard scene to be superior to Shakespeare’s, then, a disenfranchised acting community relied on their audience to be more familiar with the scene in its earlier version in order to have something by which to remember the heyday of the theatres at a time when being in possession of a play text or attending a play were considered heretical activities. While such dramatic standards concentrated into abbreviated versions of popular plays proved to be the lifeblood of the theatre throughout the Interregnum period, the closure of the theatres for nearly twenty years did constitute a significant break in continuity. On the other side of what we can rightly call a “rupture,” the popular plays of yesteryear were given a new lease on life by being reworked for the tastes of the new age. In 1661, only a year after the defeat of the Puritans, Hamlet was to become the first Shakespeare play to be staged with perspective scenery, adding newfound depth and realism to the performance.29 Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor point out that such increased realism “supported the growing interest in the definition of characters who were individuals rather than types,”30 but I am inclined here to add that these innovations mark the end of the link that the play had previously established with a now demolished Globe Theatre and its audiences. Hamlet complains to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that “this goodly frame the earth seems / to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy / the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this / majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why it / approacheth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent / congregation of vapours” (2.2.264-69), but is at the same time also directing the attention of the Globe’s audience to its architecture and fittings: the earth seems a sterile promontory (the stage jutting out from the back of the visible space); this most excellent canopy the air (the open top of the Globe) is nevertheless bounded by ornamental fretting or “golden fire” along the roofing. Cynthia Malone has observed that in the context of its early performances, Hamlet’s “frame” locates its speaker simultaneously within a cosmic frame, between heaven and earth,

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and “specifically within the microcosmic frame of the Globe.”31 We shall revisit this issue in Chapter Three, but I mention it here to make the point that before perspective scenery was to become part of the reality of staging Shakespeare’s plays, the players would call attention to their immediate surrounds in order to establish a clear link between the fictional world of the play and the world of the theatre with which it remained co-extensive. Hamlet may provide other ways in which this link was reinforced for its earliest audiences: critics have long recognised topical references in the play to the so-called “War of the Theatres,”32 and indeed there have been suggestions that conflicting textual evidence about Hamlet’s age—is he sixteen or thirty?—may be attributed to Shakespeare’s concession to the age of the actor who played the principal role, Richard Burbage.33 There are numerous other claims that might be made about topical references to historical events of the time, as we shall see, but in the specific references to The Globe, the warring of theatrical factions, and perhaps the actor in question, we find a play that marks a precise historical territory for itself. With the changes to which the play is subjected after 1660, I suggest we witness a breakdown of this earliest connection between the play and its immediate theatrical contexts. I contend further that by rending the play from its moorings, which it had established in and of itself, the Restoration theatrical tradition enabled the emergence of a newly reflective approach to the play. What had struck Shakespeare’s contemporary Scoloker as the peculiar value of Hamlet—its self-conscious conflation of life and theatre, experience and wit, enabling him to picture his own love madness in that of both his hero and Hamlet— presented itself as a problem for the Restoration stage as it began to view Shakespeare’s play reflectively. When Hamlet refuses to kill Claudius, apparently kneeling in prayer, in Act 3, Scene 3, after he believes he has confirmed the King’s guilt by The Mousetrap exercise, his ensuing speech addresses his desire to both kill the King and condemn his eternal soul to damnation: “that his soul may be as damned and black / As hell whereto it goes” (3.3.94-5). To the Restoration ear, this was unthinkable, since surely no mortal can decide the fate of another’s soul. Thus, for over two hundred years, as de Grazia notes, post-Interregnum dramaturgy typically relied on deliberate omission of these troublesome lines, or indeed on removal of the whole soliloquy, in staging and often in print, for their response to this dilemma.34 Yet the problem for the Restoration actor and audience alike is ultimately not that these lines are unthinkable in and of themselves—many a villain in Shakespeare or elsewhere is guilty of statements as execrable as these. Instead, the problem is that Hamlet, the noble Prince, utters them. In one respect, the lines are thus problematic because, as de Grazia points

12

Introduction

out, they rely on the sense that the character of the Prince is inconsistent with such sentiments. We might also suspect that the particular intensity with which the dilemma is expressed time and again in both dramaturgical and critical considerations of the play for well over the next century gives to the problem a deeper sense of investment: put simply, those who found these lines to be troubling may have done so because they identified with the speaker and attributed to him a character inconsistent with some of the sentiments he voices in the play. Ironically, I suspect, this identification with Hamlet may stem from the fact that Hamlet had been one of the plays that maintained a link, however tenuous, to the English pre-Interregnum theatre, through its presence in the drolls performed during the period of rupture. To Sir William Davenant, the play must have occupied a lofty position: when the bans on the theatres were lifted in the Restoration, a duopoly was created by Charles II, with extant plays of the pre-Interregnum period divided up between Davenant’s own Duke’s Company and Thomas Killigrew’s King’s Company—among Shakespeare’s more popular plays, Killigrew secured the rights to Othello, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Julius Caesar, whereas Davenant had to content himself with only Hamlet.35 Indeed, of the 36 plays recorded in Shakespeare’s First Folio, only nine were distributed to Davenant for his company’s use. If this distribution of rights may seem inequitable, perhaps Davenant knew at least that Hamlet was more current than most due to the connection it retained with the past via the playing of The Grave-Makers in more recent years, and he did not oppose the division.36 Davenant’s first step was to seek to make the play newly relevant by rewriting significant sections of the dialogue and offering a somewhat abbreviated version even though his company was quite at liberty to perform the play in its entirety: Davenant’s company cut the play to about three-quarters of the length of the Q2 text.37 Thus, the identification with the play stems in part from the strong, continuous link it presented to the pre-Interregnum period but in order to be able to identify fully with the play and its lead character both become altered to fit a vision that was more suited to the tastes of the time. This is a form of reflection in which the gaze wishes to see the viewer in the object, but finding distortions, undertakes corrective procedures on the object—not on oneself—to fit the reflective object to the desired image of the self. This same corrective procedure characterises the subsequent history of reception of the play, during which time there has never been any period in which it has completely diminished in popularity or critical attention. De Grazia notes that the critical view of the play throughout the eighteenth century was not entirely positive, typified by the Augustans’ attempts to

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establish the superiority of the dramatic unities espoused by the ancients.38 Furthermore, as Thompson and Taylor point out early in their introduction to the Arden 3 edition of Hamlet, there has been a late twentieth-century push to supplant Hamlet with King Lear for the title of the greatest of Shakespeare’s plays.39 With regards to the Augustan critics, we should note that their approach to Hamlet was echoed in their approach to all of the “barbarous” art of the English Renaissance, which naturally suffered by comparison with the art of the ancients; indeed, we can observe that Hamlet actually emerges time and again in the criticism of this period as one English Renaissance text that could be used to mount a defense of the achievements of the recent past. Rather than being a sign of the diminution in importance of Hamlet, then, Augustan criticism helps us to understand the degree of investment these critics had in the play: as de Grazia argues, the Augustan critics acknowledged in Hamlet a difference in kind from the drama of the ancients, Shakespeare’s play being character-driven whereas the classical plays were typically plot-driven. It is thus in their defense of the play against their own, arguably unreasonable, standards that Augustan critics contributed to the investment in character in their interpretation of Hamlet, at the expense of plot-based interpretation. With regards to more recent debates about the superiority of King Lear over Hamlet, we shall simply note that in no way does this lead to any decline in critical attention to the latter and may even have contributed to renewed interest in both of these plays—Thompson and Taylor observe that there has certainly been no decrease in the numbers of books about Hamlet, performances of the play, or film versions in the last few decades.40 The emergence of the character-based interpretation of the play during the eighteenth century is a sign of a corrective procedure being employed by Augustan critics, even as their own lofty standards prevented them from identifying with the play on the basis of its plot, lacking as it was in adherence to the classical unities. Thus, they renew their investment in identifying with Hamlet as a person, which leads the question of the delay of his revenge to eventually work its way to the fore. Rather than seeing the criticism of Coleridge as the break from an older critical tradition, the reading of a brief history of a reflective gaze shows us that Coleridge’s character-based interpretation—he uses the term “psychology” to help him explain Hamlet’s contradictions—is a link in a longer tradition of seeing oneself reflected in the play’s troubled protagonist. In William Christie’s account of Coleridge’s literary lectures, we see a man who deliberately fashioned a version of Hamlet that was well understood to be a reflection of the critic: “Coleridge’s friends all recognized the extent to which his Hamlet was modelled on himself.”41 William Empson once famously

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Introduction

wrote that the “Hamlet problem,” meaning the question of his delay, “did not seem to become one until the end of the eighteenth century.... nearly two hundred years had to go by before anyone had even a glimmering of what it was all about.”42 In Empson’s pared down account, there is a clean break with the invention by Coleridge of a psychological Hamlet, but de Grazia gives us too much detail to be able to collapse back onto a similarly clean historical divide. Using the same history that de Grazia maps, I have sought to show that a history of the performance, reception, and criticism of the play from 1600 to 1800 bears witness to a gradual reduction in the plot-driven, topical version of the drama and the emergence of a characterfocused reading as dominant. Rather than any neat divide circa 1800, we confront instead a more complex history of underground attempts to retain Hamlet as a link with the pre-Interregnum English theatre, of efforts made to refashion Hamlet in the image of a new era, paradoxically, in order to validate the link to the past, and of the continual imperative to adopt the reflective stance in relation to a play widely (if not universally) regarded as Shakespeare’s greatest.

Telmah: Question of Method I have observed that the establishment of a reflective gaze during the eighteenth century was linked to the use of corrective procedures in order to make the play—or at least the character of the Prince—fit the image of oneself that the viewer sought to identify in Hamlet. The same is then ultimately also characteristic of Hamlet criticism or reception in the last two hundred years. Coleridge’s influential interpretive step of reading the protagonist’s inconsistencies and deferrals as psychological is one such corrective procedure. When he adopts the term “psychology” to describe the mental procedure illustrated by Hamlet’s seemingly inconsistent words and actions, Coleridge states in relation to the term that it is much needed in that early nineteenth-century moment: “beg pardon for the use of this insolens verbum: but it is one of which our language is in great need. We have no single term to express the Philosophy of the Human Mind.”43 A term adopted to explain Hamlet’s character is thus necessary because it addresses a perceived gap in the state of knowledge at the time of writing. To meet this need by providing psychological readings of Hamlet, as de Grazia points out, Coleridge must divest “Hamlet” from the plot; indeed, Coleridge explicitly contends that Hamlet’s characteristic state of mind is to be cut off from the events around him.44 It is Coleridge’s argument, in other words, that the play is itself defined by Hamlet’s hermetically sealed off introversion, but this explanation is also necessary to tell us something

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about ourselves, something that is missing in a reader’s stock of concepts with which to account for that moment in time, circa 1811. For de Grazia, then, Coleridge’s argument regarding Hamlet’s plot-resistance begins with a fundamentally flawed premise and is not supported by the text. For this reason, I describe Coleridge’s strategy as corrective—it radically alters the text via unsupported interpretation to make it reflect his impression of the needs of his age. Not all corrective procedures require such a radical or unsupported take on the play. Many critical readings of the play are certainly defensible with reference to the text itself, yet I think it is invariably the case that the most influential readings of Hamlet since at least 1800 do involve some distortion or at least selective framing of the text, reflective of the present view of themselves or of a discipline. I also suggest that these readings are influential simply because they so closely reflect the particular view that pertains at that time as orthodoxy. For example, as Thompson and Taylor observe, the Anglo-American Hamlet after Freud was a typically domestic drama, disregarding or omitting altogether the character of Fortinbras and the political events of the play, whereas in Eastern and East-central Europe during the Cold War, the play would be most typically read and performed as “a political play enacting the possibility of dissent from various forms of totalitarianism.”45 Perhaps the most influential of all readings of Hamlet is to be found in J. Dover Wilson’s What Happens in Hamlet, published in 1935, which has become a firm point of reference—whether in agreement or dispute—for nearly all Hamlet criticism since.46 Dover Wilson prefaces his reading of the play with an admission that he had first been inspired to pursue this intellectual pathway after reading a 1917 Modern Language Review article in which Walter Wilson Greg had raised objections to some of the plot contrivances employed in Hamlet.47 Among several objections, Greg indicated that Shakespeare had made a mess of the play-within-theplay device, meaning that Claudius simply does not see his own actions mirrored in the performance, which in turn must cast doubt for us on the truthfulness of the Ghost’s account of his murder. Wilson’s response to this is emphatic, and was to develop over the course of the next eighteen years into his staunch defense of Hamlet against its newest detractors. As Terence Hawkes has shown in his brilliant essay, “Telmah,” written some fifty years later, Dover Wilson’s defense of the play betrays a deeply held commitment to a number of scholarly and social orthodoxies that are not disclosed.48 The corrective procedure employed by Dover Wilson is thus an attempt to correct what is perceived as an incorrect procedure by a preceding critic. Hawkes demonstrates that Dover Wilson’s defense of the play is motivated by a conservative reaction to the Bolshevik revolution

16

Introduction

and newly proposed education reforms, among other factors, in the early decades of the twentieth century. Dover Wilson had seen in Greg’s reading of the play an attack in the first instance on Shakespeare’s greatness and, secondarily by association, on the literary heritage of Great Britain and the civilizing potential of the great works of art. Against the procedure applied by Greg, Dover Wilson’s dogged defense of the play calls on a subsequent procedure in which the play is corrected in accordance with the orthodox conservative standpoint, for which it also becomes an exemplar. Dover Wilson’s silence on the potential for his reading to be a reflection of these broader concerns is telling when we note that in the prefatory comments addressed to Greg, he asserts, “ever since Coleridge first caught sight of his own face in the mirror that Shakespeare held up to nature, critics of Hamlet have gone astray largely through neglecting to concentrate upon the words of the text and the details of the action which are the first concern of an editor.”49 That Greg was himself first and foremost an editor of Shakespeare’s works makes this assessment particularly damning, yet Hawkes helps us to see that these comments rebound upon the hand that penned them: the gaze through which he concentrates upon the words of the text and the details of the action reveal in Hamlet the face of Dover Wilson and his stoic adherence to an orthodox standpoint. We may even sense that the manner in which he approached the task of defending the play was Hamlet-like in its initial agitation—Hawkes suggests this too50— but also in its protracted method of mounting a full case before avenging the murder of the Bard. His particular reading of Hamlet is quite simply Dover Wilson’s own Mousetrap with which to catch the conscience of his predecessor. Perhaps we should be careful, though, to not reject criticism simply for non-disclosure of vested interests. Might Dover Wilson’s words be viewed after all as a compelling statement of method that is difficult to refute? He is surely right that a critic’s task is to concentrate upon words themselves in order to determine their meaning. Yet we have already noted here that Hamlet provides us with a warning against unreflexive focusing of one’s attention on the meaning of words. In the two years after the publication of What Happens in Hamlet, a number of critics already argued in relation to Dover Wilson’s reading of the play that it does not attend adequately to issues of stagecraft, and in his preface to the second edition, he concedes this point, to his credit.51 Indeed, he records his hope that his contribution to Hamlet scholarship will lead ultimately to better productions. The point I wish to make here is that there are words and then there are words—that the words upon which the critic concentrates may not be the same words upon which another critic or a reader from a different background will end

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up gazing. Dover Wilson berated Greg as an editor for not attending to the words of the play, yet it was as an editor that Greg was in the process of developing what would be his lasting legacy: an approach to bibliography and textual history that sought to explain how early modern plays existed in a variety of forms. Greg was aware that editorial practice must involve dealing with the question of textual processes or of how words come into being, and this resulted in a willingness, albeit reluctantly, to consider the possibility that Shakespeare’s play was not the product of a single act of creative genius, and that the text we now read was an expression of any number of attempts to deal with the problems posed by the play. We shall return to the editorial tradition that Greg initiated, but we can simply note here that in the later writings in which he expounded his theories about textual process, he retained a Dover Wilson-like defense of the Bard as the progenitor of all that is “fair” in Shakespeare’s oeuvre—his assessment of the textual problems in Q2 Hamlet, for example, came down to Greg’s judgment that “there was little that was foul about it and the chief trouble is the incompetence of the printing.”52 The question may be, therefore, how can we switch off the reflective gaze long enough to get close to the play without seeing ourselves in it, to see the tain of Hamlet? The answer for Hawkes would be uncomplicated and to the point: we cannot. While I cite Hawkes here for his exceptional reading of Dover Wilson’s immediate motivations, it is clear that he seeks not to offer an alternative “true” meaning of Hamlet. Instead, he offers a reading of the play he calls Telmah, which is of course Hamlet in reverse. In this brief reading of Telmah, he suggests that the play from which it is derived and with which it is in fact wholly consonant is written in such a way that the audience is compelled to follow its action simultaneously in the modes of both posteriority and subsequence: what comes before; what comes after. The play begins looking backwards—“has this thing appeared again tonight?” (1.1.20); “this dreaded sight twice seen of us” (1.1.24); and so on—and continues to recount a series of events that have already unfolded previously.53 The central premise of the Mousetrap is also that it will work because it functions as “action replay” to events already having occurred and which have already been recounted in replay by the Ghost.54 The trouble for modern readers is that we are unaccustomed to thinking of Shakespeare’s plays other than “as a structure that runs a satisfactorily linear, sequential course,” so it becomes necessary to think of Telmah as an entirely new play with a circular, recursive structure rather than a linear one in order to cast off the shackles of our inherited notions.55 His account of Dover Wilson’s defense of the Bard gives Hawkes the justification for undermining these inherited notions, and to demonstrate how deeply such

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Introduction

notions have become entrenched over time. I am, like Hawkes, committed to recognising these inherited notions within the context of ideological and institutional imperatives; that is, to be reflexive about received wisdom by inquiring with an open mind. Unlike Hawkes, I am dubious of the notion that only an entirely new play will suffice in undermining the orthodoxies that pass for accounts of the meanings of Shakespeare’s texts. When Hawkes offers Telmah in place of Hamlet, it is clear that his intellectual trajectory exhibits inherent resistance to the old play itself, as well as to the critical heritage to which Dover Wilson’s defense belongs. In That Shakespeherian Rag—in which “Telmah” was reprinted only a year after its initial appearance—and in Meaning by Shakespeare, Hawkes would argue after 1985 against any possibility of “genuine access to final, authoritative or essential meanings in respect of Shakespeare’s plays”; rather, he would maintain, “all we can ever do is use Shakespeare as a powerful element in specific ideological strategies.”56 While he may not have been aware of it at the time, Hawkes was issuing the terms under which “presentist” Shakespeare scholarship would gain validity during the next two decades.57 As a reaction to what is perceived within Shakespeare Studies as the excesses of historicist readings and a drift toward situating plays within a historical context for the purpose of reinstating some sense of authorial intention or, worse, of “doing Shakespeare” in order to situate the critic within a long heritage of canonical criticism,58 presentist critics eschew any thought of being able to reliably imagine the past as past: what is past is lost and is beyond recovery except as some imaginative creation within the present moment. For Hawkes and many who have followed, it is appropriate primarily to attend to questions of what Shakespeare’s texts or any text, for that matter, mean for us, here and now, and to be genuinely reflexive about what such questions tell us about ourselves and our world. These are not unfair claims, not by any means. Against these claims, while I agree no final, authoritative, or essential meaning can be recaptured—as if such a thing ever existed in any case—I contend that “all we can ever do” is surely more than baulk at the gates of history. Importantly, Hawkes himself takes the path of history in order to demonstrate how particular critical approaches are mired in their moment. Even as he argues that we cannot recover the essential meaning of a play that is more than four centuries old, he presents this historically situated account of Dover Wilson’s reading of Shakespeare. Hawkes maps this text into a political and institutional context in order to hark back to a sense of what was really going on in the background of Dover Wilson’s writing. It is along such lines that we can read Hawkes as a prime example of how to read method: we need not look for the essential meaning of play, but we

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surely can seek to situate it within its context in purposeful fashion. If we can recover the uses to which Dover Wilson put Shakespeare’s play, fifty years ago, why should it be unthinkable that we might recover the uses to which Shakespeare or his contemporaries put their plays? Hawkes makes a compelling case for understanding how Dover Wilson fashions his Hamlet in response to immediate concerns circa 1917, by drawing on knowledge of what those concerns may be—a method based on comparing different types of evidence from beyond Dover Wilson’s What Happens in Hamlet. Indeed, one of the types of evidence used by Hawkes is the absence of any mention of the Bolshevik Revolution in Dover Wilson’s own account of his initial state of mind during the train journey in which he had initially encountered Greg’s objections to Hamlet.59 Given that Dover Wilson had previously written about the Russian situation, Hawkes is quite certain that the events of November, 1917 would have been at the forefront of Dover Wilson’s thoughts throughout this period, so the failure to mention them as a factor in his acute reaction to Greg’s words is presented by Hawkes as evidence of mental resistance or deflection, and I am inclined to agree. It is one of a string of astute observations made by Hawkes in this article. Yet Hawkes is doing precisely what subsequent critics have taken him to be saying cannot be done: inference of motivation and indeed meaning from comparisons between one text and other texts by the same author as well as consideration of events that are contemporary with that text. This is to say that Hawkes writes a concise history of Dover Wilson’s reading of Shakespeare. Rather than side with presentists on a reading of Hawkes that insists on the impossibility of accessing the past, then, I suggest that we can support the methods by which Hawkes reads method. To explain, I return to the figure of the mirror. If we really were only dealing here with a mirror, the answer to how we might turn off the reflective gaze would be simple: walk around to the back of the mirror and see the tain for what it is—an opaque backing rather than a reflective surface. The problem, as Hawkes correctly sums up the problem of all historical study, is that we cannot simply walk around to the other side of Hamlet, a play removed from us by over four centuries of history. Short of being whisked away in a blue telephone box, when we look at a text, any text, we will always be located on this side of history. How, then, to solve this dilemma? The answer lies in this persistent question of method: to stretch the analogy of the mirror one step further, suppose that even if we cannot move and are only able to see it from the vantage point of its reflective side, we can still see the tain indirectly if we change the way we see it; that is, if we opt to see it as all glass and silvered backing, and if we look for the signs of its materiality as both glass and tain. We can look for imperfections in the

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Introduction

surface rather than in the image: streak marks on the glass, scratches on the backing, and so on. If we look at the mirror in this way, the reflected image blurs and dissolves and we are able to look upon it as a mirror, with each of its component parts visible to us as such. This is analogous with the approach that Hawkes brings to his reading of Dover Wilson because he looks beyond the “image” of Dover Wilson’s opposition to Greg to see instead the shiny but imperfect backing on which it sits (Dover Wilson’s views on Russia; his opposition to Greg having been formed in the wake of the Bolshevik revolution; and the pressures on educational reform, which threatened his views on the value of Shakespeare). Importantly, we improve our capacity to see a mirror in this fashion if we have some idea about how it is made. To the manufacturer of mirrors, this manner of looking at them will come as second nature: to appreciate the qualities of the mirror in terms of how well it was made rather than to see one’s own image reflected in it—do you see the tain, it is a very fine tain, its maker uses excellent methods of applying it to the glass, and so on. When I note that the answer “lies in the question of method,” then, I do not wish to imply that we must use a particular reading method; rather, I mean that we must become aware of the text as method. Hawkes is right, then, to be suspicious of any critic who claims to know what Shakespeare meant in plays that are separated from us by four hundred years of history. Yet he shows us the way to overcome historical distances by treating the historical text with the same level of suspicion. Because he begins from a position of doubt, Hawkes ultimately is able to step back from the surface of Dover Wilson’s opposition to Greg and to read his criticism as Dover Wilson’s method for engaging with broader issues. Just as Hawkes is able to identify the method in Dover Wilson’s text by mapping its cultural and historical context, then, the same approach should allow us to be able to identify some semblance of method in Shakespeare’s play. Separated by more than half a century from his object, Hawkes cannot pretend that he knows what Dover Wilson is thinking any more than Dover Wilson can validly claim to know Shakespeare’s true meaning, so a case must be made for likely points of resonance. As historians know—but as historicists are often charged, rightly, with forgetting—the issue of likelihood is always to be treated with special care, and resonances must be treated as provisional because all historical evidence related to “context” is circumstantial. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is, indeed, a fallacy. Accordingly, Hawkes generates a circumstantial case but it is nonetheless worth making and what holds it together is a sense that the resonances he traces are likely to be relevant by virtue of their connection to the figure of the author and the contemporary date and scale of the events he describes.

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To turn off the reflective gaze we must engage—as we did in the case of understanding the mirror as method—with the text as material rather than as meaningful. This is not to argue for an approach that is ultimately meaningless; rather, I propose that we should refrain from assuming at the outset that the play text is already full of meaning, to be tapped by using just the right interpretive mode of engagement. In place of the meaningful text, we focus on a material text in order to grasp more fully the prospect that the text came into being by a number of processes of production. Our knowledge of early modern procedures for producing plays, publishing play texts, and other aspects of the nascent theatre industry—for which we may not have a direct analogue in the present—remains sketchy. There are indeed some aspects of the theatre in the early modern period that become resistant to systematic thought of this kind if we look to what the historical record tells us was happening. A cultural history of early modern theatre that seeks to collapse all activities into a single “practice” of production is capable of generating a picture of plays as method, but will hardly account for subtle differences and variations at the local level. I contend that we must be attuned to a sense of deviation from a norm, even if we do not know the norm or if no norm had as yet established itself, as some things that we want to see in terms of procedure may well have been far more ad hoc in nature. It is important to remember that, so far as we know, the first purposebuilt playhouse, The Red Lion, was erected in 1567, and the first of the larger permanent theatres, The Theatre, was built in 1576.60 The Globe Theatre, which Shakespeare’s company made their base, was opened in 1599—ironically, using the timber from the recently dismantled Theatre, such was the actual permanence of these large permanent theatres—and was one of only five or six large theatres around London at the end of the century. While we know about many theatres, playhouses, inn-houses and such used for staging plays, both privately and publicly, we are to some extent reliant on disparate sources of evidence to develop any complete picture of the theatres of that time. Artistic representations, contemporary accounts, and archaeological evidence have helped to identify with some certainty The Theatre, The Curtain, The Rose, and The Swan as the only purpose-built large amphitheatre-style theatres before The Globe, with the last three still in use at the time that The Globe was constructed. The large theatre at Newington Butts—at which we know an early version of Hamlet was performed in 1594—might well be included in this list, although no evidence remains of the theatre still being in use by 1599, and it is often excluded from lists of theatres of this kind.61 The point here is that early modern theatre was anything but a fully

22

Introduction

organised economy, as entrepreneurial motives shaped the emergence of large theatres like The Globe, and the market for theatre was gradually oriented toward London, but the businesses of playing and, importantly, of playwriting were still very much linked to nomadic historical counterparts, the travelling players, of the kind depicted in Hamlet.62 Thus, where we go in search of established procedures within early modern theatre, we are met in the historical record with a good many contradictions instead. It does not stand to reason, though, that we should abandon any attempts to expand knowledge in this area. Indeed, this book will draw heavily on the ever increasing body of scholarship that has been undertaken into the early modern theatre and the production and printing of play texts at that time, to situate the play materially within the confluence of activities associated with the early modern stage and the emerging publishing industry. To adopt the mindset of a manufacturer of mirrors, returning to this analogy once more, we cannot know exactly what the artisan thinks of the process, since we do not possess complete knowledge of the process itself, but we do have a range of different types of evidence on which to draw as we at least think of the play text as a material object that bears witness to its method of having been made. Accordingly, this book seeks to develop a relatively rich history of the making of the play, from its distant origins in Danish history, through the “ur-Hamlet” and attempts to date the version that we attribute to Shakespeare, to early modern performance histories, and the emergence of three different printed versions. In the first chapter, I suggest that assumptions about the date of the play—as having been written no earlier than around 1600—tend to be framed by recent views on book production, which is to say that we even date the play on the basis of a reflective gaze, rather than on the evidence of the historical record. Since the culture of “the book” that we now enjoy emerged as a result of the rise of a publishing trade in the Renaissance, it is too easy to make such fundamental errors in judgement, of course, but the point is that what we know of the rise of this trade tells us that many practices that we now take for granted were nowhere near as consistently in operation during the early modern period. We have seen that a glance at the historical record is all that is needed to tell us that earlier versions of a Hamlet play existed, such that we need to situate the play text within a theatrical culture that was evolving and also still coming to terms with the emergent publishing trade. The second chapter questions the nature of the connection between the theatre company and the publishing trade in more detail, by focusing on the question of why one printer (James Roberts, the printer of Q2 Hamlet) habitually delayed publication of plays by The Lord Chamberlain’s Men after having registered them in his own name with the

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Stationers’ Company. The answer I propose hinges on a re-examination of the extent to which the company’s patron may have been a factor in some of the decisions made by the players. Importantly, I maintain that study of the work of one printer and of the involvement of one patron need not be seen as grounds for thoroughgoing reconfigurations of what we now know about the nature of printing or of patronage in general. Instead, I wish to improve the way we conduct exception handling in Shakespeare Studies. Perhaps more to the point, I seek to abandon altogether any thinking in which exceptions to what received wisdom tells us about early modern printers, patrons, and players in general cannot be tolerated. Cultural histories that may inform our understandings of early modern practices like this are not new: Robert Darnton’s The Great Cat Massacre, which revitalised “cultural history” as the study of the cultures of ordinary people living in the past, was published in 1984; and a more programmatic outline of the discipline followed only five years later, in Roger Chartier’s Cultural History: Between Practices and Representations.63 In principle, cultural histories map the important role that is played by the activities of ordinary people in constituting the fabric of a culture as a whole.64 There have been several studies of early modern cultural practices or phenomena in the last decade under the rubric of cultural history: excellent examples are From Playhouse to Printing House: Drama and Authorship in Early Modern England, by Douglas Brooks; Barbara M. Benedict’s Curiosity: A Cultural History of Early Modern Inquiry; and the collection of essays by Gail Kern Paster, Katherine Rowe, and Mary Floyd-Wilson, Reading the Early Modern Passions: Essays in the Cultural History of Emotion.65 The question of patronage, in particular, has also been coming under renewed scrutiny in such works as David Bergeron’s Textual Patronage in English Drama, 1570-1640 and in the collection of essays edited by Paul Whitfield White and Suzanne R. Westfall, Shakespeare and Theatrical Patronage in Early Modern England.66 While neither of these books identify as cultural history, they do show an emerging will in recent scholarship to overturn abiding assumptions that had prevailed since the rise of patronage studies during the Victorian era, providing exemplary instances of what I called “exception handling.” For example, Paul Whitfield White challenges the widespread perception that the brief patronage of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men by Lord Cobham, from August 1596 to March 1597, was shaped principally by Cobham’s anti-theatrical beliefs; instead, the evidence from a letter by Robert Jones, the secretary to the Earl of Essex, addresses direct involvement by the then Lord Chamberlain in plays and court festivities.67 Whether his involvement extended to theatrical productions outside of the court season is not addressed by White, but here at least is an example of

24

Introduction

how relatively obscure fragments from the historical record can be used to radically disrupt received opinion. In Chapter Two of the present book, I mount a case for a similar reappraisal of the role played by the company’s next patron, George Carey, Second Baron Hudson, in some areas of their activities, based on much more than a single fragment. For all this potential to overturn received versions of history, cultural history has from the beginning struggled against the tendency to gravitate toward synecdoche, where a single example of a cultural practice is held to be representative of the whole culture. In his critique of Darnton’s Great Cat Massacre, Chartier makes the same observation: Darnton’s essays are typified by a desire to take an obscure historical fragment (an account of a massacre of cats in Paris in the 1730s, written by one of the printers who was involved in the massacre; a series of reports written by the inspector of the book trade between 1748 and 1753; and so on), and to read within it the symbolic indications of an identifiable, enduring Frenchness. Chartier queries assumptions in Darnton’s work that all writing exhibits the same symbolic register and that all symbols of “Frenchness” must be less prone to the winds of change than other aspects of French culture.68 Moreover, a desire to focus principally on the writing and practices of the peasantry is short lived: referring to four of the six essays in The Great Cat Massacre, the first two having focused on folktales and the printer’s account of a cat massacre, Chartier declares that it is “immediately evident that the texts on which they are based belong to another cultural level than peasant tales or a printer’s yarn.”69 Darnton’s remaining four fragments are not, it is true, born of the proletariat; neither are they typical of official historical records upon which most source-based historiography is developed. What compels Darnton—and it is a premise with which Chartier and his colleagues in the Annales School of historiography remain sympathetic—is precisely what I call “exception handling”: texts and fragments that do not sit comfortably within mainstream historical analysis are called into play as evidence of the cultural edges of mainstream historical events. Darnton writes that his goal is to write history “from below,” not only to write the histories of the peasants and workers.70 History written “from below” begins with the peasants but is also interested in mapping the rich diversity of a culture throughout all of its levels. The important lesson for me in all of this is that cultural history should never focus primarily on either the powerful few or the powerless masses: it should concern itself with both of these poles as well as all the strata through which power is exercised between. In my consideration of the range of people who may have shaped the production, performance, and publication of Hamlet, I seek to explore the various ways in which power was exercised locally by people occupying

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different levels of the social hierarchy. Exception handling is thus concerned with enriching our understanding of a past culture in all its vagaries and complexities. The other side of this is to maintain suspicion about the possibility that the texts and fragments that have been used to support mainstream ideas about the culture of early modern England might in fact also prove to be exceptions if reconsidered in light of new evidence. An example of this form of exception handling is offered in Chapter Two, in which the so-called “Roberts Memoranda” are reconsidered in light of evidence about the Court of Assistants, analysis of the handwriting employed on the series of memoranda in question, and biographical details about the activities of other stationers that coincide precisely with the dates ascribed to these memoranda. Scholars accept for the most part that these memoranda—the short series of occasional notes appended to the Stationers’ Register for the period 27 May to 4 August, 1600—are evidence that the six plays listed were “registered” to James Roberts; instead, the fragment is treated here as an exception to normal registration given its marginal location, unusual form, and potential for being read in terms of legal challenges between stationers. The result of such an approach, I contend, is a cultural history in which the tendency toward synecdoche is forestalled. We gain a much broader sense of the capacity for different walks of life to intersect and interweave by treating textual fragments as evidence of a set of specific circumstances rather than as an index of the culture writ large. If we were to identify any singular method at work in this pursuit of the tain of Hamlet, then, it is perhaps best identified as textually-evidenced cultural history. In Chapter Three, I argue that both the Q1 and Q2 versions of Hamlet can also, each in their own way, be used as evidence informing a cultural history of this kind. This is not to say that I conflate play texts with occasional notes in the Stationers’ Register, for example, as both presenting evidence in equal or identical fashion. Traditional source-based historiography can be invoked here in its insistence on evaluating textual evidence based on careful assessment of the function served by the text in question. Arthur Marwick explains the value of assessments of purpose in terms of the integrity of the historical investigation: “a primary source is most valuable when the purpose for which it was compiled is at the furthest remove from the purpose of the historian.”71 Texts thus cease to be “evidence” when we can be quite sure they set out to articulate explicitly what the historian also set out precisely to prove. For this reason, a textually-evidenced cultural history must remain attentive to questions of the validity of textual evidence by accounting for the purposes for which different kinds of texts are produced. As I seek to

26

Introduction

show in Chapter Three, in a cultural milieu in which revivals and attendant revisions of play texts were the norm rather than the exception, a play text was invariably subject to revision through several productions spanning a number of years, so it is conceivable that a single textual artefact like the Q1 of Hamlet could be studied on the basis of being an artefact of having been created for a number of different purposes over a lengthy period of time. This is where the tools of literary criticism and knowledge gained from new textual histories can prove to be invaluable. Rather than treat the play as a single document, we can identify the ways in which it bears the material and linguistic traces of its complex production history. Chartier himself has demonstrated how a cultural history of relationships between early modern reading and authorship can be informed by careful attention to material traces in the Q1 Hamlet. With Peter Stallybrass, Chartier tracks the presence of commonplace markers in a range of printed texts from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the practice being prevalent in titles published by Nicholas Ling, as it so happens.72 The commonplace marker is a quotation mark placed at the beginning of a line of print, thus signifying that the line is a commonplace worthy of note in commonplace books or “tables.” Hamlet himself most likely possesses a commonplace book, as Tiffany Stern has noted, since he explicitly refers to his tables as the place to which he will “set it downe / That one may smile, and smile and be a Villaine.”73 Stern adds that commonplace marking was certainly used in deliberate and systematic fashion by Ben Jonson, but there is no evidence that Shakespeare ever embraced the practice.74 As Stallybrass and Chartier point out, the presence of commonplace marks next to the precepts expressed by Corambis in Q1 might have been prompted by the author of the manuscript on which the printed text was based, but it is just as likely a feature imposed by the stationer who regularly used such marks in an effort to enhance the literary stature of his printed works within the increasingly competitive marketplace.75 While I do not seek to provide a new literary criticism of Hamlet, then, I do nevertheless return to questions and challenges posed by this text, and offer some answers based on critical reading, such as a consideration of the effect on the dramatic structure of the play created by moving the “To be or not to be” speech from its location in Q1 (equivalent to early in Act 2, Scene 2, before Hamlet’s encounter with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern) to its more familiar placement in Q2 (near the beginning of Act 3, Scene 1, generally presumed to take place the day after the events depicted in Act 2, Scene 2). My goal is to show that the text of Q1 provides numerous clues regarding a complex and convoluted history in which a play based on an ancient and already well-established legend undergoes frequent change as

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a result of several revivals, with each requiring attendant revisions. Efforts to locate Q1 historically have typically failed to think the play outside of a single moment of creation relative to the more authoritative Q2—be it a single act of piracy, misremembering large tracts of Q2; an act of drafting by Shakespeare himself, on the way to improving in Q2; or the process of a single staging of the play, adapted for performance from Q2; and so on. Yet Q1 contains many details that have plagued scholars—my argument in Chapter Three is that these details, contradictory and anachronistic as they have proven to be, will continue to plague us so long as we seek to find in the play evidence of a single moment of creation. If we attend instead to the prospect that the play bears witness to several moments of creation, each of which uses its own specific method in response to an immediate set of historical contingencies, we begin to unravel a great deal more of the mystery of the play and the role that it played in Shakespeare’s career, as well as in the career of another Will—the great clown, Will Kempe—and in the life of Shakespeare’s patron, among other people. From this rich, textually-evidenced cultural history, I suggest, we then come to terms with Hamlet as method, in order to resist the lustre of our own image in the play. The play comes into being against a backdrop of complex interactions between people occupying a number of rungs on the Elizabethan social hierarchy, and its history of revival and revision bears witnesses to the rise and fall of many men and women along that same social ladder. By delving deep into the historical record, we find a wealth of material that has not previously been mapped into either the history or the criticism of Hamlet or, in some cases, any of Shakespeare’s writings. The rewards, I maintain, are abundant, as we gain a much richer and more nuanced impression of the relationships between players, patrons, printers, and other participants in the life of a theatre company and its repertoire. The return benefits for studies of Hamlet, in particular, should be clear: we are able to return to the play text and interpretation of its meanings with a sense of how these meanings came to be—or not to be, as the case may be for some meanings that we may now reject—in the tain of Hamlet.

CHAPTER ONE HAMLETS BEFORE HAMLET

Hamlet is not an original play, at least not in the sense that we might want the plays of the immortal Bard, William Shakespeare, to be original in order to justify bardolatry. This is not intended as a slight, although the relative lack of originality has been used by some critics as grounds for rejecting Shakespeare and his plays as worthy of critical attention. One of the most famous attacks on Hamlet, in particular, was made by T.S. Eliot in “Hamlet and his Problems.”1 Eliot identifies sources of Shakespeare’s play and declares that the result, “superposed upon much cruder material which persists even in the final form,” represents an “artistic failure.”2 Yet we make the observation about there being source material for Hamlet in order to situate the play text within a context of production in which the modern concept of “originality” did not exist. The idea that originality— understood as novelty or creativity, proceeding directly from the fertile imagination of the individual—is a fundamental component of the genesis of artistic works did not emerge until the late eighteenth century, at least a century and a half after the early modern playwrights were plying their trade.3 In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the word “original” meant a source, and it is true of the great majority of plays written at this time, and possibly of all of them, that there is at least one prior source text from which they are drawn. This is nothing new to Shakespeare scholars, and need not be treated as a revelation. In the preface to his eight volume Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, Geoffrey Bullough notes three works of similar scope that preceded his collection, the first being Charlotte Lennox’s three volume Shakespeare Illustrated, or the Novels and Histories on which the Plays of Shakespeare are founded, collected and translated from the original authors. With critical remarks, of 1753. Bullough’s own work collects no fewer than nineteen sources, analogues, and allusions for Hamlet.4 The majority of these are not direct sources for the main story; they are references to texts that might have given Shakespeare the inspiration for a specific scene or a section of the play: the description of Hamlet’s encounter with the pirates, for example, can be found echoed in Philip Sidney’s The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia (1590).

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There are three sources commonly associated with the fuller narrative of the Danish prince whose father is murdered by his uncle, whose mother marries the uncle, who feigns his madness in order to escape the uncle’s wrath, and who ultimately extracts vengeance for his father’s death. The first is by Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus, whose Gesta Danorum is presumed to have been written by no later than 1208, and contains the “Vita Amlethi” or story of Amleth, in which most of the principal elements of the Hamlet story are found. The work was first published, in Latin, in 1514, as the Danorum Regum Heroumque Historiae or Historiae Danicae (History of the Danes). Saxo’s story of Amleth was rewritten in French in 1570 by Francois de Belleforest in the fifth of seven volumes comprising his Histoires tragiques (Tragical Histories). The Amleth volume became immensely popular, being reprinted no fewer than ten times to 1585, and five further times between 1601 and 1606.1 We might speculate that the second series of reprints was motivated in part by the popularity of the Shakespeare play after 1600; indeed, an English translation of Belleforest appeared as The Tragicall Hystorie of Hamblet in 1608. The translation in this version was evidently influenced by Shakespeare’s play: the spy in the bedchamber scene—Polonius in Q2 Hamlet or Corambis in Q1; unnamed in Saxo and Belleforest—conceals himself under a quilt in Belleforest’s early version, for example, but the English translation has him concealed behind “hangings,” and adds Hamlet’s very words: “A rat! A rat!”2 The third source on which Shakespeare is regularly thought to have drawn for inspiration is the so-called “ur-Hamlet,” a play that some scholars suspect to have been performed at least as early as 1589, but about which nothing is really known at all. Before discussing in detail the problems associated with this “earlier” Elizabethan play, I want to turn to the two historical sources to consider the extent to which the play we know could be said to have derived from either. Importantly, we must acknowledge from the outset that “histories” in medieval and early modern practice were heavily fictionalised versions of the past, oftentimes incorporating regional myths and legends. Several scholars have identified a range of viable classical, Icelandic, and broadly Scandinavian influences on Saxo’s own history of the Danes, which it is likely he would have incorporated in order to present a relatively familiar version of history. Palle Lauring recounts the history of Saxo’s “history” and points out that he had been commissioned by King Valdemar I and Archbishop Absalon to write a national history in Latin to rival the great chronicles being written by the British and French.1 William Hansen adds to this significant parallels between the Roman tale of Brutus—whose real name was Lucius but changed to Brutus, who feigned madness, and who

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revenged his family’s death by killing the king—and the details of Saxo’s Amleth.2 The Amleth figure can also be traced to a ninth-century Icelandic tale of Amloði, whose story of feigned madness gave rise to the use of “Amloði” in Icelandic to refer to any weak-minded or imbecilic person.3 Saxo’s Amleth is thus already an amalgam of even older narratives that had been brought together to creatively refashion a particular version of Danish history by the decree of both Church and State. The result was the tale of the son of Horwendil, governor of the Jutes and slayer (along with his warrior-sister Sela) of Koll of Norway, who married the daughter of King Rorik, Gerutha; Horwendil’s jealous brother Feng kills him, rapes Gerutha, and compels her to marry, then conceals the deed behind a story about defending her against Horwendil’s violence towards her; fearing Feng’s wrath, Amleth pretends to be witless, and assumes a dishevelled appearance; while not once being guilty of lying—an unworthy trait—he avoids being caught out through extreme cunning in responses to a series of trials; he is presented with a girl in a secluded location, but manages to ravish her without being seen by Feng’s spies, and then admits to the deed without being suspected of the truth of his claim; he berates his mother in her bedchamber and kills another spy, then disposes of the body in brutal fashion, again answering questions about the whereabouts of the deceased truthfully but with sufficient guile to avoid being suspected of the act; he escapes a plot to have him put to death in England by turning the tables on his companions; and he returns to destroy Feng and his court in the most violent fashion, burning the courtiers and slaying Feng with a stake he had fashioned as a child, when he first vowed to avenge his father’s death. Already, parallels between Saxo’s Amleth and the principal elements of Shakespeare’s Hamlet should be apparent, but there are differences: the maiden who tempts Amleth is presented as a deliberate ploy to challenge his mask of insanity; the graveyard scene, the play-within-the-play, and the fatal final duel are all absent; and, crucially, there is no appearance by the ghost of the deceased father to spur the hero on in pursuit of revenge. Belleforest introduces none of these elements, with the possible exception of the ghost, as we shall see. Yet it is fair to claim, as Arthur Stabler did in a series of publications in the 1960s and 1970s, that Shakespeare’s play is manifestly closer to Belleforest than Saxo on a number of key points.4 Belleforest adapts the tale to the tastes of his Catholic benefactors and the sensibilities of Renaissance France, though some credit for these changes is given to Johannes and Olaus Magnus, who had been responsible for two volumes of histories in the mid-sixteenth century, in which the Saxo tale is reworked—as Julie Maxwell has shown—in accordance with the counterReformation, anti-Protestant tastes of their benefactors.5 Drawing to some

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extent on this counter-Reformation twist on Saxo’s tale, then, Belleforest’s Amleth strips away some of the excesses of its saga-inspired precursor: the hero is now melancholic due to thwarted ambition; mention is made of the elective process used in contemporary Danish accession; the hero does not have his way with the maiden, and speaks the truth of this while leading others to suspect that he had given in to temptation;6 and his mother is given a lengthy speech in which she confesses that she played no part in Horwendil’s murder and married Feng solely to put herself between Feng and Amleth, thereby saving her son’s life, and if it had been in her power to do the same to prevent the murder of her first husband she would have done the same. The violent ends meted out to the spy and to Feng and his courtiers are retained by Belleforest, who is nevertheless eager to justify Amleth’s actions as those of a servant of righteousness in delivering his victims from sin. Importantly, it has often been assumed that there is no mention of the ghost in Belleforest, leading scholars to deduce that Shakespeare’s play is indebted to Saxo and Belleforest only to the extent that the ur-Hamlet was indebted to them beforehand, and that the ghost must have been added to the tale in the ur-Hamlet. The case for this rests on existing evidence that an earlier Hamlet play had a ghost that sought vengeance: we noted in the introduction that Thomas Lodge recorded having seen a ghost that cried “Hamlet, revenge” so miserably at The Theatre in 1596. Yet this evidence is open to further question, since we know that The Lord Chamberlain’s Men were also housed at The Theatre from late 1594 to April 1597, so it is likely that Shakespeare himself was involved in the performance in which the ghost cried “Hamlet, revenge.”7 The author of the play seen by Lodge is unclear, of course. Yet the prevailing assumption holds that the author of the 1596 Hamlet was the same as the author of the “whole Hamlets ... of tragical speeches” lampooned by Thomas Nashe in 1589. While it is unclear if Shakespeare was known as a playwright of repute by 1589, we seem certain that he was the target of an attack by Robert Greene in 1592: Greene berated an “upstart Crow” for challenging the best playwrights of the day and believing himself to be the “only Shake-scene in a country.”8 Importantly, Greene’s attack must have been written at an earlier date, if we are to believe the printer’s claim that it was “Written before his death and published at his dying request.”9 It is likely that Greene’s opinion had been formed before 1591, during which time his Groats-Worth of Wit was being compiled. I will return to this issue of the origins of the earlier play and Shakespeare’s reputation shortly. Here I want simply to note that the earliest reference to the ghost in the so-called ur-Hamlet is from Lodge, who in 1596 attended a play in which Shakespeare was almost certainly a

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Chapter One

performer, if not also the responsible playwright. The absence of the Ghost in Saxo and Belleforest, along with its likely presence in the ur-Hamlet, means that scholars invariably presume either that an intermediate source gave to Shakespeare his ghost or that he added this plot element himself. Old Hamlet is not, of course, the first ghost to be used in the plot of a stage play, let alone a tragedy: the Senecan tragedies on which Elizabethans based their revival of the form abound with ghosts who strive to manipulate and interfere in the lives of mortals. In the most famous English tragedy before Hamlet, Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy, there is even a ghost named Revenge overseeing the action. Were there indeed no ghost in Saxo or Belleforest, then, Shakespeare would not have needed to look far to see that according to theatrical convention, a revenge tragedy based on the Amleth tale would have done well to include one. Yet in an article that has been largely forgotten in Shakespeare Studies, Stabler has established that there is indeed a ghost in Belleforest’s version, which had been missing in Saxo. It is common for Shakespeare scholars to assume the 1608 translation of the Belleforest version is adequate for a reading of the Histoires tragiques, and it is true that there is no ghost in the English version. Stabler points to two references made in Belleforest’s version to Horwendil’s “ombre,” which translates as “shade” or phantom.10 Stabler may have added that a literal translation of “ombre” would be “umbra,” which for the early modern reader would have signified as “phantom” in the literal sense.11 The ombre of Horwendil is mentioned by Amleth in two speeches, in neither of which does it merely invoke the name of a deceased person; in both cases, “ombre” is a direct reference to the deceased person in the form of his spirit. In his speech to his mother, Amleth describes the ombre as being indignant at having been usurped, and in his triumphant speech after slaying Feng, Amleth describes how the ombre may now rest peacefully among more blessed spirits. The reference to the ombre in the first of these scenes could possibly even be seen as a direct precursor to the appearance of the Ghost during the bedchamber scene in Hamlet, but what Belleforest lacks, of course, is a scene in which Amleth learns of his father’s indignation in any direct way from the ombre in question, such as we find in the first Act of Hamlet. Stephen Greenblatt, while echoing the common perception that “no ghost appears” in Saxo or Belleforest, points out that the crucial function of the Ghost in Hamlet is in revealing what is unknown to others, whereas in both Saxo and Belleforest, Feng makes no secret of the fact that he has killed Horwendil; he merely lies about motive.12 It is this dramatic ploy— altering in fundamental fashion the nature of the first crime—that becomes the catalyst for all other significant changes to the Amleth tale. It becomes

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possible, for example, to educate the hero: Saxo’s frightened boy becomes Shakespeare’s melancholic wit, unaware of the need to exact vengeance until after the Ghost reveals the truth. In turn, whereas Amleth had to bide his time and escape suspicion long enough to acquire the physical capacity to perform the deed, Hamlet delays revenge precisely because it is a ghost, whose supernatural motives are initially unclear, that reveals the details of the murder. As Greenblatt puts the case, “Shakespeare in effect wrecked the compelling and coherent plot with which his sources conveniently provided him. And out of the wreckage he constructed what most modern audiences would regard as the best play he had ever written.”13 A strong understanding of the source materials for Hamlet is useful along such lines because it provides us with a clear picture of the foundational materials on which Shakespeare was working, and enables us to discern where there are indices of the playwright tinkering at the edges or indeed at the core of the inherited materials. This brief consideration of the play’s source materials should already be sufficient grounds for asking at least two key questions on the pathway to understanding the method or tain behind Shakespeare’s Hamlet: what did Shakespeare retain from his source materials (and by extension, what did he alter); and what function or purpose might these changes have served? The long history of the Amleth tale prior to Hamlet demonstrates that immediate historical concerns shaped the presentation of the story in strategic fashion along the way. If we wish to imagine that the same may be true of Shakespeare’s version, it will be necessary to go in search of immediate historical concerns, the next problem being that an understanding of such “immediate” concerns implies some knowledge of exactly when it is that this version was shaped.

The Question of Memorial Reconstruction The reader should now have some understanding of the difficulties that are faced in referring to a single Shakespearean version of Hamlet. While it is often desirable to want a single edition of the play for performance and study purposes, we should be more circumspect about wanting to access a single Shakespearean version when we are discussing the play in its early modern context. When we look to the printed versions from this period, we find there are three different versions to contend with: the First Quarto (Q1) appeared in 1603, the Q2 appeared a year later, and the Folio of 1623 is a different version again—while other Quarto editions appeared after the Q2, they were all based on this text. We have grounds to suspect that more versions than these had some form of existence in Shakespeare’s lifetime: we forget the performance history of the play if we focus only on

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Chapter One

Figure 1.1. Title page to the Q1 Hamlet (1603).

the published versions. As the title page (see Figure 1.1) to the Q1 Hamlet attests, at the time of its publication the play was already “diuerse times acted by his Highnesse seruants in the Cittie of London: as also in the two Vniuersities of Cambridge and Oxford, and elsewhere.”14 Indeed, it would seem to be axiomatic that the play was performed diverse times before it was published, since the publication of contemporary play texts was a new phenomenon to the fledgling publishing industry in which printers vied for marketable print commodities with which to strengthen their foothold in the marketplace.15 While it is true that the invention of the printing press precipitated a revolution in book culture, it did not happen overnight. In England, William Caxton had introduced the printing press in the late

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fifteenth century, but the capacity to use the technology remained limited for decades. Even with movable type, printing was time-consuming and costly, so only specific kinds of works were produced: official documents, doctrinal texts, or works that held significance only for the ruling class. It was not until well into the sixteenth century that mercantile interests began to take a stranglehold over the printing industry in England, and private enterprise printeries emerged as viable commercial operations motivated by market forces.16 A stationers’ guild was established as early as 1403— “stationer” being the word covering all aspects of the production and sale of printed matter, from scribes to booksellers—when the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers was formed within the Corporation of London,17 but it was not until 1557 that the Stationers’ Company was granted a Royal Charter. It was a further two decades later, as we have seen, that the arrival of permanent, purpose-built playhouses began to produce a shift in the management of the theatre. While travelling companies had previously dominated, a new entrepreneurial theatre was a locus for the development of new plays and created a market for these plays both in performance and in print. Importantly, the men who owned the presses were not the same as those who owned the playhouses, so the passage of any play text from playhouse to printing press usually was determined by an assessment of the title’s profitability solely from the perspective of the printer; to wit, the play would make it to press only if it was deemed to remain popular enough to risk the expenses on paper, ink, typesetting, labour, and so on.18 Helen Smith has observed that the relationships between the various processes constituting what we may now call a “publishing trade” were every bit as multifaceted and precarious as the relationship between the early modern theatre and the emerging book trade: “The very notion of a publishing trade threatens to restrict our understanding of the multiplicity of mechanisms through which texts could be made public, or sent abroad,” and it disguises “the sheer variety of the industries and processes which came together to produce the early modern book.”19 We may remember that while the Stationers’ Company regulated to some extent the training of printers, publishers, and so on—all of whom could identify themselves under a single vocational banner of “stationer”—the Company was not itself an organisation that had centralised economic control of the trade. In many publications of the period, it is common to see up to three different fiduciary interests being identified on the cover: the person who owns all rights and who we might therefore now identify as a publisher; the owner of the press and who we might now identify as the printer; and the owner of the place of sale or bookseller who had authority to distribute the work

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to a particular market. These names would generally also all be identified as “stationers” on the Company list either as apprenticed or free men, but it is clear that some stationers tended to engage themselves more or less in one aspect of the trade; that is, they began to acquire specialisations within the industry. Within each specialised activity, the other active members of the Company represented direct competition, so it should be no surprise that individual stationers often sought to obtain a monopoly on potentially lucrative new types of activity: in 1588, Ralph Bowes was granted a patent for the printing of playing cards, and was able to monopolise the trade in cards by first being sworn in as a freeman of the Stationers’ Company and, on 18 October, registering moulds with the Company in the Stationers’ Register.20 This register protected a stationer’s rights to an item entered in his name therein, so, for example in the case of Bowes and his playing cards, no other person could legally print playing cards, just as a stationer who entered a particular title under his name would expect that nobody else could print that title without his permission. To imagine a publishing trade in Elizabethan England as being like the modern book trade would lead us inevitably to overlook the tensions that operated within different types of activities of the time. It also means that we need to be careful about generalising any activity as “typical.” Once a play found its way into the hands of a stationer, there was as yet no typical pathway into print, and depended largely on the individual and the people with whom the “copy holder” chose to engage in further dealings. Indeed, the question of what was “typical” of a playbook’s pathway to publication, and the degree to which any stationer might have deemed a play worthy of publication on the grounds of its “popularity,” have been subjects of much debate in recent years. Peter Blayney’s groundbreaking 1997 essay on the publication of playbooks forced scholars in the field to reconsider previous assumptions about the relationships between playing companies and the stationers who put playbooks into print.21 Blayney’s particular target was Alfred W. Pollard, to whom we shall be introduced again very shortly, but his more general aim was to cast asunder long standing presumptions that had been based on outmoded beliefs about the popularity of Elizabethan playbooks in their initial reception, and on the notion that “piracy” was rife. More recently, in 2005, Alan Farmer and Zachary Lesser mounted a counter-claim against Blayney, not on the details of his influential critique of presumptions about piracy, nor against the renewed rigour that he had introduced to the study of the publication of plays; in particular, Farmer and Lesser dispute Blayney’s conclusion that playbooks were ultimately not so popular in their day as critics had previously come to expect.22 The particular value of their critique, for mine, is in the extent to which their

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account of “market share” illustrates a highly competitive marketplace into which any new title was to be launched for sale. This account of market share suggests that levels of risk for any new form of publication—which Blayney’s study paints as being unimportant in decision-making about the publication of playbooks—remained high. If playbooks were not quite as popular as psalms, for example, it may have been primarily because the printing of playbooks was a relatively new phenomenon in England, and the market for playbooks remained far more localised. Against Farmer and Lesser, Blayney was given a right of reply in Shakespeare Quarterly, his response appearing in the same issue in 2005, and in which he reinforced his initial claims.23 Regardless of which way the reader might side on such debates, one thing seems clear: there is little chance that any stationer would commit to purchasing ink, paper, labour, and so on, as well as to engage stationers with necessary specialisations, if not convinced the play was likely to sell. In the world of the theatre, the best way to determine that a play was likely to sell was if the company had returned a tidy sum at the turnstiles through repeat performances. Hamlet must indeed have been diverse times played prior to 1603, before Nicholas Ling and John Trundell felt warranted in procuring the services of Valentine Simmes to commit the text to print, the result of which was the Q1 Hamlet. This venture was, in fact, technically illegal, since the title was registered in 1602 to James Roberts, and we lack any evidence that Roberts had given permission to the three stationers involved to print and sell the book of the play. We shall look at this set of circumstances in more detail in Chapter Two, since a very large question mark must hang over the publication of the Q1, given that Roberts himself would go on to print the Q2 text in 1604 with Ling on board once again as the publisher. Before we embark on consideration of the publication history of the play, though, it is necessary to consider the life of the play as a play rather than as a product of book culture, established or emergent. Yet from this side of history, the exercise is a convoluted and potentially circular one because the only evidence we have of what a performance of the play would have contained is the printed play text itself.24 We lack a manuscript version or a surviving prompt-book, since no documentary evidence of this kind has survived—indeed, as Evelyn Tribble points out in a recent entry into the authorship debate, none of the performed plays of any major late sixteenth or early seventeenth-century playwright survive in manuscript, so there is nothing in the least bit untoward about this fact.25 We must base our sense of the content of the performances, then, on the published texts. In the case of Hamlet, the existence of three different primary versions has generated a particular challenge for formulating any

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understanding of the play’s pre-publication history. The Hamlet of Q1 is remarkably different from the Q2 and F versions, the latter two being different from each other in only a marginal fashion: Thompson and Taylor note in their introduction to the Arden 3 Hamlet, “F contains about 88 lines with no counterpart in Q2, while Q2 contains about 222 lines with no counterpart in F,”26 which in a play of nearly 4000 lines indicates a high proportion of correspondence between the two versions. It is generally believed by scholars that the Q2 and F versions emanate from revisions carried out on one version of the play, and they disagree for the most part only over the nature of these revisions. Yet Q1 is an altogether different kettle of fish, being only fractionally over half the length of the other two, and while it contains some dialogue in common with the others, much of the text is similar to the other two versions only in the extent to which most of the key plot elements and most of the characters are the same, but most dialogue and all of the soliloquies differ markedly. In Q1, furthermore, the King’s adviser is named Corambis rather than Polonius, his servant, who we know as Reynaldo in Q2, is named Montano, while such peripheral characters as Osrick, the Messenger, and the Attendant make no appearance. Barnardo and Francisco—the first characters we encounter in all three versions—are listed as unnamed sentinels in the Q1. Scenes are provided in Q1 in a different order to that in which they appear in Q2 and F and, importantly, the bedchamber scene includes lines missing from the other versions, in which Gertrude agrees to “conceal, consent, and doe my best, / What stratagem soe’re thou shalt desire,” in support of Hamlet’s revenge, making her character’s motivations clearly different in the Q1 from those displayed in the other versions.27 When scholars attempt to date Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the style employed in Q2 or F is invariably employed as a basis for comparison with other plays in his oeuvre, particularly with those of which we can be more certain about a date of composition, leading to the quite widespread agreement that this play cannot be dated to any earlier than about the turn of the seventeenth century, or late 1599 at the earliest.28 This comparison does not normally include the Q1. Ever since the Q1 version was discovered in 1823, it has been considered inferior in style to the Q2 and F texts: it was initially thought to have been a rashly published version of an early draft by Shakespeare;29 an emerging picture of the War of the Theatres helped John Payne Collier in 1843 to argue that Q1 was in fact a corrupted version of Shakespeare’s play;30 and subsequent editorial practice has tended to follow this line, most influentially in 1909, when Alfred W. Pollard designated Q1 as a “bad” Quarto, meaning that it was stolen or surreptitiously copied against the will of the playing company, as

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the Folio editors claimed in 1623 was the case with many of the existing Quarto versions of Shakespeare’s plays;31 furthermore, Pollard’s category gained support in 1910, when Greg expounded the theory of “memorial reconstruction” to explain the mechanism by which a “bad Quarto” could first come into existence.32 While several arguments have been made against Greg’s “memorial reconstruction” theory, perhaps most notably by Pollard himself,33 there was significant textual evidence in support of it, as George Ian Duthie showed in 1941.34 Comparison of the text of Q1 with that of Q2 shows that the lines spoken in both by Marcellus are as near to identical as to be drawn from the same source, as Duthie showed, and the same has since been shown to be true of the lines spoken by Lucianus and Voltemand. According to Greg’s theory, an actor who played the part of Marcellus—and later scholars have extended this to include the same actor doubling in the parts of Lucianus and Voltemand35—became unhappy at some point in the service of the company and departed, taking with him his personal “part” (a cue script containing all of his lines and only those lines, to be delivered by other actors, with which he would be prompted to deliver his own characters’ lines);36 then, based on his memory of the rest of the play and armed with the lines he had retained intact in his own part, this disenfranchised figure reconstructed it for any stationer who might be willing to make money from the popularity of the play. The high level of correspondence between the Q1 and the Q2 for these parts makes Greg’s theory difficult to combat. If memorial reconstruction is valid, then Q1 must have been written down after the text on which Q2 is based, even though it made its way into print beforehand. Accordingly, it too can tell us nothing about the performance history of the play, except for the perhaps inflated claim by the publisher about it having been diverse times played in sundry locations. Paul Werstine has proposed two valuable questions about the memorial reconstruction argument: why are there some sections of dialogue, other than those delivered by the actor-reporter favoured by memorial reconstructionists, which are also delivered as near to verbatim in both texts, without being consistently verbatim across the full stretch of lines spoken by the character in question (both Hamlet and Corambis-Polonius, for example, match in some dialogue between both versions, even in scenes where the so-called actor-reporter would not be on stage); why, also, does some of the dialogue spoken by several other characters while the actor-reporter is on stage get terribly misrepresented in Q1?37 According to Greg, the dialogue should be near-to-exact in scenes where the actor-reporter is involved, yet correspondences should diminish markedly in scenes in which this actor played no part, yet Werstine points out that this is manifestly not the case throughout the texts. In particular,

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Werstine observes that the lines delivered by the Ghost after the exit of Marcellus toward the end of Act 1, Scene 4 demonstrate a high level of correspondence.38 Thus, by the end of Act 1, memorial reconstruction begins to come unstuck. Yet Werstine does not set out to disprove Greg’s theory altogether; rather, he argues that editors and critics have mistakenly adopted the unwavering belief that Greg’s theory has been demonstrably proven; rather, it is “an undemonstrable hypothesis.”39 Notwithstanding such claims, it is worth noting the earlier attempt by Laurie Maguire to do just this—to develop a rigorous method for assessing the “bad” Quartos as potential memorial reconstructions.40 Maguire’s methods of assessment enable her to dismiss a good many of the suspect texts, but we should note that the Q1 of Hamlet, in particular, is not dismissed altogether, the final assessment being that it is “possibly” a memorial reconstruction, “but if so, a very good one.”41 As we have seen already, orthodoxies in Shakespearean scholarship are very difficult to dislodge. The risk is that by finding holes in the memorial reconstruction argument, we end up shredding it altogether, as can happen when any orthodoxy is overturned. Werstine makes the valuable assertion that the conclusions Greg draws simply do not follow completely from the textual evidence, and that subsequent attempts to prove these conclusions merely engage in circular reasoning: since we know which parts the actorreporter played, all that is left for us to do is to account for discrepancies in his memory of the remainder of the Q2 text. It is important to remember that “memorial reconstruction” is a theory which attempts to offer a viable explanation for the fact that Q1 contains some portions of text that are near to identical to those found in Q2 while for the most part the Q1 text differs wildly and in inferior fashion. It is equally important to remember that the observations Werstine makes about the unproven nature of the hypothesis do not mean that the textual evidence pinpointed by Duthie and others is inaccurate, and Maguire’s analysis also bears this out. The fact remains that of the 87 lines delivered in Q1 by Marcellus, Voltemar, and Lucianus, only two are not replicated as near as possible to verbatim in the Q2. One of these is replicated identically in the Q2 for a different character but is restored to Marcellus in the Folio version: Marcellus asks, “What hath this thing appear’d again tonight” in the first scene in both Q1 and F, but the line is given to Horatio in Q2.42 The other problem line is the removal of two words from the demand by Marcellus that Hamlet not approach the Ghost in Act 1, Scene 4—“My Lord be rulde, you shall not goe” (in Q1) appears in Q2 and F as “You shall not goe my Lord,” while it is Horatio who insists, “Be rul’d, you shall not go.”43 In other words, one line and two words are taken from Marcellus and given to Horatio in the Q2, but

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this is reduced to two words in F. Furthermore, in this exchange in Act 1, Scene 4, Q2 and F both give Marcellus an extra line immediately before exiting: “Nay, let’s follow him.”44 Rather than treat such discrepancies as a further potential nail in the coffin of memorial reconstruction arguments, let us ask ourselves about whether an actor-reporter might in fact be justified in making alterations even to the source part if the original presented problems of its own. First, consider this exchange as it appears in Q2: Ham. ... goe on, Ile followe thee. Exit Ghost and Hamlet. Hora. He waxes desperate with imagion. Mar. Lets followe, tis not fit thus to obey him. Hora. Haue after, to what issue will this come? Mar. Something is rotten in the state of Denmarke. Hora. Heauen will direct it. Mar. Nay lets follow him.45

Remember that this is soon after Marcellus has advised Hamlet not to go, and Horatio has insisted that Hamlet be likewise “ruled” as such. If an actor-reporter has a cue script for Marcellus, all of this dialogue, being alternating by one line per speaker at a time, and therefore containing all of the lines by his interlocutor as cues, will have been available to him. He will thus see that this brief exchange introduces an unnecessary point of resistance on Horatio’s part to the idea of following Hamlet for the sake of his protection. Having just told Hamlet of the dangers that await him with the Ghost, Horatio now appears reluctant to do anything besides leaving Hamlet’s fate to Heaven. Most important, though, is the fact that in this version of the play, Marcellus is twice expected to utter the phrase, “let’s follow,” wherein only the second is supposed to be the cue to actually follow Hamlet and exit. From the perspective of the action, the exchange seems superfluous, and potentially contrary to Horatio’s character, but just as importantly, from the perspective of the staging, the repetition of the cue to exit is a risk that need not be taken. Q1 “solves” these problems, I feel, by removing the repetition and giving to Marcellus the demand that Hamlet “be ruled”: Ham. ... go on, ile followe thee. Hora. He waxeth desperate with imagination. Mar. Something is rotten in the state of Denmarke. Hora. Haue after; to what issue will this sort? Mar. Lets follow, tis not fit thus to obey him. exit.46

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We thus confront the prospect that Q1 might even be an improvement on Q2, rather than inferior in all respects, as has been the prevailing view for a very long time. We need to be clear that these insights do not prove that Q1 is a memorial reconstruction with additional improvements, based on a text from which Q2 and F were also developed. These changes could just as easily have been made under entirely different circumstances, or it may be that Q1 preceded the Q2 text, and the playwright amended this scene for the worse, a thought that is surely anathema to bardolaters but which must never be discounted. What I want to make clear at this point is that memorial reconstruction is not a particularly orthodox position, as debates over the provenance of Q1 have resurfaced in recent years. Werstine’s millennial ruminations about memorial reconstruction—published as they were in 1999—seem to be indicative of a moment in which critics were vehemently reviving the old debates once more. There are three principal positions that are worth recounting here in brief: 1. Q1 provides evidence of the playwright’s ongoing revision of the play through a number of literary drafts,47 extending perhaps to the prospect that Q1 records in some degree the ur-Hamlet text;48 2. Q1 is a performance text, but most likely the result of abridgement and simplification of the play for a provincial performance,49 or for a London performance under pressure of staging;50 3. Q1 is indeed a pirated copy, created most likely through memorial reconstruction. In the first two positions, the prospect of Shakespeare’s involvement in the Q1 is retained and they differ primarily on the question of whether it is a literary text or a performance text, first and foremost. Only in the third is it required that Shakespeare’s hand is absent from the Q1 except in so far as 87 lines of the original are retained by the thieving hand of the “pirate” or actor-reporter. Each position has its attractions and compelling evidence within the Q1 text itself, but each is weakened precisely to the extent that the evidence on which the other positions rely must be explained away. If Q1 belongs to a history of revision, what can explain the logic of retaining the bit parts of Marcellus, Voltemar, and Lucianus unchanged, while other characters are removed, dialogue is radically altered, and whole scenes are transformed and rearranged? Yet if Q1 had been an abridgement intended for performance, the question of the 87 lines remains, and we confront the issue of why the playwright would turn otherwise dramatically effective lines into dross— “To be or not to be, that is the question,” for example, is

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amended to read “To be or not to be, I there’s the point, To Die, to sleepe, is that all?”51 As for the third position, Werstine’s incisive critique gives us reason to suspect that the position is not entirely foolproof. My sense of this situation is that the intractability of these positions is not to be found in the nature of the evidence but in the extent to which the proponents of each position adhere to a particular view of textual practice. The differences between proponents of the first and second positions can be linked, in effect, to a difference in view of the Q1 as either a literary or a performance text. What prevents all three positions from finding a happy medium with either of the others is an abiding desire, I suggest, to imagine a single moment of production as primary: Shakespeare wrote the play for publication (and every other process is secondary, including multiple acts of revision), or he wrote the play for performance (as scripts or as promptbook, or what have you), or it was pirated and copied down in a single act of reporting from memory. In order to resolve the conundrum of having three equally valid but mutually exclusive positions, we must abandon this desire for a single moment of production. To understand the method, it will instead be necessary to picture the production of Hamlet within a series of processes or activities, the end result of which has been the generation of three versions of the play as the material residues of these processes. Let us imagine, for a start, that the actor-reporter need not have been involved in a single performance of a Q2-based play. Where there are multiple performances over a number of years (especially within a culture of revival of older plays), there are bound to be multiple textual residues. Similarly, in an environment in which several acting companies changed personnel over time—which is hardly a trait confined to the Elizabethan theatre—it stands to reason that multiple performances will have involved a range of performers over time. Regarding this second point, though, it is important to note that we know a significant amount of detail regarding The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, the nature of their business dealings, and their personnel. The blind spot we possess is in the repertory and dates of their performances. Yet our extensive knowledge about the company tells us that they were relatively static in personnel when we compare them to other companies, as we shall discuss later in this chapter. The disgruntled but anonymous actor-reporter on which a memorial reconstruction theory relies should be potentially identifiable if we test it against what we now know of the company. It is upon this premise that much of what follows in this book is based. Rather than argue for one of the prevailing but seemingly intractable positions, and at the expense of either or both of the others, I want to offer what I think is a plausible scenario to explain the vagaries of the Q1 text:

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let us entertain the notion that the actor-reporter, who was scripted to play Marcellus, Lucianus, and Voltemand, in a performance that became the source for the Q2 text, could also have played in earlier performances of Hamlet, such as the one that Lodge records having seen at The Theatre in 1596. This scenario could provide for a combination of all three prevailing positions. Such an explanation could account, for example, for variations in correspondences between Q1 and Q2, wherein some sections match as closely as the memorial reconstruction explanation suggests while other sections may bear absolutely no resemblance to each other. Let us further suppose that this actor-reporter who has only peripheral roles in the Q2 text previously filled the role of Corambis, and that this role was later substantially revised for a different player. This would help to explain the wide range in correspondence between Q1 and Q2 for the Corambis and Polonius lines, often matching verbatim while at other times being either different or missing altogether, as Werstine noted in his critique of Greg’s theory. Clearly, the Corambis part in Q1 predates the Polonius part—it would be a terrible lapse for any actor-reporter to altogether fail to recall the name of one of the chief roles of a Q2-based performance. Along the same lines, we can imagine that an actor-reporter who played the part of Marcellus must have been having an off day if he was unable to recall the names of Barnardo and Francisco, both of whom are on stage with him in Act 1, Scene 1 and the first of whom is on stage again in Act 1, Scene 2. Instead, the Q1 gives both of these parts as unnamed, numbered sentinels, which may have been the case in a performance that the actor-reporter is recalling. In such a scenario, we also find support for the notion that the actorreporter was disgruntled, since being downgraded to peripheral roles is an index of a performer being marginalised by the company. If the actor in question had previously performed as Corambis, the company’s decision to apportion him only 87 lines spread across three minor characters in this revival of the play speaks to the reduced standing of this player with his fellow players. In what follows, I aim to demonstrate that the player might have been facing an even greater scale of diminished stature: the player to whom we might attribute the Q1 version may well have played the earliest manifestation of the Hamlet role, before being assigned the clowned roles of Corambis and the gravedigger in revivals during the 1590s and then, at the last, leaving the company during preparations for a 1599 production in which he had received the parts of Marcellus, Lucianus, and Voltemand. I do this, though, mindful of the material difficulty we have identified: the only textual material on which we can test for connections between Q1 and an earlier version is the Q1 text itself. This has always been a problem

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for proponents of an early ur-Hamlet as well, which brings me to a key point concerning such speculations. Critics tend to agree that the Q1 text is stylistically inferior to Q2, but if the Q1 is based in part on a recollection of earlier performances, the seeming intractability of the three prevailing positions dissolves, as the obvious inferiority of Q1 can be accommodated by the same stylistic logic according to which Q2 could not have been written before about 1599. It is entirely plausible that the inferiority of the Q1 text could be attributed to much of its text having originated in the years before 1599, only to then be recollected in more or less faithful form around 1603, but with the more recent script for some of the minor parts retained almost verbatim because the actor-reporter had a Q2 part to hand. According to this scenario, Q1 could also reference earlier versions of the play and subsequent revisions that the play might have undergone during a series of revivals over a number of years. The evidence for such a scenario remains to be demonstrated, and this will indeed be the key focus throughout this book but I foreshadow it here, in the context of considering the relationship of Shakespeare’s Hamlet to its source materials, because it upsets any suggestion that the transmission of ideas must adhere to ay straightforward, linear trajectory. Rather than an urHamlet, penned by some alternative hand, to mediate between the SaxoBelleforest Amleth stories and Shakespeare’s Hamlet, we might consider that the mysteries of the Q1-Q2 relationship can be resolved by thinking of a 1603 text produced both after Q2, as a record of only some of its parts, and significantly before it, as a residue of earlier versions to which Lodge and others bore witness. In place of the ur-Hamlet, then, Q1 might record for us a history of transmission in which earlier Amleth material gets taken up directly by the author of an early Hamlet play and that this play undergoes a series of revivals and revisions, the end result of which is the Q2. Q1 is then written down after, based on both the Q2 (in parts) and the earlier versions of the play (in memory). Such paradoxes do not sit well with us, even in an academy in which ideas about the potentially endless dispersal of meaning in any text now sit comfortably, and this may in part be due to our reflective gaze, in which we see our established book culture mirrored in the practices of those who were plying their trade during its infancy, over four hundred years earlier. It will thus be necessary, in what follows, to also demonstrate that Q1 has more in common with the known historical source materials than do the Q2 or F texts, strengthening the case for the Q1 being based on more direct borrowing from these sources, even though the published version is committed to paper after the Q2 has reworked this same set of materials.

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The Merest of the Early Tragedies The reader may already have guessed that I am mounting a case that the so-called “ur-Hamlet,” rather than being a source for Shakespeare’s play, may have been penned by Shakespeare himself. I should note that the main reason for mounting this case is, in keeping with the goal of a textually-evidenced cultural history, to return to the play in terms of its method, reinforcing the point that we simply do not need an ur-Hamlet to pull together the fragmentary evidence of a pre-1599 Hamlet into a single causal explanation. The desire to match a number of disparate historical references to a single pre-existing version of the play, and to then see this earlier version as the primary source for the later play, is an expression of our contemporary book culture and its ultimate figurehead: the book. Once it is agreed that Q2 cannot be dated to before 1599, the next logical step is to conclude that references to earlier Hamlet performances could not be to Shakespeare’s play, so we go in search of a separate work onto which we can hang all of these earlier references; ergo, the ur-Hamlet. My goal is to tear up this singular ur-Hamlet, to suggest that a more complicated history of production viably accounts for the evidence we have to date, and might add support for claims that Shakespeare could himself have been involved in some capacity at every step of the way in this more complicated history. In Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist, Lukas Erne gives us a valuable framework for thinking beyond “the book” as a locus for authorial agency throughout Shakespeare’s career: “When Shakespeare started working as a playwright, playtexts were not considered literary artifacts, written by an author, with a life on the stage and the page. Such a summary statement no longer applies halfway through his career, however, and is even less true at the moment of his death.”52 We need not dispense altogether with the idea of Shakespeare as the author of the play; it is simply necessary to view authorship at that time— especially in the theatre—as a fragmentary process that was evolving and adapting to demands of both the new theatre and the emergent trade in printed play texts. It is only necessary that we dispense with “the book” as the ultimate source of authorial status in the theatre during Shakespeare’s career. In Shakespeare and the Book, David Scott Kastan maps out the uneasy relationship between the two principal terms in his title, concluding that any assertions made about Shakespeare’s success based on his printed output ignore the evidence that Shakespeare is unlikely to have had direct involvement in the publishing process, nor do we have any record of him ever having expressed a desire to do so.53 As Kastan notes, the publication histories of the plays that were published during Shakespeare’s lifetime—

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amounting in any case to less than half of the total output we now attribute to Shakespeare—tell us plenty about the market and the will of investors but nothing of any consequence about the “intentions” of an author. Even the use of Shakespeare’s name seems more often than not to have been a question of the marketability of the name: the name remains absent from the eight Quartos printed from 1594 to 1597, but then 21 of the 29 editions of Shakespeare’s plays printed in Quarto or Octavo from 1598 to 1616 do name Shakespeare as playwright.54 The name of Shakespeare can be seen to have thus become a key factor in the marketing of his plays, albeit not universally, after 1597. In Chapter Two, we shall consider the relationship between playing company and stationer in more detail, pinpointing 1597 as a turning point in this relationship, based on data from the Stationers’ Register. Yet as Kastan notes, the publication history of the plays tells us nothing about the playwright’s relative stature among his contemporaries on the London stage. We do possess contemporary views on Shakespeare, such as the “upstart crow” reference, but not all are as negative as this. At this point, then, I wish to consider one contemporary reference for what it can tell us—or perhaps, more importantly, for what it will never tell us— about the standing of Hamlet among other plays in Shakespeare’s oeuvre. One of the pieces of evidence that is sometimes cited for not attributing the ur-Hamlet to Shakespeare is its absence from a list provided by Francis Meres in Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury in 1598: As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy and Tragedy among the Latines: so Shakespeare among Ǥ English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage; for Comedy, witnes his Gͅtlemͅ of Verona, his Errors, his Love labours lost, his Love labours wonne, his Midsummers night dreame, & his Merchant of Venice; for Tragedy his Richard the 2. Richard the 3. Henry the 4. King John, Titus Andronicus and his Romeo 55 and Juliet.

This document provides a fitting testimony in support of what Kastan observes about the discrepancy between a playwright’s stature and his published output, since Meres cites as evidence of Shakespeare being “most excellent” for both Comedy and Tragedy twelve plays in all, six for each, of which yet only seven had been published in Quarto by that time. This list also passes as evidence for ur-Hamlet proponents since it has no reference to the play we now consider to be Shakespeare’s best Tragedy. The absence of the play here surely proves that the Hamlet performed prior to 1598 was not considered by Meres to be one of Shakespeare’s. Yet we need to be very clear about what kind of evidence is presented by this text. Meres is cataloguing only those plays that prove Shakespeare’s

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excellence in the genres of “Comedy and Tragedy” by comparison with the Latin masters of each, thus advocating for Shakespeare to be seen as pre-eminent among his contemporaries, given his mastery of both forms. Since Hamlet is a Tragedy, a list of his Tragedies should include it, if he had written it before 1598. We might ask, though, what was the criterion for inclusion of each play in either category? One place to start to answer this question is to consider other obvious anomalies. The list of Comedies seems to be clear cut, notwithstanding the absence of Taming of the Shrew—which was not published until the Folio, and its early provenance is uncertain in any case56—and the inclusion of the unknown Love labours wonne in the list. Given that the other five plays are all included in the First Folio as Comedies, we could scarcely quibble with Meres over the classification of these plays, although The Merchant of Venice was in its earliest imprint classified as a History. The list of Tragedies is less clear cut, given that of the six plays listed here, only two—Titus Andronicus and Romeo and Juliet—are listed in the First Folio under the heading of Tragedies. The other four, that is, the English history plays, are all catalogued in the Folio as Histories. It is worth mentioning, of course, that Meres was cataloguing the best of Shakespeare’s plays according to the types of drama that were attributed to Plautus (Comedies) and Seneca (Tragedies), so it would be natural to assume that he would be uninterested in a list of Histories and would be most inclined to think of Shakespeare’s plays as belonging to one or another of these two classes alone. Yet it is also worth noting that the classifications were themselves less than clear cut during the period in question. When they were printed in Quarto, and three of these four History plays were printed before 1598, this classification was perhaps not so evident to readers. The first Quartos of both Richard II and Richard III are explicitly identified as Tragedies by their publishers on the two title pages: “The Tragedy of King Richard the Third” (1596); and “The Tragedy of King Richard the second” (1597). The Henry VI plays, which Meres omits, are also difficult to define any other way: whereas 2 Henry VI was published under the verbose but accurate title of “The First part of the Contention betwixt the two famous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster” (1594), its sequel was marked as “The true Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke, and the good King Henry the Sixt” (1595). The three Richards, including the Duke whose fate is bound up with Henry VI, were thus identified as Tragedies by the printers of these Quartos. The odd ones out here are the Henry IV plays, listed by Meres under the banner of a single title. The first of these plays was marked in large print on the title of its First Quarto in 1598 as the “History of Henry the Fourth” (1Henry IV). It

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is very likely that Meres was not yet familiar with the Quarto when he wrote his list, given that both were printed in 1598: from the Stationers’ Register, we know that Shakespeare’s play was registered on 25 February and published later the same year,57 while Wit’s Treasury was registered on 7 September.58 The latter was in all likelihood close to being finished at around the time that “History of Henry the Fourth” was released. It is thus possible that the play could have been billed previously as a Tragedy, as a continuation of the broader narrative stretching across the Tragedies of the Richards, with Meres remembering this much aright. The absence of the Henry VI plays from the list of Tragedies is worth considering further. I suggest three possible reasons for their omission: 1. Meres did not know or believe that the plays were by Shakespeare; 2. He did not think the plays represented evidence of his excellence in the form; or 3. He simply forgot to include them. Regarding the first possibility, we note again that Shakespeare’s name was absent from the title pages of both imprints, but then this was true of all of his published texts until 1598. We do know, however, that when Greene’s “upstart crow” comment was published in 1592, it made a clear reference to the text of 3Henry VI, describing a “Tiger’s heart wrapped in a Player’s hide,” in an obvious echo of York’s “tiger’s heart wrapped in a woman’s hide” (1.4.138).59 This suggests it was common knowledge by 1591 that Shakespeare had written the “true Tragedie” of 3Henry VI. As the Henry VI plays are among the earliest we attribute to Shakespeare, the second possibility may have more validity. It may well be the case that his earliest Tragedies failed to stand the test of contemporary regard after a few short years. The Tragedy of Richard II was already popular enough by 1598 to warrant both a second and a third print run, a second print run of Richard III also appeared that year, and Romeo and Juliet was about to be printed in a second edition in 1599. The later Tragedies were very much in vogue circa 1598, it seems. If, however, it is true that Meres simply forgot about the Henry VI plays in 1598, then their absence from this list provides no evidence one way or the other regarding critical reception of the plays by Meres or any other contemporary. Whichever reason may be true for the failure by Meres to include the Henry VI plays in his list of Shakespeare’s most excellent Tragedies, we can deduce from this exercise that the omission of Hamlet tells us just as much about its early provenance. If Meres forgot the Henry VI plays, he could have done the same with an early Hamlet play. If he did not think

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the early Henry VI plays warranted inclusion, the same could also apply for an early Hamlet, particularly if some residue of its text survives in fragmentary form in the “inferior” Q1 Hamlet so roundly denigrated by generations of modern critics. Furthermore, if Meres knew of this earlier Hamlet but did not think that it was Shakespeare’s, then this list tells us nothing about the earlier Hamlet that modern scholarship does not already widely regard as fact based on a pun on the word “Kidde” in 1589. When Meres compiled his list in 1598, “the book” as the kind of object we know it today had not yet taken hold in his imagination—recall that five of the plays in his list were not yet published—but Shakespeare had emerged in the chronicler’s mind as a challenger to the heritage of Plautus and Seneca. His failure to list Hamlet does not mean we must discard the play from our sense of Shakespeare’s output before 1598 or else we would be compelled to do the same—despite all evidence to the contrary—with the Henry VI plays, for example. All that we can glean from Meres, then, is that his list is indicative only of Shakespeare’s relative stature circa 1598, and it may help us to appreciate the extent to which some of the plays conventionally classified as Histories after 1623 were initially identified as Tragedies. In the case of the provenance of Hamlet, alas, Meres has nothing whatsoever to add.

Removing the “Kidde” from the ur-Hamlet Rather than search for evidence regarding the earlier Hamlet in sources that omit it, let us focus instead on the references which, as we have seen, lend weight to the idea that an earlier version, most likely written by Kyd, was in circulation throughout the decade prior to the years in which it is usually thought possible for Shakespeare to have become involved. The standard account tends to proceed by plotting these three references to a play by the same name in forward chronological fashion, starting with the 1589 attack on English Seneca and ending with Lodge’s account of 1596. Indeed, we did much the same thing here previously, when first recording the known historical references on which the case for an ur-Hamlet usually hangs. Yet this progressive chronology is based on a premise that we have a clear point of origin and can trace forward from this point to identify the subsequent references to performances that are related to this origin point. In other words, the chronology begins by referencing a non-Shakespearean origin, and then links other pre-1599 Hamlet references back to this nonShakespearean source. Accordingly, Shakespeare’s 1599 or 1600 Hamlet is then viewed as having borrowed from the earlier source text. Let us now consider the history in reverse, by taking the fact that Shakespeare wrote a

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Hamlet play in 1599 or 1600 as a starting point, and pushing back through time to see how far back we might extend his involvement with the play in its earlier guises. We have already noted that the 1596 reference by Lodge is to a performance at The Theatre, which of course was home to The Lord Chamberlain’s Men at this same time. When scholarship begins with Kyd as a starting point, there are some crucial assumptions made on the basis of comparisons with The Spanish Tragedy, which we know was penned by around 1588. We shall look at these comparisons in further detail shortly. I note them here because they are frequently used to lend weight to the idea that Kyd was responsible for reworking Belleforest’s Amleth tale to suit the new mode of Tragedy for Elizabethan tastes. Let us start a point of comparison instead with the first print version of Hamlet we possess: in 1603, the Q1 was printed as “The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet,” the title of which points curiously to a direct link in name to Belleforest’s Histoires tragiques, which literally translates as “tragical histories.”60 When the Q2 appeared in 1604, it retained the title despite being evidently different in many ways from Q1. In 1603, then, as the Q1 was being prepared for publication, the adopted title could be said to have been influenced directly by Belleforest. This is not evidence that Shakespeare took his title directly from Belleforest, to be sure, since it is unlikely that Shakespeare had any involvement at all in the nomination of the title for the Q1 print run. Yet a Q1-Belleforest link, at least in name, means that it may not be necessary for us to posit Kyd—putative author of a Danish Tragedy to match his own Spanish play—betwixt Belleforest and the Q1. At the very least, we can deduce that when the manuscript for the Q1 was being prepared for print, Belleforest’s Amleth was potentially a direct source, rather than any Kyd play. This term, “Tragicall Historie,” is also possible to link to Shakespeare, however, given what we do know of the Q1 and Q2/F texts: we need only recall the joke about the escalation of fanciful crossover genres delivered in all three versions by the CorambisPolonius figure. As lovers of the play know well, Polonius waxes eloquent about the travelling players being the “best actors in the world, either for / tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, / historico-pastoral, scene individable” (2.2.333-35). In F, Polonius expands this list to include “Tragicall-Historicall” among more nonsensically grouped play types, but in the Q1, as well, Corambis refers to “Tragedy historicall”.61 The point is that in all three versions, the joke rebounds on the title of the play itself. The play text thus provides a clue that the playwright had crossover genres like “Tragicall Historie” in mind when the lines for the Corambis-Polonius figure were penned in whatever version we care to consider. The internal self-referential joke renders Kyd superfluous as a bridge between Hamlet

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and the classification of one of its principal sources. We push back, then, from the 1603 text, beyond Meres, to 1596. It is at this point that standard chronologies of ur-Hamlet usually end, attributing to Kyd the ghost witnessed by Lodge. Yet we note the likely involvement of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men in the performance that Lodge recalls. If Shakespeare played no part in this production, it might well have been due to an absence from the company occasioned by events at Stratford-uponAvon. Stephen Greenblatt speculates about the impact on Shakespeare of news of the failing health of his only son: “at some point in the summer he must have learned that Hamnet’s condition had worsened and that it was necessary to drop everything and hurry home. By the time he reached Stratford the eleven-year-old-boy—whom, apart from brief returns, Shakespeare had in effect abandoned in his infancy—may have already died.”62 We do not know exactly when Shakespeare made his way back to Stratford, of course, but we do know that on August 11 of that year, the burial register at The Holy Trinity Church in Stratford recorded the interment of “Hamnet filius William Shakspere.” For Greenblatt, the impact of his son’s death went unregistered in Shakespeare’s writings, save for the rhetoric of the grieving mother in King John, until he decided to respond to more immediate pressures around 1600 to 1601, when his revision of the old Kyd play—which also bore the name of his dead son— became psychologically necessary for him.63 In Greenblatt’s account, there is no suggestion that Shakespeare’s company might have performed the 1596 play, but I add Greenblatt’s speculations to my own here, to mark the coincidence of the death of Shakespeare’s son and the observation by a contemporary that the Hamlet play had been performed at The Theatre. We lack the necessary historical detail to make psychological arguments of this kind, but we might pause over arguments that map Shakespeare’s mind on the basis of recapitulating the ur-Hamlet chronology, enabling assumptions that Shakespeare does not come into contact with Hamlet until four years after the death of his son. Greenblatt is in good company with his approach, with psychological readings of Shakespeare’s life being in vogue for well over a century.64 To be historically accurate, however, we know that Lodge’s account of the play and the death of Shakespeare’s son both took place in 1596, but remain unsure which preceded which. Nevertheless, if we want to argue for Shakespeare’s direct involvement in the 1596 production, there is a powerful temptation to want to speculate that after his son’s death, Shakespeare marked the occasion immediately by bringing the play of Hamlet out of the cabinet for an autumn run at The Theatre. According to Nicholas Rowe, the earliest editor and biographer of Shakespeare, regarding the playwright’s own acting career, “the top of his

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performance was the Ghost in his own Hamlet.”65 How tempting it must be, armed with this piece of evidence, to conclude that in 1596, after the death of his only son, Shakespeare performed the Ghost that “cried so miserably” at The Theatre, yet we cannot be sure. Either way, I suggest, the son’s death is worth marking as the potential basis for a psychological reading of the prospects for a 1596 Shakespeare Hamlet regardless of the relative order of events. If the play had been performed earlier in the year, Shakespeare could surely not help but to have been struck by the irony of the performance presaging the demise of his only son. If this is the case, we could be stuck on the verge of a psychological precipice that explains the curious anomaly observed by Greenblatt: “In the four years following Hamnet’s death, the playwright, as many have pointed out, wrote some of his sunniest comedies.”66 If the “tragical” 1596 performance of Hamlet presaged his son’s death, Shakespeare could justifiably have been driven to disregard the genre in the foreseeable future, turning his hand to writing only Comedies for an interval. In addition to Greenblatt’s observation, we also note that the Henry IV plays are usually dated to the period from 1596 to 1598, but we have also already observed that while Meres catalogued them as Tragedies, they are the first of Shakespeare’s Histories to avoid the term “Tragedy” on the title page. Even when he was writing Tragedy in the wake of his son’s death, then, the playwright recasts the form in the mode of “History”. Is it conceivable, along such lines, that the death of Shakespeare’s son provided the catalyst for the formulation—or at least the first formal designation—of this newest Elizabethan dramatic genre? Is this the sign of a will to want to write tragic materials but, under pressure of grief, to displace tragic content under the rubric of chronicle history?67 Such a question is perhaps more provocative than provable, but it is worth asking at least in response to any psychological reading that recapitulates the notion that Shakespeare’s involvement with the Hamlet play comes some four years or so after the death of his son. The reader will of course have noted the discrepancy between the two names in question here: Hamnet and Hamlet. We retain the name Hamnet here only via convention and we have seen that the name of the child was recorded as such in the burial register, but as the late Eric Sams argued for over a decade, the name given to his son by Shakespeare was most likely Hamlet, since this is how the name of the friend after whom Hamnet is named is given in Shakespeare’s own will—“Hamlett Sadler xxvjs viijd to buy him a ringe”—and the name of a woman known to Stratford locals for having drowned in the river Avon in 1579, leading to an inquest which may be a source for the Ophelia drowning, was Katherine Hamlett.68 Sams points out that the name “Hamnet” is likely to have been interchangeable

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with “Hamlet” in any case. Importantly, I reiterate that the attribution of the 1596 performance to Shakespeare does not hinge on the question of whether or not the play was staged before or after his son’s death. In either scenario, it is possible to insert Shakespeare into the 1596 reference, and in such a way as to recuperate a plausible psychological reading, of the kind that is often supported by removing Shakespeare altogether from the picture of a performance of a Hamlet play in 1596 in order to imagine the playwright being so damaged by his son’s death that he would delay the revival of the old Kyd play for four years. Yet we must be careful about overstating any psychological impact of the death of Shakespeare’s son, lest we again risk reading Hamlet and its origins through the reflective gaze, in much the same way that Coleridge did when he offered to use the term “psychology” to refer to the interiority of the character of Hamlet. Fathers and sons had a different relationship in early modern England than in more modern times because of the importance of the figure of the firstborn son in laws pertaining to property. Common law as it applied to primogeniture—the inalienable right of the firstborn son to be the prime inheritor of a deceased estate—locked property into the family in simple and direct fashion, but also placed great responsibility on the role of the firstborn son. It is far too easy now to forge sentimental approaches to the early modern desire of men to produce a son, based on some sense of the family name as all important, but we underestimate the degree to which name was tied inexorably to property and that both, in turn, were attached by common law to the firstborn son. Margreta de Grazia points out that Hamlet’s thwarted ambition in the play is meaningful to an early modern audience in terms of this inalienable right,69 but we can add here that the law of primogeniture also placed significantly greater social weight onto Hamnet as the sole viable inheritor of Shakespeare’s property, a line of succession that was lost with his son’s death in 1596. In the same year, on October 20, some 27 years after Shakespeare’s father had unsuccessfully applied for a family coat of arms, Shakespeare applied a second time and was finally granted a heraldic device. Greenblatt reads this milestone in terms of the relationship between John and William, and Shakespeare’s desire to cast off the shadow of his father’s loss of stature,70 but given that Hamnet was buried in August, it is surely impossible to ignore the timing of the revival of the application in this respect as well. Greenblatt notes that acquisition of the herald carried with it elevation to the status of gentleman, which had the capacity to protect the property interests of Shakespeare’s wife and children, though again he makes no mention of Hamnet’s recent death in this context. Stanley Wells, on the other hand, observes a potential link between Hamnet’s death in August,

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1596, and the purchase, in May 1597, of New Place, the second largest house in Stratford-upon-Avon.71 For Wells, the two events are indicative of a renewed desire on Shakespeare’s part to commit to his home town, in contrast to a popular view that Shakespeare had abandoned Stratford and only returned there as circumstances demanded. This Shakespeare endures London because it is where his talents can best be turned for profit, and these profits enable him, as Wells explains, to “come a long way in a short time,” particularly in his home town.72 If we group together the death of Hamnet, Shakespeare’s successful renewal of the application for a family herald, and the purchase of New Place, we can pinpoint the rationale for Shakespeare’s actions that have nothing to do with the psychology of a grieving father and much more to do with registering the likely impact on his sense of social standing occasioned by the death of his only son. In the months after Hamnet’s death, Shakespeare’s response appears quick and decisive, which does not accord with the perception that he shied away from his grief and was unable to respond for up to four years. More to the point, his response was appropriate to social and financial need: a herald and a substantial new property purchase. However we may wish to view Shakespeare’s Hamlet in relation to these events of 1596 and early 1597— which, as we shall see, only shortly precede a run of significant crises for Shakespeare’s company—it does seem to make more sense to imagine that the 1596 performance seen by Lodge and the death of Shakespeare’s only son are not purely coincidental. Any difficulty in understanding the precise nature of the relationship between the two events arises only because we lack a more precise sense of which preceded which. That Shakespeare’s company was responsible for performing the Hamlet seen by Lodge is at least a viable interpretation of the historical record, and it is a view that is strengthened by the timing of events in Stratford. The next earlier reference to a Hamlet is in Philip Henslowe’s diary— “9 of June 1594 Rd at hamlet”—referring to a performance of a play by this name at Newington Butts. It is not often noted in ur-Hamlet accounts that only a few lines above the Hamlet reference, Henslowe lists that the plays are “begininge at newing-ton my Lord Admeralle men & my Lorde chamberlen men.”73 From the beginning of June, 1594, the newly formed Lord Chamberlain’s Men had found their first home at Newington Butts, situated just outside London. Hamlet appears as the seventh play listed for June, with one of the preceding plays being another Shakespearean play: “5 of June 1594 Rd at andronicus.” We can assume that a new company would be seeking to rapidly build up its repertory of materials, and since Shakespeare was in the group of players who had signed on with the Lord Chamberlain, any materials that he had already compiled would have been

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put forward for performance. Two days after Hamlet was performed, on June 11, Taming of the Shrew is also recorded as having been performed, with a second performance of Titus Andronicus another day later. This is, however, where the list of Shakespearean plays in Henslowe ends. He does not annotate the July list with any indication that the following plays were performed only by The Lord Admiral’s Men, but it seems certain that Shakespeare’s company had departed from Newington Butts within two weeks of their first performances. Indeed, so brief must their stay have been that some histories of the company disregard these Henslowe diary entries altogether, instead locating the company at The Theatre from their beginnings. Thus, just as Andrew Gurr does not include Newington Butts in his history of large theatres, Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London,74 he also makes no mention of the Newington Butts venture in his otherwise thoroughly detailed The Shakespeare Company, 1594-1642. Yet there they patently were, for at least four performances of plays we associate with Shakespeare, two of which conventionally date to before 1594, but only one of which was in print by that time.75 Another important feature of the Henslowe diary entry is that the play is not marked here by the precursory symbol “ne,” with which Henslowe appears to have marked all other new plays in his diary; that is, for a play in its very first performance. While Titus and Shrew are certainly being played at Newington Butts for the first time in this month, the absence of the symbol next to their entries suggests that Henslowe is aware that they are not “new” plays and cannot be billed as such for promotional purposes. The same is true, then, of Hamlet. When it was presented to Henslowe to include in the summer run, no case must have been made by the company for it being a new play. Accordingly, pushing back to 1594 in this way to the earliest documented history of Shakespeare’s company, we are able to identify evidence that places him alongside the play and acknowledgement that even at this early stage the play may be significantly older still. Of the normally catalogued references to the ur-Hamlet, the remaining milestone lies a further five years asunder. This becomes most difficult to tackle not because of the strength of evidence contained in Nashe’s “whole Hamlets ... of tragical speeches” but because of the mythology of the early origins of the play that has been attached to it. After all, Nashe’s reference is the first piece of evidence used in mapping an ur-Hamlet chronology, so all manner of importance is attached to this small snippet when we seek to attribute an ur-Hamlet to Kyd. Yet it was not always clear to scholars that Nashe was referring to Kyd with his “Kidde” quip, let alone that this quip was even directly related to his comment regarding “whole Hamlets.” The relevant section of the Nashe text reads, in full:

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English Seneca read by candle light yeeldes manie good sentences, as Bloud is a beggar, and so foorth : and if you intreate him faire in a frostie morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets, I should say hand-fulls of tragical speeches. But ô griefe! tempus edax rerum, what’s that will last alwaies? The sea exhaled in droppes will in continuance be drie, and Seneca let bloud line by line and page by page, at length must needes die to our stage: which makes his famisht followers to imitate the Kidde in Æsop, who enamored with the Foxes newfangles, forsooke all hopes of life to leape into a new occupation.76

In 1906, debate raged among scholars over the interpretation of Nashe’s words, following a 1905 PMLA essay in which Albert E. Jack summarised the history of the discussion and concluded bluntly that “Nash has not Kyd in mind in this paragraph nor indeed any dramatist at all.”77 The crux of the Nashe quote is not so much its reference to “whole Hamlets” but the observation in relation to the “English Seneca” that his followers imitate the “Kidde” in Aesop. There being no “kid” in any of the Aesop fables, the assumption is understandably made that Nashe is inserting a proper name.78 What seems to have been overlooked in these exchanges was that the fable of the “foxe and of the gote”—a young goat being called a kid, of course—was very much available in William Caxton’s 1484 English translation of Aesop’s fables, as was the fable of the “wulf and of the kydde,” although in neither of these fables is the victim enamoured with any “newfangles.” The goat in the first is simply tricked into helping the fox out of a well, the moral clearly being that he was duped rather than enamoured, and the kid in the second is able to forestall doom by refusing to believe the wolf’s lies.79 My point here is that Nashe’s wordplay is not straightforward. If he is indeed referring to Kyd with “Kidde,” then what should we make of “Foxes”—is it also meant to be a proper name and, if so, whose? The most viable candidate seems to be John Foxe, the writer responsible for the Book of Martyrs, which, from its publication in 1563, was a key to the widespread uptake of Puritan ideology in the last decades of the sixteenth century.80 Yet this helps in no way at all, since it is unclear why a reference to a Puritan idealist would add anything to an assessment of English refigurations of Seneca. Importantly, also, if Nashe propagates the analogy by drawing on Aesop, why does he take such liberties with his source by referring to a fable that is not to be found in Aesop? Jack points out that the wording used by Nashe is very close to a passage in Edmund Spenser’s Shepheardes Calendar of 1579, though it then becomes unclear why it is attributed by Nashe to Aesop.81 The Nashe reference generates more riddles than it does answers, even on the question of whether or not he is referring to Kyd, and as Jack and others argued over a century ago, his grammar reveals that there is no reason to suspect that his “Kidde in

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Aesop” is intended to be the author of the “whole Hamlets ... of tragical speeches” of several lines earlier. When it comes to suggesting that Shakespeare should have been made the target of Nashe’s attack on the popularity of Senecan tragedy among English playwrights, it is equally difficult to add anything conclusive. Until Greene’s 1592 attack on the “upstart” playwright, we have no other documented evidence of Shakespeare’s involvement in London theatres. Yet the fact is that Greene does make this attack in 1592—or, as we have suggested, he made the attack earlier, around 1591, and it was published posthumously in 1592—less than three years after Nashe pens his attack on English Seneca. We may wonder how long it would take a playwright to acquire the kind of reputation that would prompt an ad hominem attack by a writer of Greene’s stature, noting of course that it is in the preface to Greene’s own novella, Menaphon, that Nashe penned his earlier attack. Given the potential connection between Greene’s and Nashe’s attacks on playwrights, Katherine Duncan-Jones has argued that we might read both as having Shakespeare as their subject, or that he is one among a host of new writers included by Nashe under the collective proper noun, “English Seneca.”82 To mount such an argument, since it relies on the claim that Nashe is indeed directing his attack at a new brood of Senecan playwrights in England, it is necessary to argue that by 1589 Shakespeare had become known well enough to be counted among this cohort. One way to do this is to posit a viable time and entry point for Shakespeare, during the so-called “lost years,” to enter the London stage, leaving a sufficient interval during which he could catch the dissenting eye of Nashe. A quite popular notion is that Shakespeare landed a job with a touring company during a stopover for performances in Stratford. As Greenblatt explains in Will in the World, from 1586 to 1587, Stratford hosted three of the major theatrical troupes of their time: the Earl of Leicester’s Men, the Earl of Essex’s Men, and not least the troupe that bore Elizabeth’s own imprimatur, the Queen’s Men.83 The last represents arguably the most popular candidate for Shakespeare’s first foray with one of the major companies. Greenblatt notes that while in Stratford, on June 13, 1587, one of the leading actors of the Queen’s Men, William Knell, was killed, so the troupe found itself faced with a vacancy that needed to be filled quickly from among the local talent if the tour was to continue.84 Stanley Wells also remarks that the timing of these events seems right. While Wells is suitably equivocal about the extent to which the truth about Shakespeare’s entry to the London stage presently remains “a mystery,”85 he nevertheless finds the timing and stature of this company lends itself to the capacity for Shakespeare to have learned his craft among the best in

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the land as well as to have attracted the green-eyed attention of the more established wits like Greene and Nashe. Not being one to equivocate, Greenblatt goes further and adds that if Shakespeare did indeed take up with the Queen’s Men from June 1587, he would have been compelled to conceal his Catholic beliefs, the company being known as propagandists for Elizabeth’s Protestant reforms.86 Throughout Will in the World, Hamlet in Purgatory, and elsewhere, Greenblatt has long argued for the Catholic undercurrent in Shakespeare’s work.87 Supposing that Shakespeare’s first encounter with a theatrical company exposed him to Protestant scripts, so this argument runs, he must have been driven to affirm his own orthodox religious upbringing by importing his beliefs into his writing but without revealing himself to be wholly antithetical to the monarch’s agenda for reform. I would add to Greenblatt’s speculations, then, the observation that Belleforest’s Amleth, with its counter-Reformation twist on Saxo, would have presented an appealing source for an early foray into the playwright’s trade. We note again that the tenth edition of the French text had appeared in 1585, two years before the date postulated for Shakespeare’s entry into the Elizabethan theatre. Belleforest had retained the name “Amleth” from Saxo but the author of the play to which Nashe refers had already changed the name of the hero to Hamlet. Why Kyd, or any other person, might do such a thing is unclear, but for Shakespeare we have an obvious reason in that it inscribes the name of his own son and the best friend after whom this son had been named. We might ask, though, would two years have been sufficient time for Shakespeare to get to London with the Queen’s Men and to then establish himself as a writer of such skill that he may be counted as one of the new writers targeted by Nashe in his attack of 1589? This is a question of little interest for either Greenblatt or Wells, both of whom focus on Greene’s 1592 attack as the earliest definitive reference to Shakespeare. In their biographical narratives, the interval from entry to attack is closer to around five years. For Duncan-Jones, however, the 1589 Nashe attack does target Shakespeare, among others, so the two year interval is worth considering, but Duncan-Jones restores a five year interval by arguing that Shakespeare is more likely to have started with the Earl of Leicester’s Men, possibly as early as 1584, and then shifted companies to join the Queen’s Men around 1586 or 1587, during which time he could have been more involved in producing some of the plays whose titles he would later revive and adopt for The Lord Chamberlain’s Men—one of the great curiosities of early modern repertory studies is that plays with titles like The Troublesome Reign of King John, The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, The True Tragedy of Richard the Third, and King Leir, appear in known association

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with the Queen’s Men during the 1580s and then re-appear with slightly different titles in the known repertory of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men after 1594.88 My concern with this chronology is that it possibly errs too far on the early side. Let us not forget that when Nashe pens his preface to Menaphon in 1589, he was himself just 22 years of age and his targets seem to have been those playwrights whose work was only newly popular (such as Kyd’s own Spanish Tragedy, from around 1587 or 1588). If Shakespeare had been building his reputation since around 1584, at which time the author of the 1589 attack would have been just 17 years old, we might expect that he would have already been viewed by Nashe as a more senior member of the London theatre circles. Perhaps more to the point, we must not forget that when Greene described Shakespeare as an “upstart crow” in 1591 or early 1592, his target would surely have been new enough to the stage as to be a suitable target for this age-specific epithet: “upstart”. I think it is therefore necessary to imagine that Shakespeare’s reputation must have been established comparatively recently in both 1589 and 1591 in order to render both attacks viable. I am thus reluctant to want to imagine Shakespeare aligned with a company as a writer from 1584 as a result, but I do believe there are grounds for wanting to link him primarily, if perhaps not exclusively, to Leicester’s Men, for reasons that shall soon become apparent. Whichever way we argue the toss about the pathways through which Shakespeare might have obtained access to the London-based Elizabethan theatre, there is nevertheless a groundswell of support within mainstream Shakespeare scholarship for the idea that he was with one of the Londonbased companies by 1587 or 1588. This makes it plausible to imagine that Nashe’s reference to a Hamlet play circa 1589 could easily be to a play in which Shakespeare was involved in some way. This is of course not proof that the play is Shakespeare’s—far from it. Yet the plausibility of this connection does give us sufficient reason to cast significant doubts on the standard ur-Hamlet explanations that hold sway within the same body of scholarship. The further we push back in time from 1603, we find that at every point of the way there is the clear potential to read Shakespeare into the same historical moment within which the ur-Hamlet is said to have been in existence. Indeed, we find that even at the origin point of an urHamlet, in the unknown pre-history of Shakespeare’s dramatic career, it makes every bit as much sense to picture the direct transmission of the Amleth story from its French version to Shakespeare as it does to cast Kyd as an intermediary writer of a Hamlet play that is “later” used as the main “source” for Shakespeare’s play.

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1589, or Beyond Book Culture Any reader of Harold Bloom is no doubt aware that I am by no means the first to attempt to link the earliest versions of the Hamlet play directly to Shakespeare. In his monumental book, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, Bloom begins his chapter on Hamlet by making it clear that he follows the work of Peter Alexander in surmising that Shakespeare wrote the ur-Hamlet and this leads Bloom to elaborate a series of comparisons between the earlier, more immature play and the canonical text that later emerged from around a dozen years of “gestating” in Shakespeare’s mind.89 Bloom’s description of the earlier play is a remarkable piece of memorial reconstruction in its own right, but it is offered with scant historical evidence, an unsurprising feature of a 743 page book that contains no bibliographical information whatsoever. While I agree with the conclusion with which Bloom begins his treatment of Hamlet, then, I do not seek to arrive there at the outset as well. I have opted instead to undertake a more detailed examination of the conventional account of the origins of the ur-Hamlet. Importantly, I want to point out the risks of attempting to consider the ur-Hamlet as an intact object or “book” for the sake of analyses of the kind Bloom undertakes. It is worth noting here that Alexander is not altogether convinced by his own argument. In Shakespeare’s Life and Art, Alexander connects Hamlet to The Lord Chamberlain’s Men from their earliest performances as a newly formed company in 1594, but tackles criticism of the play as consisting of “incongruous and contradictory elements” in order to explain the mind of the author, as distinct from any suggestion that “several minds played a part” in the transformation of the saga-like source tale into Shakespeare’s crowning intellectual work.90 Unlike Bloom, who at least makes educated guesses about the content and form of the earlier version, Alexander uses the known Hamlet as his reference point to explain away the incongruities introduced over time, which amounts to the argument that there only ever was one book of Hamlet with only the most minor of adjustments applied over the course of many years. If one follows Alexander’s argument, then, the ground is already rather loose to start with, because it relies on the idea that the play with which we are familiar was already in place and largely intact from as early as 1594, if not earlier. Any stylistic argument about the provenance of the Q2 Hamlet would therefore be rendered irrelevant, which is to say that the majority of Shakespeare scholars would have been fundamentally wrong all along on matters tied to style. This book makes no such claim. Instead, I accept as a crucial premise that the Q2 Hamlet is unthinkable as a pre-1599 text, given that its stylistic

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differences to texts in the earlier part of Shakespeare’s career clearly set it apart. What we seek to do here is to resituate Shakespeare within the story of the prehistory of the same play, which includes a preparedness to accept that the play underwent a series of more substantial revisions throughout its early lifespan.91 If the play was with Shakespeare—or, perhaps, to be more precise, if Shakespeare was with the play—from as early as a decade before the date normally associated with the time of his authorship of the Q2, then it may be worth pursuing the question of the company to which he was first affiliated since studies of companies have in recent years been yielding much new evidence of the personnel, locations, and repertories of Elizabethan companies, which is worth mining for evidence of the likeliest company context out of which the earliest version of the Hamlet play could have emerged. As we noted, a significant body of scholarship holds that the most likely path for Shakespeare to the London theatres was with the Queen’s Men, following the untimely death of Knell in Stratford in 1587. Whereas E.K. Chambers once famously dismissed any connection between Shakespeare and The Earl of Leicester’s Men as “mere fantasy,” though, a strong relationship was established by Robert Burkhart in 1978 between the leading personnel in Leicester’s company and the group later associated with The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, particularly George Bryan, Richard Burbage, Will Kempe, and Thomas Pope.92 Burkhart notes that after the decline of this company, the surviving nucleus of actors teamed up again, along with John Heminges—another of Chamberlain’s men, and one of the editors of the First Folio some three decades later—in The Lord Strange’s Men, and this same nucleic group subsequently went on to form The Lord Chamberlain’s Men for Henry Carey in 1594. That Shakespeare would have joined the group under Strange seems axiomatic, since he was one of the founding members of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, and would surely have been a trusted companion of the other leading members by 1594. Given that Shakespeare was in all likelihood with this group that progressed from Strange’s company to Carey’s, it should also then be no stretch of the imagination to link Shakespeare to Leicester’s Men as one possible member of the same nucleic group’s previous incarnation, albeit perhaps as a junior member in those earlier years. What the Queen’s Men argument has going for it is, of course, a clear historical event that would have occasioned the need for a travelling group of players to enlist local talent. It is therefore informative to note that the most comprehensive study to date on the Queen’s Men, by Scott McMillin and Sally-Beth MacLean, posits a steadfast refusal to buy in to the notion that “Shakespeare got to London because Knell died.”93 While they are deeply interested in considering the ramifications of the overlap between

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titles in the Queen’s Men repertory and titles attributable to Shakespeare, McMillin and MacLean remain more circumspect than the majority who consider this issue: delving into questions of style, they point out that the plays of the Queen’s Men overlap with those of Shakespeare in terms of plot but not in the heightened visual literalism with which the Queen’s Men littered their plays. For example, in Shakespeare’s King John, the appearance of the five moons is treated narratively, through the description of their impact on the beholders; in The Troublesome Reign, conversely, the five moons are presented in more literal vein, the Queen’s Men rigging up a lunar display for actor and audience alike to behold.94 McMillin and MacLean are drawn to the idea that Shakespeare might well have worked with the Queen’s Men in some capacity early in his career, perhaps, in the manner of a “factotum,” as Greene in fact called him in 1592, and any scraps of writing work he secured with them gave him the early exposure to these plots that later informed plays of his own.95 They are reluctant to situate Shakespeare with the Queen’s Men throughout his development as a playwright. Here we might revisit Burkhart’s claims for Leicester’s Men, in which we find that a loose genealogical argument of which company’s players formed which other company, and so on, helps Burkhart to trace back from the membership of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men to a number of earlier companies according to a logic of continuous membership—as is the way in researching family trees—but it leads to a range of assumptions about familial ties once he progresses more than one generation into the past. Burkhart’s own conclusions stop short of a clear statement about Shakespeare’s earliest theatrical affiliations, noting only that he would have “had an opportunity to become acquainted with Leicester’s company and with others. And we need not assume that he ran off from Stratford with them.”96 Terence Schoone-Jongen summarises the scholarship on Shakespeare’s earliest theatrical affiliations, listing the Leicester’s Men connection as one of the “lesser claimants” to the mantle, behind four prominent candidates: the Queen’s Men, of course, as well as Strange’s Men, Pembroke’s Men, and Sussex’s Men.97 One issue with thinking of all of the companies as potential claimants is that it compels us to want to imagine a singular point of entry into the London theatre. Indeed, as McMillin and MacLean argue in relation to the difficulty of trying to track Shakespeare’s movements with any precision, personnel changes were frequent among acting troupes in the 1570s and 1580s, and records of many companies are almost nonexistent, but what little we know of Leicester’s Men from the early 1580s tells us that there was a high volume of traffic between this company and the newly formed Queen’s Men.98 If we want to track Shakespeare’s first

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involvement with Leicester to 1584 or earlier, as Duncan-Jones aims to do, we nevertheless confront the prospect that in a two year gap, from 1583 to 1585, Leicester’s Men disappear from the historical record at the same time that the Queen’s Men are formed, seemingly drawing chiefly on the personnel from a potentially defunct Leicester’s troupe, as McMillin and MacLean demonstrate. When a new group of performers crops up in the records of payments made by Leicester to actors, from 1585 onwards, it becomes clear that the company has been reinstated but with no direct continuity in personnel to its pre-1584 manifestation. For McMillin and MacLean, then, it is not a question of the Queen’s Men or Leicester’s Men for Shakespeare’s early career; rather, it is the prospect that he could very easily have been itinerant in the sense that he did not belong for any length of time in his earliest years in the theatre to any single company. There is thus no issue of the strongest claimant to the mantle of Shakespeare’s first company, since the proprietary nature of that claim dissolves in the face of a confluence of troupe formations and dissolutions. It is not until the fully professional companies emerge, like The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, that the prospect of continuous membership being used to track personnel over longer periods of time becomes more feasible. Because of this mire of the ephemeral nature of theatre companies in the 1570s and 1580s, any “claimant” that could be linked to a historically evident opportunity—like the death in 1587 of William Knell creating a vacancy in The Queen’s Men—provides scholars with opportunity also to lock in the claim. We do not seek to “prove” the origins of Shakespeare’s entry point into the London theatre, although there is no doubt that if such proof could be found, it might do more than merely cause a “bardolater’s heart to skip a beat,” as Samuel Schoenbaum wrote of the discovery of a reference to “Will, my lord of Lester’s jesting plaier” in a letter by Philip Sidney.99 The “Will” described in Sidney’s letter is almost certainly not Shakespeare—the description fits Kempe with far greater precision—but its discovery did cause a flurry of excitement in the 1840s and continues to do so from time to time whenever scholars scour the archives to fill in the lost years of Shakespeare’s life. Instead of proof, I offer here a theory that is based on a plausible link between two historical facts: the whereabouts of Leicester’s Men in 1586 and the attack on “English Seneca,” which, we have seen, identified a Hamlet play being in existence by 1589. It is worth turning here to the argument made by Frederick Boas when, in 1901, he gave the name “ur-Hamlet” to this earlier play, in the introduction to his Works of Thomas Kyd.100 To strengthen the case for Kyd’s involvement, Boas lists the Danish source, suggests that a dramatisation of the Amleth story “was doubtless prompted by the visit of English actors to the Court

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of Helsingor (Elsinore) in 1586,” and then maps Senecan correspondences between Hamlet and The Spanish Tragedy, but does not develop the detail about the actors in Elsinore any further.101 Fortunately, the historical record does allow us to identify the actors in question: the Earl of Leicester undertook a series of diplomatic trips to the Low Countries during 1586 and 1587, and took with him several leading members of his newly reformed playing company—the “English actors” unnamed by Boas, but known to have performed for the Court at Elsinore in June, 1586, were Bryan, Kempe, and Pope, to whom we have already been introduced.102 If, as Boas argued more than a century ago, the great castle at Elsinore prompted a playwright to rework the Amleth tale with a more modern setting, then it surely follows that the playwright in question would have been most likely to do so if he was immediately connected to the actors who actually performed in that location. There is some question over whether these three figures were members of Leicester’s company at the time, or whether they had simply been recruited by him for the Low Countries expeditions,103 but there is no evidence that they belonged to any other company until they are linked to Strange’s Men. If we are to doubt that the players abroad with Leicester were also part of his domestic company, it is mainly because we know that Leicester’s company went on tours of provincial towns in 1586 and 1587 while Leicester was abroad, as Chambers records in The Elizabethan Stage.104 Yet in the absence of any evidence to prove that Bryan, Kempe, and Pope were not Leicester’s men, both at home and abroad, it is reasonable to suspect that Leicester would have sought to pay for the travel only of performers in whom he could expect the fortune of his diplomatic mission to be trusted, and with whom he already had financial responsibilities. For mine, we have the evidence we need to identify Bryan, Kempe, and Pope with Leicester’s Men at the time of their trip to Elsinore, and we have at least a potential genealogical connection to Shakespeare. Certainly, we need not follow Boas in making a connection between unnamed English actors and Kyd, armed as we now are with these additional details. We can take the connection further. Leicester’s Men saw fit as a group, albeit somewhat depleted by the loss of leading players, to tour during the Earl’s absence, and one of the locations to which they toured, in 1586 and 1587, was Stratford. Just as William Knell’s death affords scholars a vital moment of opportunity in which need arose to fill a tragic vacancy within the Queen’s Men in 1587, a tour undertaken while Leicester’s company was missing some of its key personnel would also provide grounds for a willingness to showcase local talent. A long-standing theory holds that Leicester’s Men may have already been familiar with Shakespeare, given

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that he was the son of the town alderman, with whom the company would have made all arrangements and who would have been privy to rehearsals and such like, but also because of the prospect that John Shakespeare and the Earl of Leicester might have been acquainted via Leicester’s brother, the Earl of Warwick.105 All of this is pure speculation. Yet the possibility that Shakespeare was not completely unknown to the company diminishes the potency of arguments that the company was unlikely to use untried regional performers. Furthermore, it does provide us with a plausible set of circumstances under which Shakespeare could have performed with the company in 1586, even if he did not continue on with them to London on their return on this occasion. Such circumstances provide us with a pretext under which he could have found his way to the company eventually, even if he initially left Stratford with the Queen’s Men in 1587. The key point to be taken from all such speculations is this: the very fact that prompted Boas to designate an “ur-Hamlet” as a non-Shakespearean precursor—to wit, the presence of “English actors” at Elsinore in 1586—reveals, with not too deep digging into the historical record, a perfectly valid reason for not dismissing the possible Shakespearean connection. We can be fairly certain that Leicester’s company had been gutted by the emergence of the Queen’s Men in 1583, as McMillin and MacLean demonstrate and Gurr is prepared to state categorically;106 the newly reconstituted group were even further shorthanded when Leicester departed in 1586 with three players who crop up again in the historical record as members of Lord Strange’s Men; Kempe did not continue on to Saxony with Leicester, as he returned to England in September of 1586, meaning that he almost certainly toured with Leicester’s company in 1587, and he is therefore a likely candidate— rather than Boas’s non-specific “English actors”—for the transmission of tales of Elsinore to his colleagues in England. If Shakespeare did join them at around this time, he would have been among their number when Kempe returned to regale his fellow players with his impressions of the great Danish castle and, perhaps, the Amleth tale itself. If Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy was already signalling the arrival of a major talent in 1587, Shakespeare would have seen what the competition looked like as he sought to make his way with the company as an aspiring playwright. A “Danish Tragedy” to mark his arrival on the theatrical scene would have been a most tempting exercise. We may return at this point to Shakespeare being an “upstart crow” according to an attack penned around 1591 but also to the fact that, if he was one of the playwrights attacked as “English Seneca” in 1589, he must have been in established company in the eyes of Greene at that time. Whereas Duncan-Jones is prepared to push Shakespeare’s entry to the London stage to as far back as 1584, it makes

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more sense in terms of the attacks by both Greene and Nashe to see him as the author of a popular new play around 1588 or early 1589, but without a reputation that precedes this date by many years. Harold Jenkins, editor of the Arden 2 edition of Hamlet, dismissed Shakespeare’s authorship of the early play as “groundless,” but history may thus suggest otherwise.107 This is not to say that we seek to attribute to Shakespeare and to Shakespeare alone responsibility for the method that we have been aiming to identify in the early play text. It is important, however, that we find some way to include Shakespeare in the picture, else we simply capitulate a standard urHamlet account. In other words, by finding room for Shakespeare within the picture of the early Hamlet, fragmented as the picture may therefore become, we effectively undermine the hegemony of “the book” served by the proponents of this singular ur-Hamlet. In order to place Shakespeare in the picture, we need to recall details of the theatre companies of the time, at a time when the permanent playhouses were not yet quite so permanent, when companies regularly dissolved and reformed with new personnel, and when “Elizabethan playwright” did not properly exist as a vocational pathway. This ur-Hamlet is indeed difficult to challenge: for many years, I have taught a university class in which the starting point for enquiry has been to consider why Shakespeare needed to “update” a play written by somebody else, quoting William Empson’s famous essay on the matter.108 Now, of course, my students are asked to tackle different questions. Importantly, I insist that any monolithic thinking be interrogated.109 One such monolith, beyond book culture, remains the integral relationship that is assumed to be “inherent” between actor and part, it being the standard interpretation of Hamlet, as a role, that it was only performed during Shakespeare’s lifetime by Richard Burbage. Even if we lacked the historical evidence to argue otherwise, the play texts may contain evidence of changes in personnel. As an example, Gurr documents evidence of a change in actor for the part of Osric from Q1 to Q2, the character described as a “Bragart Gentleman” in the former and “young Ostricke” in the latter.110 In Chapter Three we will examine the texts for further signs of similar shifts among other parts, including the eponymous hero. The point I wish to make here, to pave the way for the arguments to follow in this book, is that we must be prepared to confront shifts of this kind in every aspect of our endeavours. It might seem that certainty is impossible to achieve when we confront the multiple versions of the play and we accept that the ways in which it was staged in Shakespeare’s lifetime changed, that actors took on different parts from one revival to another, and that even biographical details of Shakespeare’s lifetime—against which we might at least hope to pin some constants—

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remain elusive. Yet if it is difficult to track any constants in Shakespeare’s career, particularly before 1594, the same is true of every other actor and playwright in that period. We know less about Kyd, in point of fact, than we do about Shakespeare. Faced with uncertainty, scholarship can rely instead on the authority of a relatively stable text: the play’s the thing, so to speak, but that means that it is a single object, the thing, in which case we risk divesting the text of its variable human element. By seeking to understand the play as method, we do not do away with the hands required to apply the method in question, nor I suggest do we require that the hands be those of a solo artisan; we simply refuse to view the play as complete, that is, as having already been made. Debates about the status of the Q1 had in fact already put paid to the culture of the book, but scholars had too much invested in the idea of Hamlet being a play of more mature genius to push the date of Shakespeare’s involvement back any further. Faced with the evidence of the earlier provenance of the play, they posited in Shakespeare’s place a less mature but wholly monolithic prior textual object: Kyd’s ur-Hamlet. These arguments over Q1 hinged on a notion that an actor had in his possession a copy of the parts he had used in preparation for the play. Arguments over Q1 involved tacit acceptance of fragmentary textual processes: parts scripts generated by the company scribe—or possibly by a playwright, who might just as well have been the scribe in some companies—so that no individual actor would need a whole manuscript reproduced entirely for their benefit; and, in some cases, a full manuscript would be developed to provide a frame of reference for piecing together a myriad of different parts;111 but very often, as David Bradley explains, a “plotter” was enlisted to draw up a plot with which to track the various parts, account for any difficulties in the doubling of parts, and to thus reconstruct a play from these parts—“the practice of plotting, various though its effects appear to be, had a well understood purpose ... to count the actors, to construct a framework for the correct making-out of their acting-scrolls, to create a mutual accommodation between the cast and the text, and to direct rehearsals in the absence of the Book.”112 To invoke the parts script or the plotter is thus to already posit the absence of “the book” as a fully integrated whole, as Bradley points out. As I noted earlier, it has become de rigueur in Shakespeare criticism to argue that the play text should be read either as a play (intended primarily for performance) or as a text (which can be studied using the reading tools of literary criticism): performance-based readings look primarily at issues related to what staging practices tell us about a play; text-based readings focus on the words on the page. I am inclined to see both of these options as remaining under the sway of “the book,” with the play text invoked in

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either case as a stable point of reference against which hypotheses can be tested. Questions about how the text was written, how it was transmitted from the playwright to the company, or how and why it was presented for publication have been too often imagined as appropriate for editors or historians but not for the critical task of reading, which, as I have argued, amounts as a result to the identification of one’s own story in the play text via a reflective gaze. Where this gaze is held in thrall of “the Bard,” it is perhaps even harder to imagine that one is not also seeing an ideal version of oneself. Recent years have seen growing acceptance among critics of the findings of editors and historians, leading to a loosely defined critical movement known as the New Textualism. Margreta de Grazia and Peter Stallybrass explain that this New Textualism represents at least a move away from a single unitary play text—the text of Hamlet, the text of King Lear, and so on—to an acceptance that plays were revised and there are thus always multiple texts, not just as an expression of multiple readings; rather, the plays are seen as having been multiply written.113 Yet they lament that we remain very much still in thrall of the Bard, by replacing Shakespeare the author with Shakespeare the reviser, meaning that each text represents a “canon in miniature in which the author’s personal and artistic developments can be charted from revision to revision.”114 I am inclined to think that Shakespeare the reviser is not such a bad compromise, if truth be told, because I believe that a sense of “personal and artistic development” can provide a worthwhile historical locus for discussions about the shifting terrain of the play text. A necessary sidebar to this is that we do not detach the development of the author, whether personal or artistic, from the many processes through which it is given expression. Just as important as Shakespeare the reviser is Shakespeare the actor, the company man, the landowner, and the participant in any other activity that could have defined in some small measure his sense of self and his achievements on a daily basis. In attempting to gauge the rise of Shakespeare within his own lifetime, we must remember that when The Lord Chamberlain’s Men was formed in 1594, Shakespeare was by this time already considered by his companions to be a stable financial partner in an industry marked by uncertainty, but also a reliable contributor to the ongoing viability of the company as a production house for new plays.115 This observation reminds us that Shakespeare was one among a number within a company. Scott McMillin has claimed that the next advance for early modern literary studies must be to learn more about “Elizabethan acting companies and how to read them,” by which he means we should use our expanding knowledge about the histories of the acting companies as a framework for reading plays, just as performance-based readings have

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tended to want to counter the putative timelessness of literary criticism by reading the plays through a knowledge of past stage practices.116 By situating Shakespeare within the world of the companies, we not only retrain our eye to consider the play texts as having always been produced with a degree of collaboration or intervention by other hands; we also reorient the way we think about the source materials for these plays. It is our contemporary book culture that compels us to search for Shakespeare’s sources in other books. Whether Shakespeare came to Leicester’s Men in Stratford or in London, or even if he did not join the Chamberlain’s cohort until sometime during their prior existence as The Lord Strange’s Men, he nevertheless developed a strong relationship with Bryan, Kempe, and Pope before they took up membership with The Lord Chamberlain’s Men. From such evidence we might acknowledge that one of the sources for a Danish revenge tragedy located in Elsinore was a trio of men who we know to have performed at Elsinore in 1586. This timing is significant. Geoffrey Bullough, with whose Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare we began this chapter, identified several historical events after 1587 that would have made a revenge play involving Danish royalty highly topical: James VI of Scotland was being called upon by Scottish nobles to take revenge for the execution of Mary at around the same time that he was arranging to marry Anne of Denmark, an event that was then postponed because of the death of Frederick II of Denmark.117 Curiously, Bullough only footnotes the striking parallel in which the dead King’s brother, Duke John, had previously attempted to obtain the throne ahead of the heir, the eleven year old Prince Christian.118 In addition to Bullough’s brief footnote, we should note that the English ambassador Daniel Rogers recorded at the time the sense he had made of John’s rejection by the Danish Council: “yet the Estates have neglected him, not making him an overseer of his nephew, the yonge elected king, neyther lefte him anie parte of governement, as he thought they would have done.”119 John’s claim was weakened by virtue of the fact that he remained uncle to the young elected Christian, a situation he could have rectified if he had, like Claudius, married the dowager Queen. This wider international context, in which a Hamlet play might have become topical between 1588 and 1589, could have impressed itself upon Shakespeare and the members of his immediate dramatic circle thanks to the personal experiences of those players who had performed at Elsinore less than two years prior to Frederick’s death. We are thus left with a scenario in which Kyd is much further from any claim to authorship of the ur-Hamlet than Shakespeare, since it is the latter who was a companion of the men who had visited and performed in the castle that would be used as the setting of

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the play that mirrored a scenario involving the succession question of that country, at that very moment in history, and it was the latter whose son bore the name that Nashe linked to whole handfuls of tragic speeches. If such evidence is circumstantial, it is nevertheless more compelling than the scantiest of evidence on which Kyd’s involvement has hitherto held to have been as good as proven, but it remains necessary that we release our thinking from the hegemony of modern book culture to fully appreciate the relevance of the potential links hiding in plain sight in the historical record.

Another Will in the World Let us return to the question of what the version of Hamlet that we know does by way of method, at least in relation to its source materials. Importantly, we have dispelled the need for a lost ur-Hamlet to mediate between Shakespeare’s Hamlet and its earlier sources. While I have tried to do this by viably situating Shakespeare in the orbit of earlier references to a Hamlet play, we have also seen that even the phrase “Shakespeare’s Hamlet” is somewhat misleading in terms of how to understand the play, at least in its 1589 to 1596 guises. We cannot underestimate the degree to which the play in its earliest forms would have been a result of a range of different types of collaborative practice among the company in whose circle Shakespeare found himself when the impulse to produce a Hamlet play took hold. Not only was Kempe the first of the players to return from Elsinore with accounts of the grandeur of the location—its grandeur being something to which we will be returning shortly—he is not likely to have left it entirely up to somebody else to write the play about Elsinore. There are four jigs registered under his name in the Stationers’ Register between 1591 and 1595,120 and his departure from The Lord Chamberlain’s Men in 1599 is conventionally seen as being due to a falling out with Shakespeare over the then lead playwright’s failure to give Kempe sufficient scope for comic extemporisation in his plays—Hamlet’s speech in which he warns the players against such excesses is seen as having been directed at Kempe after the latter had left the company and sold back his share.121 We know also that late in his career, Shakespeare was not averse to the prospect of collaborative writing, with several plays now attributed to Shakespeare and John Fletcher, for example.122 Against this line of reasoning, though, we should note that during the initial years of the existence of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, the new plays added to their repertory were almost exclusively Shakespeare’s, as Andrew Gurr’s list of plays will attest: Gurr attributes the first ten of the company’s plays from 1594 to Shakespeare,

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with a question mark over a further eight plays presumed to have been acquired from The Queen’s Men, including King Leir, The Troublesome Reign of King John, and Famous Victories of Henry V.123 A similar list presented by Roslyn Lander Knutson in The Repertory of Shakespeare’s Company, 1594-1613 contains variations, chief among which is a refusal to count the Queen’s Men plays as acquisitions, but it also therefore gives us more reason to assert that the repertory of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men in their first years of operation was principally populated by plays attributable to Shakespeare.124 We shall revisit these two repertory lists shortly, in considering what the debates within repertory studies can tell us about Shakespeare’s plays both in performance and print, but I suggest here that these studies help us to consider Shakespeare’s involvement with The Lord Chamberlain’s Men in the company’s early years in two ways, which might seem at first to be contradictory, but which I contend are interdependent, given the nature of playing companies at the time: first, we confirm that between his earliest association with the London theatre and the development of the enduring association with The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, Shakespeare had acquired a reputation sufficient to be trusted as the company’s lead playwright; and second, we see that in acquiring this reputation, he necessarily forged it on the back of collaborations with more experienced hands. When we look at the plays that Gurr and Knutson list as Shakespeare’s contributions to the early Chamberlain’s repertory, we should acknowledge arguments that have been made for the input of additional hands to Titus Andronicus,125 the three Henry VI plays,126 The Two Gentlemen of Verona,127 and The Taming of the Shrew;128 to wit, six of the plays attributed to Shakespeare in the first years of standard chronologies of his career. The point here is again not to push Shakespeare out of the picture altogether; it is rather to reinforce the point that any efforts to argue for early Shakespearean input into the authorship of Hamlet do not equate with efforts to argue for sole Shakespearean authorship of this or any other play before 1594. Generally, arguments about collaborations in the Shakespeare catalogue focus on the earlier and later plays, with the middle period of his career being marked by sole authorship of plays over which his company enjoyed an exclusive performance capacity. If we want to imagine Shakespeare as having a major hand in the early Hamlet play, then, we must nevertheless yield to the notion that it was in all likelihood also a collaborative effort in some degree. This can include the recording of an actor’s extemporisations, a feature of any performance that relied on Kempe in a prominent role. The potential for collaborative involvement is important if we try to develop a clear sense of what aspects

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of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, not being present in the source texts, were added by Shakespeare, as well as when. Much of what follows in this book is an argument for the capacity of topical readings to enable us to identify when a particular character or plot point of the various versions of Hamlet would have been a most contextually relevant addition. If we also keep in mind that the potential for collaboration is highest during Shakespeare’s earliest years, then any changes to the Amleth storyline that can be mapped to the earliest years of his career might just as easily have been occasioned by a collaborator’s input rather than by circumstances in Shakespeare’s life. In other words, the biographical impulse should be weaker as we push back into the earliest years of Shakespeare’s career. For this reason, I believe it is highly likely that Kempe’s personal experiences at Elsinore, rather than anything of specific note in Shakespeare’s life, precipitated the decision to undertake a dramatisation of the Amleth tale circa 1587 to 1588. We also know that the name of the eponymous hero was changed to Hamlet in this early theatrical version because it is presented in this form by Nashe. As I have noted, such a change obviously bears the imprint of Shakespeare’s personal world. We also know that the Ghost was in the Hamlet play by no later than 1596, thanks to Lodge’s eye witness testimony, but we also saw that the Ghost was possibly taken directly from Belleforest, and need not be characterised as a change to the source texts except in the increase of the role of the Ghost in driving the revenge plot. If the source contained no ghost, in any case, it would have been expected that a revenge play written in the shadow of The Spanish Tragedy would have needed to insert one. It is to the popular Kyd play that we should turn for a moment because it is undoubtedly an influence on the emergence of an early Hamlet play. One question must first be asked: exactly how similar are Hamlet and The Spanish Tragedy? There are certainly analogous plot elements, as Harold Jenkins mapped them in the Arden 2 edition of Shakespeare’s play: It has a background of wars and politics, with ambassadors going back and forth. Hieronimo distrusts the letter which reveals the murderer just as Hamlet distrusts the Ghost. He reproaches himself for delay, even accuses himself of preferring words to blood. He has thoughts of suicide. His situation is reflected in that of other fathers as Hamlet’s is in that of other sons. He takes one father for a spirit come to rebuke his tardiness. He arranges the performance of a play which is less innocent than it seems. Instead of mirroring the crime, as in Hamlet, this play presents the vengeance; yet the image of the crime is still there in the exhibition of Horatio’s corpse, and the play, by effecting vengeance in the guise of entertainment before an unsuspecting court, extends the analogy with Hamlet to include the fencing match as well. In an ironic prelude to it the avenger and his destined victim ... have a public reconciliation. For the

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This does represent an impressive list of points of consonance, and if we used this as the basis for interpretation we could certainly be mistaken for assuming that the two plays are almost identical. Yet close examination reveals that Jenkins is overstating the case in many of these analogies. The ghost in Kyd’s play is not, for example, that of the dead father/son, but acts more in the manner of a Senecan chorus, as Revenge, commenting on the action from outside. The play-within-the-play in The Spanish Tragedy functions very differently from the play in Hamlet, despite the attempts by Jenkins to identify similarities in them: in the former, it is staged with the express intention of committing the murder on stage and for this reason it signals the end of the play; in the latter, it is a device used by Hamlet to dispel his doubts about the revenge motive, and for this reason is central. There is no reconciliation between Hamlet and Claudius analogous to the scene in which Hieronimo and Lorenzo come to terms—Jenkins refers to Hamlet and Laertes, but omits the names—and in Kyd’s play it is clear that Hieronimo is not genuine, feigning reconciliation in order to enable him to put his murderous plan into effect. The conflation of Kyd’s Bel-Imperia (the forbidden lover) with Isabella (the mother who commits suicide) into the figure of Ophelia is also not a proper analogy, but it may be possible to assert that these figures do provide the author of the earlier Hamlet with inspiration for aspects of the Ophelia character that expand the role of the nameless temptress from Belleforest’s tale. In Chapter Three, we will look at the characters in more detail, as we seek to explain how changes to characters in Hamlet represent evidence of the method through which we might glimpse the tain of the play—in other words, what is changed in the play and when. At this point, I want simply to register that Kyd’s Spanish play does have some similarities with the Hamlet we know, but it requires significant interpretive excess to present them as extensively analogous. Indeed, as we have seen, much of the plot of Hamlet is already present in Belleforest. From Kyd, Shakespeare and any early collaborator probably only borrowed elements that were already fundamental to Senecan revenge tragedy, such as the secretive nature of the first murder and the obstacles to revenge—in the Amleth tale there is never any sense that what the young boy said about his course of action will fail to come to pass. From Kyd, but then also from the Senecan form, the creators of the early Hamlet play probably also took the catastrophic ending in which many characters including the tragic revenger die, which is in contrast to Amleth, who has many further adventures after he obtains

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revenge against Feng. If the Hamlet creators also took the play-within-theplay device from Kyd, its function was radically altered. There is another sense in which Kyd’s play has no clear analogue in Hamlet, as we see by virtue of the ability to continually look to Belleforest for analogies that are not present in The Spanish Tragedy: Shakespeare’s play has an identifiable historical source; Kyd’s play has no such historical source. While scholars have been able to identify sources for different features of Kyd’s Spanish play, such as an analogous text for the play Hieronimo uses to enact his revenge, none have located any overarching source in Spanish history for the play as a whole.130 This suggests one very clear difference in method between Kyd and the author of Hamlet. Indeed, if we were to search for anything like a modus operandi for Shakespeare’s Tragedies, a consistent feature is the presence of a solid historical reference text, such as Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland, which appeared in second edition in 1587, and from which the plots of the History plays— as well as of Macbeth, King Lear, and Cymbeline—are clearly derived.131 While I push Kyd into the background, I wish to explore the potential for Kempe to have made a significant contribution to the early Hamlet, not just as the source of the inspiration for a Danish play. In Kempe, we have a player who was keen at one stage of his career to try his hand as a writer, and indeed it is no coincidence that after he left the company, he gained notoriety for his nine day dance of wonder from London to Norwich but promoted his exploits even more notoriously through the shameless piece of self-aggrandisement, Kemps Nine Daies Wonder.132 What Kempe and Shakespeare had in common, then, was a will to write; where they differed was in their views on how writing should promote the playwright’s talents. In Shakespeare in Parts, Simon Palfrey and Tiffany Stern have shown that Elizabethan playwrights “specifically created and designed parts suited to the particular range and talents of individual actors,” with Shakespeare’s plays expertly reflecting the talents of the players within his immediate purview.133 Conversely, any playwright who, like Kempe, wrote material suited only to his own specific acting talents was an unlikely candidate for an enduring role as lead writer for a company. For this reason, I stop short of suggesting that Kempe saw himself first and foremost as a writer, and I make no claim that he must have directly collaborated with Shakespeare as a co-writer of the earliest version of the Hamlet play. Yet Kempe’s sense of his own talents as a writer may lend weight to the suggestion that I wish to make here: he could well be considered a prime candidate for the actorreporter in the memorial reconstruction of Q1 from both the rudiments of a Q2-based performance and earlier performances of Hamlet.

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Figure 1.2 Title page to Kemps Nine Daies Wonder (1600).

Of all the company’s plays not yet in print, Kempe may have held a rather proprietary view of Hamlet in 1603, especially if I am right in my claims about his role in the transmission of the Amleth story based on his experiences in Denmark. He could not, of course, put his name on the Q1 text, for that would draw attention to the fallout with the company whose play he was now reproducing without permission. After all, Hamlet is seen by many scholars as the place where the fallout between Kempe and the company is documented most cogently.134 His speech to the players rails against the excesses of the clowns, yet we may wonder, if Kempe is being

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positioned here as a viable candidate for actor-reporter of Q1 Hamlet, why would he retain Hamlet’s attack on the clown in the Q1 text, unless it was only to conceal his own involvement? We can counter with the curious observation that the text of Q1 does more than simply retain the attack: out of the many speeches that are reproduced in some form or another in the Q1 text, Hamlet’s clown complaint is one of the few that is actually substantially longer in the purportedly “reconstructed” version. The Q2 complaint reads: let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them. For there be of them that will themselves laugh to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, though in the meantime some necessary question of the play be then to be considered. – That’s villainous and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. (3.2.36-42)

Q1 reproduces these lines more or less verbatim, but in verse, and adds the following: And then you have some agen, that keeps one sute Of ieasts, as a man is knowne by one sute of Apparell, and Gentleman quotes his ieasts downe In their tables, before they come to play, as thus: Cannot you stay till I eate my porrige? and, you owe me A quarters wages: and, my coate wants a cullison: And, your beer is sowre: and, blabbering with his lips, And thus keeping in his cinkapase of ieasts, When, God knows, the warme Clowne cannot make a iest Vnless by chance, as the blind man catcheth a hare: Maisters tell him of it.135

A further eleven lines are thus present in the clown complaint in Q1, which must prompt us to ask why the disgruntled clown would want to include all of this additional material, let alone retain the substance of the attack as it is recorded in Q2? I take my cue here from Robert Henke, who argues that the expanded material from the Q1 text is no jibe; instead, its speaker “out-clowns the clown” and, in the play scene following, the same speaker declares himself to be the “only jig-maker” present and disrupts the performance in exactly the same manner described in his attack on clowns.136 By removing these eleven lines, the attack on the clown becomes more pointed, and Hamlet’s jests during the play scene will seem less likely to refer back to his speech about clowns; rather, his clowning in the play scene becomes, in isolation, an index of his impatience for the Mousetrap plan to catch the conscience of the King. With the eleven lines inserted, the attack rebounds explicitly

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on its speaker. It is in the Q1, then, that we find an attack on the clown that need not be read solely as an attack; to wit, a plausible defence of clowns as if, to quote Gertrude, the rant shows Hamlet to be protesting too much. For Harold Jenkins, it is evident that the Q1 clown complaint “provides, ironically enough, an instance of the thing complained of,” but Jenkins is unclear, as Robert Weimann extrapolates, on what this tells us about the actors in the play and those performing the play: whether this means the actors are expected to be performing under authority or without authority, under the instructions of a Prince who knows not the hypocrisy with which he speaks or in accordance with their own craft—that is, by law of writ or with liberty.137 In Weimann’s further reading of the Q1 clown complaint, any such divisions collapse around this speech in which both “author’s pen” and “actor’s voice” are afforded equal standing in what amounts to a meta-theatrical comment upon the competing social and cultural pressures exerting themselves on the dynamic world of Elizabethan theatre.138 My interest in the complaint is somewhat more blinkered: I see this speech as a textual residue of the coming together of pen and voice that witnesses a moment in which the actor who might be seen as the target finds solace as a maligned performer rather vindicated by the hypocrisy exhibited by the playwright-Prince. What is impossible to know for certain is whether Kempe would have added these lines in a reconstruction of the play, which would otherwise have contained only the lines that are in the Q2, or whether the longer and more ambiguous speech was already present in the earlier version of the play and the additional lines were removed following Kempe’s departure. In either case, the point of this exercise is to show that the very figure who could have been one inspiration for the genesis of a play set in Elsinore is also a viable candidate for the actor-reporter behind the “bad” Quarto of 1603. The idea that Kempe might have involved himself in some form of piracy after his departure from the company is not new: Gurr lists Kempe as a candidate for the pirated Quarto of Henry V, for example, and David Grote has observed that Kempe might have been responsible for both the Q1 Hamlet and a reconstructed Thomas, Lord Cromwell, along these same lines.139 David Wiles also recapitulates the theory that Kempe is directly responsible for the pirated 1602 play of Syr John Falstaffe, and the merrie Wives of Windsor, based in part on the claim that Kempe stood the most to gain from preserving a role that was written principally for his talents.140 Within this way of thinking, could we explore the possibility that Kempe’s part in an earlier version of Hamlet might extend to the central character? For this to be feasible, of course, we must make the leap that must seem unthinkable from the perspective of the reflexive gaze of audiences and

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critics since Coleridge’s time: we must ask what kind of Hamlet could be suited to Kempe’s particular talents. Hamlet is indeed the “jig-maker” who dominates witty verbal jousts with other characters and, as Wiles notes in Shakespeare’s Clown, the concept of the “clown” as a specific role was developed by Kempe, after Richard Tarleton, to give his talents prominence in scripts prepared for his companies.141 While Richard Burbage would later be universally credited with inventing the melancholic Dane, on which generations of subsequent actors would model their performances, Kempe was the more senior of the two circa 1588, and the comic nature of much of Hamlet’s dialogue even in the Q2 text suggests that it may well have been developed in its earliest incarnation as a showcase for the talents of a company clown. In tracking these roles written for Kempe in Shakespeare’s plays, Wiles does not, of course, include Hamlet. In point of fact, Wiles identifies Hamlet’s lines regarding the “tragedians of the city” as topical reminders, soon after the fact, of Kempe’s departure in 1599—Wiles thus retains the conventional dating of the play to 1600 or later.142 Against this, our observations about Kempe’s narcissistic approach to his roles and his writing suggest that he may have demanded that the company’s scribe—an aspiring playwright— faithfully transcribe the content of his extemporisations or jigs. Surely, the evidence that Hamlet might have first been a comic role would therefore be found in Hamlet’s own lines, since Kempe’s scene stealing wit would be evident even within the lines of a character now more renowned for his melancholy than for his mirth. The textual conundrum of the nature of the relationship between Q1 and Q2 is pertinent here, but it should not be used as an excuse for not pursuing the question further. We have seen that in the differences between Q1 and Q2 in the clown complaint, there are clues to be found about differences in the characterisation of Hamlet between the two versions. We should dig further, but first we must deal with the orthodox view that Hamlet was written for and performed by Burbage in its earliest iteration. Within a few years of the start of his career, Burbage was to become the lead actor in his troupe, and was universally recognised as one of the two leading actors of his time, with Edward Alleyn his chief rival for the honour. As Scott McMillin has shown, of only twenty roles that we know to have exceeded 800 lines, thirteen were performed by Burbage.143 With what troupe Burbage commenced his acting career, we do not know. As with attempts to put Shakespeare into a specific troupe in his early career, we are invariably scuppered by the fact that company records are sparse enough as it is, and are certainly unlikely to record the full name of any fledgling actor scrapping for parts alongside more established names. The

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best evidence we have for his early career is the inclusion of his name in the plots of both 2 Seven Deadly Sins and Dead Man’s Fortune, a fact that has prompted debates about the dates for these plays, the companies that are referenced by the cast lists, and the careers of the actors involved.144 David Kathman has shown that the first of these plots really only provides evidence that both play and actor were with The Lord Chamberlain’s Men around 1597, rather than the date of 1590 to 1592 previously ascribed to the plots, and his argument is in my opinion quite conclusive.145 Lacking any other documentary evidence for Burbage’s early career, we should consider what we know about the careers of Elizabethan actors in general. We do not know the year in which Burbage was born, but we know he was younger than his brother Cuthbert (born 1566 or 1567). It is significant, then, that Burbage may not have reached the age of 21 until 1589. Just as Kathman has debunked the date evidence offered by the plot of 2 Seven Deadly Sins, he has also provided compelling arguments that boy actors aligned with professional troupes were typically “bound” in apprenticeship arrangements until the age of 21, in accordance with general ordinances that pertained to labourers of all kinds since 1562.146 Under this system, Burbage was likely to have been a bound apprentice until 1589, so he is unlikely to have been the leading player in any troupe circa 1587 to 1588, whereas Kempe was certainly already one of Leicester’s leading men as early as 1585—a record from Leicester’s own accounts shows that Kempe had been singled out for payment of an extra pound above his individual share of the payments to the actors for their service on Leicester’s progress from Flushing to Hague in December of that year.147 Yet Hamlet was among those roles credited to Burbage at his funeral elegy in 1619: He’s gone, and with him what a world are dead, Which he revived, to be revivèd so. No more young Hamlet, old Hieronimo, Kind Lear, the grievèd Moor, and more beside, That lived in him have now forever died.148

These lamentations clearly link Burbage to four of the biggest roles in the theatre of the age, the leads in Hamlet and King Lear, “the grievèd Moor” Othello, and The Spanish Tragedy’s Hieronimo. The inclusion of the last of these is surely sufficient to counter claims that all four are roles that Burbage was the first to perform, since it is extremely unlikely that the young apprenticed Burbage would have been given the lead in any 1587 production of The Spanish Tragedy. Just because the part of Hieronimo is credited to Burbage during his funeral, then, we need not presume that it

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was his from the moment of its inception. To be clear about what the elegy actually claims, we need only note that in the previous line, he is credited with having “revived” these parts, “to be revivèd so.” The revival of plays over the course of many years was a regular feature of the Elizabethan theatre. While “revived” was not intended by the elegist only in this sense of the theatrical revival of an old play, it would be a mistake to disregard the possibility that this meaning —the word “revive” was certainly in use for the new production of old plays by the early seventeenth century149— frames part of the word’s metaphorical scope in this context, especially as the word is repeated in the same line. Rather than suspecting that this “old Hieronimo” was Burbage’s when The Spanish Tragedy was first staged, I agree with Knutson’s claim that Burbage acquired the role when the play was revived by Lord Strange’s Men in 1592, or perhaps even as late as in a revival by the Chamberlain’s men circa 1601 to 1602.150 Similarly, the earliest Hamlet, circa 1588, was not Burbage’s role, but it makes sense to imagine that by the time Hamlet was played at Newington Butts by The Lord Chamberlain’s Men in 1594, Burbage was probably in the role. As for Kempe, it is fair to assume that the role of the gravedigger—a role listed in both the Q1 and Q2 texts as “Clowne”—was his at some time. After Kempe departed the company in 1599, he was replaced by Robert Armin, but as Wiles points out, this necessitated a change in the principal term for comedic characters within the company’s plays, since Armin did not embrace the tradition of “the clown”: in the plays written from 1599 to 1601, the term “clown” had already become interchangeable with “fool,” suggesting that Kempe’s mode of characterisation was being abandoned, and afterwards “clown” is replaced by “fool” altogether.151 The definitive use of “Clowne” for the gravedigger in Hamlet means that the role was certainly written earlier, for Kempe, and not for Armin after 1600. In his analysis of the demise of Kempe within The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, Wiles notes that the highpoint of Kempe’s career can be found in the character of Falstaff,152 and that Dogberry from Much Ado About Nothing was the last part written specifically for him—by 1598, Wiles argues, the clown parts had been in decline throughout a series of plays, which points to the marginal status Kempe had been acquiring during this time.153 This decline in Kempe’s status in the company also means that the gravedigger role is likely to have been written for Kempe before 1598. We might recall that in both Q1 and Q2/F, whereas Polonius/Corambis, Ophelia, and others fail to defeat Hamlet in their verbal exchanges, the gravedigger succeeds at least in confounding the Prince, which is typical of the manner with which Kempe’s clowns regularly outpoint other characters. There is one telling point of difference between the Q1 and the Q2/F texts: in Q1, the entry of

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the gravedigger and his colleague is directed “enter Clowne and an other,” and the “other” character’s lines are designated by the number 2; in Q2 and F, the characters are marked for entry with the stage direction, “Enter two Clownes” (5.1.1), yet one of the two delivers lines designated for “Other” throughout.154 Minor as such discrepancies might seem to the business of staging the play, they do mark a clear distinction between a play in which one actor alone is recognised as “the clown” (to reiterate Wiles) and one in which any performer may function in a clown capacity. I propose that the Q1 direction makes sense as a residue of a performance in which the part of the gravedigger has been written for the company’s principal Clown, to be accompanied on stage by his apprentice. The Clown wins the exchange with his underling and bests Hamlet in verbal by-play. In the later revival, “2” in the text is replaced by “Other” but the roles remain suitably weighted toward the leading Clown. After the lead Clown leaves the company, with no clear claimant on the Clown roles, as happened in 1599, a direction for the Clown to enter with an “other” would make less sense from a company perspective, so it is changed to “two Clownes” and remains in that form in subsequent versions. For Wiles, who dates the play to 1600 or later, the possibility of earlier Kempe-oriented content is non-existent. Instead, he regards the “Clowne” in Hamlet as a late editorial emendation, and he claims that Hamlet “has taken over from the clown/Vice the function of mediating between play and audience.”155 Wiles refrains from discussing the gravedigger scene in more detail, but we shall undertake to do this in Chapter Three to outline further differences between Q1 and Q2/F and to identify evidence for the evolution of the part within the decline of Kempe’s stature. Here, I leave open the possibility that Hamlet need not be seen as having “taken over” a clown function; rather, the later development of the role might retain some residue of an earlier clown function during a long history of revivals. My argument is of course that the origins of the play point to the likelihood of the role having first been written for Kempe circa 1588 or 1589, or at the very least to the important historical role Kempe would have played in the decision to write a Danish play set in Elsinore at this time. If Kempe had played a very early Hamlet, and if he had recorded some of this in the Q1 reconstruction of the earlier play, we might expect to find some residue of the comic Hamlet in the play. In Chapter Three, we shall consider a range of puns and other comic devices used by Hamlet, some of which are in the Q1 text but not in Q2/F. Here I want simply to register some clues the play provides for what kind of Hamlet is suited to Q1 and Q2/F. In the great speeches—“O that this too sallied flesh would melt” (1.2.129); “what a rogue and peasant slave am I” (2.2.485); “To be or not to be” (3.1.55); and

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so on—and in the way Hamlet’s demeanour and actions are described by other characters, we find a character that is sullen and withdrawn at one turn and given over to sudden escalations of emotion at the other. He is, in other words, the classic melancholic. Yet as David Bevington has recently pointed out, it was Edmund Kean whose performance as Hamlet in 1814 gave to the role the heightened emotional edge to which all later actors would be expected to respond: following the “nunnery” exchange with Ophelia (3.1), Kean is noted to have stopped prior to his exit, gazed at Ophelia, smothered her hands with kisses, then rushed off the stage; and during the Mousetrap sequence (3.2), Kean portrayed Hamlet as crawling menacingly from Ophelia’s lap toward the King and Queen.156 For Bevington, prior to Kean and European Romanticism, the play’s first audiences would have viewed Hamlet as a quite conventional revenge tragedy hero, one sworn to vengeance but scuppered, as the hero himself declares, by “how all occasions do inform against me” (4.4.31). Without the Romantic tradition or Kean’s embellishments, the text provides ample evidence of the importance of gesture and excess in the original portrayal of Hamlet. Bevington notes that the text of the play “calls for gestures that are carefully calibrated, like props, for thematic effect” and he specifically cites the description given by Ophelia: “He behaves very oddly to Ophelia, in an offstage action described by her to her father: he appears to her in disordered dress, holds her at the length of one arm, studies her face, and sighs piteously.”157 What Bevington seems to have missed when he later recounts Kean’s 1814 performance is that Kean was bringing onstage what Ophelia describes as having taken place off-stage. Perhaps Burbage left these actions offstage, but the text nevertheless provided him with grounds for giving to his portrayal of Hamlet a range of heightened emotions and gestures. While the questions of Hamlet’s delay would later be suffused with a more modern, psychological understanding of the play, Elizabethan audiences would certainly have understood the range of conventions that indicated madness in a character. Duncan Salkeld’s study of Madness and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare examines a range of these conventions as they were employed by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, such that Hamlet’s insistence on his feigned madness can be seen as a relatively late response to an Elizabethan heritage of acting points related to the revenge tragedy in general: like other revenge tragedy protagonists, Shakespeare’s hero is associated with “outbursts of anger, expressions of affection, puns, jokes, prophecy, ... [and] detached reflection.”158 While puns, jokes, or even prophesy are well-matched to a comic role, the detached reflection is perhaps less likely to be seen in such a portrayal. In one example at least, we can find evidence that the Q1 Hamlet used the

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more comical of these devices and was less inclined to be seen in a mode of detached reflection. We have already noted the lengthy rant against the clown in Q1, which shows Hamlet out-clowning the clown, as it were. In one of the speeches we already identified as being associated with Hamlet the melancholic—“what a rogue and peasant slave am I” (2.2.485)—there is a subtle but crucial difference between the different texts that adds to the sense of a clowning rather than melancholic Hamlet. The speech in Q1 has Hamlet begin with, “Why what a dunghill idiote slave am I?”159 In the Q1, the chiasmus is lost, but what the speech loses in rhetorical device it gains in a none-too-subtle reference to one of the most popular comic devices of Plautine Comedy: the servus currens or running-slave. Distinct from the clever slave, whose role was woven intricately into the plot as the comic accomplice to a master whose personal problems provided the story with its motivation, the running slave was a stock character whose role was to be little more than a scene stealer, bursting onto the stage with high energy and often with a monologue of great length and bombast.160 Furthermore, while the Q2/F versions of this speech preface the chiasmus with a note of solitude—“Ay so, God buy to you. Now I am alone.” (2.2.484)—there is no such solemn note in the Q1 speech. Hamlet’s monologue might be seen more as a public display than as a solitary lament. The Q1 speech shares some imagery with the Q2/F versions, like the “John-a-Dreams” reference, the plucked beard, and so on, but the Q1 is also pregnant with the image of the standers-by: “Yet I … Stand still, and let it passe.”161 The difference between the Q1 and the Q2/F versions is largely defined by this shift from a solitary lament concerning the effect of the Player’s tears on the eyes of his audience and his voice on their ears (Q2/F) to one in which the speaker is in motion in relation to bystanders (Q1). The language of the Q1 is thus more suited to a demonstration of excessive motion by a speaking subject who mocks the Player. The advice to the Players about not sawing the air, “thus” (3.2.5), showed Hamlet to be clearly guilty of the same offence in his demonstrative approach to the task; so, too, the suite of jests to which he directs his criticism of the Clown—and which he also demonstrates most capably himself in the Q1—might well have a very recent analogue in this exaggerated demonstration of the impact of the Player in motion on those who stand by and watch, along with demonstrations of the plucking of the beard, tweaking of the nose, and so on. If, as would be typical of the Plautine idiot slave, he was very much in motion during his speech, then Hamlet would strike the audience—his bystanders—very much as one of the stock figures of an altogether different point of heritage than the one we now normally associate with the melancholic Dane.

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If Kempe was the focus of a comic Hamlet circa 1588, I suggest that he was displaced by Burbage by around 1594, and it is likely that Kempe took on a rival role—my suggestion is that the roles of Corambis and the gravedigger are expanded to accommodate Kempe’s talents at around this time or ahead of the 1596 production witnessed by Lodge. By 1599, the principal Clown had been marginalised to the extent that he was given no comic parts at all in a new revival of the play, prompting him to leave the company with his parts for three minor roles. Comparison of the Q1 and Q2 texts shows that the graveyard exchange with Hamlet is the last piece of Q2 text that is also to be found substantially intact in the text of Q1—all other subsequent dialogue is either omitted in Q2 or at least significantly abridged. This lends support to a claim that the actor-reporter behind the Q1 reconstruction could have played the gravedigger-clown’s role in an earlier performance but was no longer in the role for a 1599 performance, given that this dialogue is not identical in Q2. The graveyard scene was, as we have seen already, sufficiently well known to have been the reference to this play for decades after, to the extent that it was played alone during the closure of the theatres as a droll. The conventional view of memorial reconstruction is that Shakespeare wrote the play in sole-authorial capacity and that the failing memory of a former player mediated between this text and the corrupted Quarto. By “reading the company,” we complicate this picture to the extent that it may be possible to think of a long-term role for the actor-reporter, pushing his role as far back as the genesis of the play some twelve years or so before it is conventionally deemed to have been written, with a comic Hamlet at its centre. When Burbage takes over the role, Hamlet is then transformed into the melancholic figure with which we are more familiar, but residues of its origins can be found scattered throughout the surviving texts. As a jig-maker, Kempe was particularly gifted in the use of wordplay to turn situations that initially seem disadvantageous into positions from which his character stands to gain from besting others. The same is true, of course, of Amleth in versions written by both Saxo and Belleforest. In his analysis of the surviving writings of Kempe, Wiles develops a description of the typical Kempe character and how it differs from others of the time: “Where other clowns invite a simple feeling of superiority, Kemp’s clown initially appears to be a ludicrous figure, but rapidly makes everyone else appear more ludicrous.”162 Importantly, as a point of comparison, Wiles adds that the figures around which Kempe’s jigs are constructed appear ludicrous because of the “assumption of melancholia”: they begin “full of woe” (Rowland), “troubled at heart” (Simpkins), or yearning for “heart’s ease” (Peter), and so on.163 The assumption of melancholia is of course a

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component of the initial characterisation of Hamlet in all three versions of the play, but the assumption in Q1 is quickly abandoned for the audience as the Prince takes on the role of jig-maker. The proliferation of moments of solitary lament in the Q2/F texts is more likely to have been based on a Burbage-oriented Hamlet, from 1594 onwards. If Kempe was responsible for the reconstruction of the play around 1603, then, he could not have returned to it the full force of his initial comic ideal, since that would reveal too much about his role in the unauthorised publication of the Q1, but he was certainly at liberty to retain the ambiguous dialogue that had been layered upon it, a point to which we will return in Chapter Three.

Finis or Jig: A Matter of Closure As we seek to make more perfect sense of the clues provided by the Q1 and Q2/F texts, it is incumbent upon us to cease trying to do this in terms of a book culture that emerges out of—therefore, after—the processes that resulted in the production of these texts. Reading the Q1 as method, based on what we do know of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men and the histories of the company’s major figures, we gain some understanding of how to wrest the text away from a monolithic “book culture” approach. The idea that a printed work might be a product of multiple performances, some based on parts in hand and others based on long-term memory, may not be the most straightforward explanation, but then it does represent a plausible account of how else to read the clues and the questions posed by the Q1 text. Our attempts to build complete narratives out of the fragmentary details of the lives of the players and playwrights is a desperately fraught task, but we do in fact know more about Shakespeare than about other players one might care to name from the same period. The tradition in which Kyd is conventionally seen as the author of an ur-Hamlet, for example, is propped up by far less evidence than what has been presented here—and which it has been necessary to present—in order to dismantle standard ur-Hamlet accounts. We know very little about Kyd, as it happens. From this side of history, we search for evidence to support reflective assumptions about Shakespeare’s grandeur in the middle of his career, so find it much easier to ascribe to Kyd the authorship of a less acclaimed lost play and leaving Shakespeare’s lost years imagined as a Dark Age of his talent, out of which sprang the Renaissance of his middle years. It is also less easy to construct a mythology around the Bard if we find ourselves regulated by sobering ideas about the dynamic terrain of newly entrepreneurial theatre companies, through the filter of which “Shakespeare’s authorship” is no longer such a straightforward notion. The onus is on scholarship to point

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out where Shakespeare may need to be pulled out of the spotlight to some extent, but not in order to have him banished to the wings; if we do this, it is merely in order to have him share the stage with the rest of the cast. The Q1 Hamlet is one such vehicle for doing this but our attempts to map this version of the text into the ur-Hamlet account also mean that we can place Shakespeare on the stage along with his companions for much longer than we had reason to assume under sway of the ur-Hamlet and the particularly bookish version of the Bard it supports. Even to Shakespeare’s middle and later years, we should be reluctant to adhere stoically to the dramatic structure through which his career has been viewed, with the inevitable rise that is seen to culminate in Hamlet followed by a short plateau of triumphs and gradually falling away in the later years, achieving a brief dénouement with The Tempest, before fading from the scene altogether. The picture of a revising Shakespeare is always going to be difficult for some to accept because it upsets this rhythm of his career; the picture of a Shakespeare who shares the stage with a company of other players, all of whom revise plays in concert with him, puts that rhythm further into disarray. This is not to insist that we must abandon any suggestion that the playwright and his company improved their skills and their output, nor even that one member—Shakespeare included—could become stale or decline in effectiveness; it simply means that the assumed rhythm should not be placed before the evidence, as a result of which any evidence must be disregarded if it fails to then support these assumptions. We inserted the Q1 into Shakespeare’s earlier development as a dramatist, which is anathema to anyone who believes that Shakespeare’s Hamlet is nothing less than the pinnacle of his career. The existence of the Folio should in fact have made such thinking obsolete: it presents a version of Hamlet that is a little different once again; not as different from Q2 as is Q1, to be sure, but different nonetheless, from which we should see the F at least as a constant foil to any hint that the Q2 represented the final word on the Hamlet story. In this chapter, instead, we have attempted to imagine anew the first word on the history of Hamlet during Shakespeare’s life in the theatre. The question of what Hamlet does with its source materials is fundamentally connected to the question of when Shakespeare became involved in the long history of the Danish story and its transformation into one of the great works of English literature—the belief that Shakespeare wrote the play no earlier than 1599 leaves us needing the intermediary of an ur-Hamlet, supposedly written by Kyd; recognition that Shakespeare could have had a hand in the play to which Nashe refers in 1589 leaves us with a more direct relationship to Belleforest, albeit with the proviso that other factors complicate the source-text relationship.

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Importantly, though, we have also recognised that we impose our own book culture if we imagine the sources of Shakespeare’s play only as texts. If we seek to read the companies with which Shakespeare was involved, on the other hand, we create a new field of potential source materials: the players themselves. If we accept that Kempe was involved in updating the Amleth tale as a reflection of the Elsinore at which he had performed, then the idea of separating a source from the method by which it is updated will become untenable: put simply, we collapse the categories of “source” and “adaptation.” This is not a gesture toward a peculiarly postmodern notion of intertextuality; rather, it speaks to the task of trying to understand early modern textual practices on their own terms. A time when book culture as we know it had not yet developed, the early modern period involved many new and emergent ways of thinking about the nature of words, spoken and written. The rise of the trade in books presented to those whose principal stock in trade was playing a new and potentially fertile market, but the idea was rather slow to catch on, and the task of adapting the ephemeral writing practices of the travelling companies to the demands of printers produced new challenges, both practical and conceptual. Again, the role of the player comes to the fore when we encounter issues of variation among the different print versions of the play, since explanations for variations have invariably hinged on accepting the involvement of the company in the production of the play text: either the plays were revised between print versions, based on the needs and wishes of the company, or the existence of cue scripts is all that can account for the similarities between versions, leading us to conclude that a disgruntled player had taken it upon himself to reconstruct the remainder of Hamlet from memory. An account of the method to which the play text bears witness must therefore posit “source materials” as a provisional category. Certainly, we can isolate the text of Belleforest, for example, and identify those aspects of Shakespeare’s Hamlet that are both present and absent, from which it follows that the absent material must have come from somewhere else, but the task of isolating “Shakespeare’s Hamlet” is not all that straightforward, nor should we be inclined any longer to want to refer to such an object as a thing in itself. When we refer from this point onwards to the method of the play being a question of what it does with its source materials, then, I ask the reader at all times to remember the provisional status of this definition, since it will be contingent on ensuring that we are adequately explaining the practices of early modern individuals and companies; it should not be paramount that our categories are kept perfectly intact. Ever the clown, the figure of Kempe has emerged here as a focus for a question of sources and adaptations, but in a fashion most appropriate to his role in the Elizabethan

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theatre the terms by which we seek clarity have been thrown into chaos. Yet this chaotic picture of a Hamlet-story that emerges out of Kempe’s personal experience, the Danish court circa 1586, an ancient and possibly apocryphal Danish history, and the arrival of an ambitious young playerdramatist within Kempe’s company provides the more viable—and thus, curiously, the more stable—version of the play’s history than does a tale of the linear transmission of a narrative through three discrete “books” (the Amleth text, a Kyd ur-version, and a Shakespearean revival of the latter). The likelihood that Kempe remained a part of the history of the Hamlet play right up to its publication—and, therefore, as I have argued here, the likelihood of his earlier involvement as well—is increased when we recall the timing of the appearance of both the Q1 and the Q2 versions. Kempe was certainly already absent from the company by the time he embarked on his nine day jig and subsequent sojourn to Europe in 1600. Gurr has suggested that Kempe’s rather cryptic assertion in his Kemps Nine Daies Wonder—“Some sweare in a Trenchmore I have trode a good way to winne the world: others that guesse righter, affirme, I have without good helpe daunst my selfe out of the worlde”—bespeaks a complaint that he had felt compelled to dance himself out of The Globe.164 In any case, he had returned to England by no later than 2 September, 1601, after which he became associated with Worcester’s Men at a time that this company emerged as the first real challenger to the duopoly control of the theatres enjoyed by The Lord Chamberlain’s Men and The Admiral’s Men.165 We shall consider this duopoly in more detail in the next chapter, but Kempe’s involvement with the group that first challenged the royally sanctioned domination of the two major London companies is worth observing here, since it reminds us that he was by no means an anonymous and forlorn figure straight after his departure from Chamberlain’s company; rather, he actively participated in an enterprise seeking to end his former company’s dominance of the London theatre scene. Kempe’s capacity for playing a clown who brings misrule down upon the careful plans of others in his offstage life is also fairly well documented: Wiles records that in 1585, Kempe was left in charge of the correspondence of the Earl of Leicester and Philip Sidney, but he handed the entire package to Lady Dudley, wife to the Earl of Leicester, including the letter in which Sidney had asked Francis Walsingham to keep Dudley’s wife from joining her husband at court, presumably so that he could be more free to enjoy the excesses of courtly life.166 Sidney had previously described clowns in his Apology for Poetry as unnecessary indulgences cast merely “to play a part in majestical matters, with neither decency nor discretion.”167 Sidney dubbed Kempe a “knave” for his part in this recent misdirection of his mail. Leicester seems

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to have been less concerned by Kempe’s breach of protocol—he was more likely to have berated Sidney for being indiscrete in the first instance—and of course he later employed Kempe for further international service, on the trip to Denmark in 1586. By early in 1602, Kempe fell into financial hardship. He had tried to establish a viable touring destination in Münster for a group of players late in 1601. As there was no return tour despite the popularity of his own jig Rowland in Germany, it is likely that he failed to recoup his expenses in setting up the tour,168 and by 10 March, 1602, he found himself needing to borrow money from Philip Henslowe for his “necessary uses.”169 Within a few months, Hamlet was entered into the Stationers’ Register but not, it seems, with intent to publish, as I shall explain in Chapter Two. Given that the entry was in the name of James Roberts, it was rightfully his to print but no print run had appeared under his name in the remainder of 1602 or 1603. Kempe’s financial hardship would easily account for a desire to risk censure or even imprisonment by contravening the rules of the Stationers’ Company, getting involved in an unsanctioned publication of Hamlet. As Wiles notes, Kempe vanishes from the public record after 1602 and, after the closure of the theatres for the plague of 1603, Worcester’s Men had acquired a new clown “and effective leader of the company” in Thomas Greene.170 Kempe’s demise may simply be signalled in the Southwark parish burial entry of 2 November, 1603, for “Kempe, a man.”171 In this brief biography, we find a man who was forever stubbornly searching for a new way to make his fortune—when one enterprise failed, he would move on to another. Kempe was, in a sense, the great clown of his generation but also a tragic figure in his personal life: he had one time been a favourite of the man responsible for diplomatic affairs on the European circuit, Dudley himself being a particular favourite of the Queen, and he had performed for royalty in Denmark and elsewhere; he was then the leading clown in a playing company that would dominate the London stage; yet his career seemed destined to follow a downward trend, and at the same time that Shakespeare’s company was anointed by James as The King’s Men in 1603, Kempe was destitute and at death’s door. Furthermore, he could well have been made the subject of ridicule in at least one of the plays performed by The Lord Chamberlain’s Men in the season of 1602 to 1603: Paul Yachnin observes that the humiliation of Parolles in All’s Well that Ends Well could be seen as “an allegorized punishment of Kemp.”172 If he did indeed retain possession of his old script from an earlier production of Hamlet, which his old company had by now successfully revived, there is little wonder that he would give into the temptation to approach a printer to make a deal.

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After the Q1 was printed, there appears to have been no attempt on the part of either Roberts—in whose name the play was registered—or the Lord Chamberlain and his men to invoke their right to have the offending stationers punished. Instead, they simply approached the same stationers to invest in a newly imprinted and enlarged edition, which we now know as the Q2 Hamlet, in 1604. One reasonable explanation for the decision not to take action against the publishers of the Q1 Hamlet and, instead, to seek to capitalise on the success of the first printed edition, may be that the true culprit was no longer alive. The tragedy of Kempe’s life may well amount at the end to a misguided attempt to make money from a play that he felt was as much his as it was any other man’s, and his final act with the play was not as a player or “writer,” but as the ghost publisher we now refer to as “actor-reporter,” one whose only chance to make money out of the play was to remain a completely anonymous participant in its publication, and to give to the play the name of Shakespeare. Kempe’s life had never been associated with anonymity—such it seems was his love of the spotlight— but it may be that it was at last only in anonymity that he could seek his fortune, but he died before it bore fruit. Kempe was by this time replaced in the Chamberlain’s company by Robert Armin, whose influence on the company’s repertory seems to have been immediate: himself a gifted and respected writer by the time of his arrival, Armin contributed plays of his own to their repertory and worked closely with Shakespeare to develop scenes around his talents as a “fool,” quite distinct from Kempe’s “clown,” according to Wiles and others.173 Kempe’s departure seems to have been associated with his own yen for the spotlight. To the contrary, Armin the intellectual seems to have been quickly embraced because he possessed the player-performer’s gift of withdrawing into the background. Jeffrey Masten reads Armin’s preface to his The History of The Two Maids of More-clacke (1609)—in which the play text is described to the “friendly peruser” as a “dumbe show” wanting merely for further acceptance—as evidence of a new trend toward viewing Quarto texts as “silent surrogates for the thing itself, theatrical performance,” wherein Armin deliberately endeavours in his writing to “finesse the transition from stage to page.”174 In a more detailed analysis of Armin’s career, Nora Johnson affirms Masten’s overarching point that Kempe’s replacement quickly emerged as a pivotal figure in the shift to book culture, not because he provides any evidence of the rise of modern authorship at this time but for precisely the opposite reason: Armin’s career shows us that writers for stage and print were at this time still negotiating their terrain anew, and he in particular now needs to be seen in terms of “his position between the private and the collective, or the power of his reputation to configure strong relationships

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between print and performance.”175 The figure who wanted to be too much in the sun, like Kempe, is eventually discarded by troupe-minded players, a reminder that we are mistaken if we seek to keep the spotlight solely on Shakespeare. The figure of Armin thus serves to reinforce the point that any attempt to read the writing career of Shakespeare through the lens of modern book culture, with its focus on sole authors and individual writing practices, inevitably leads us to fail to see the early modern text, either in print or in performance, on its own terms. As we look to the performance aspects of the early modern play text, it is worthwhile extending our view to include more than the performance of the play; we might consider, for example, the interplay between the play and the other entertainments on offer to those who frequented the theatre. As it happens, the various texts of Hamlet help us to see that one feature of the entertainments on offer at The Globe might have been radically altered by Kempe’s departure, and in such a way as to suggest that the earlier Hamlet was more conducive to the comic form associated with Kempe’s talents. Gurr notes that by 1600, jigs were a popular entertainment to follow the staging of any Tragedy, with a concomitant stage practice therefore being that dead bodies were usually cleared away before the end of the performance with a funeral march—a point Muriel Clara Bradbrook makes as well in Themes and Conventions of Elizabethan Tragedy176—but the ending of Hamlet provides a moment of “rare awkwardness” in which three corpses are simply left on stage, and only Hamlet’s dead body is removed.177 Gurr asks whether these corpses would have simply sprung to life again as the jig-making commenced, his point being that this seems unlikely and that the company was by this time abandoning earlier practices for marking the end of a day’s entertainments. Gurr’s observation is an intriguing one and his conclusion is sound, but it does rely on this particular ending having been written before the arrival of Armin, whose talents gave to Twelfth Night its closing song in 1601, as Gurr also observes.178 Hamlet in fact explicitly denounces jig-making— “he’s for a jig, or a tale of bawdry” (2.2.438)—which would seem to be a barb against Kempe, foremost among jig-makers of his day, yet Hamlet is himself the only jig-maker, as we have seen. Indeed, the denunciation of jig-making by Hamlet could well be seen as a teaser for the audience to expect that a jig, and “a tale of bawdry,” will be offered at some time in the day’s entertainments. The length of the play, however, might have made this prospect seem less likely as time slipped by for the audience. Scholars have long debated the possibility that Shakespeare’s long plays might not have been viable within the “two hours’ traffic of our stage” to which the Prologue refers in Romeo and Juliet, but Michael J. Hirrel has recently provided substantial evidence for all of the plays being viable in a

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four hour window that normally represented the duration of entertainments at the large public theatres.179 Nevertheless, while the longest of the plays, like Hamlet, might be capably presented in full within the four hour period covered by the entertainments, the audience might certainly expect to have less of the peripheral entertainments when the nearby church bell had been struck for the third hour, with the play still not yet finished. Length is less of a problem for the Q1, which is fractionally more than half the length of the Q2/F versions. Furthermore, closer inspection of both Q1 and Q2 gives us reason to suspect that Gurr’s conundrum is non-existent: to begin with, in Q2, it is not “the body” that is taken up but “the bodies” (5.2.385), and then follows the command to bid the soldiers shoot along with the stage direction, “Exeunt,” (but there is also no “Peale of Ordnance” as directed at the end of the Folio). This suggests that no corpse is left on stage after all, and there is no peal of gunfire shot off to signal the end of the day’s proceedings. In Q1, “the bodie” is taken up but there is also no command for a peal of ordinance, nor in fact is there any stage direction at all for the players to exit the stage. Q1 ends thus: “such a sight as this / Becomes the fields, but here doth much amisse / Finis.”180 The corpses would indeed be required to rise in order to leave the stage, but such awkwardness is circumvented by the text indicating that all players remain on stage. Either this is oversight, a habit admittedly associated with the actor-reporter in the standard memorial reconstruction account of the Q1 text, or else it is the residual index of a performance in which the players did remain on stage. To this we should add that in the Q1 text, moments earlier, Horatio pre-empts the drawing of matters to a close but with a clear indication of how this shall be managed on stage: Hor. Content your selues, Ile shew to all, the ground, The first beginning of this Tragedy: Let there a scaffold be reared vp in the market place, And let the State of the world be there: Where you shall heare such a sad story tolde, That neuer mortall man could more vnfolde.181

In Horatio’s last words in Q1, then, I think we find a suggestion that the stage was already being altered to suit the final actions of the play to the closing entertainments: a makeshift scaffold may well have been raised on stage to represent the platform on which a story about Hamlet—the same story that the audience have seen unfold on this stage—will be unfolded. Even as the last lines of the Q1 are delivered by Fortinbras, the new chief of State in Denmark, the stage is already being readied around him for the

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following entertainment, an ending that does “much amiss” indeed in the Q1 text. Importantly, this is an ending that lends itself to a jig following the Tragedy, of a kind well suited to Kempe’s showmanship. The Q2 text is less suited to the playing of a jig afterwards, but it does at least provide for the removal of all corpses. It would make sense that the Q2 ending was an amendment to the Q1 ending, to accommodate the absence of Kempe, but it certainly also admits of the players returning to the stage for further entertainments. There is, in other words, in both Q1 and Q2—each in their own way—the capacity for a jig to follow the performance without the awkwardness provided by the Folio text on which Gurr bases his reading. In any case, as I noted above, Gurr’s conclusions make sense if the Folio text refers to a performance that was written before the arrival of Armin: if there is any awkwardness in such a performance, then, it may be because it references a production that had already sidelined Kempe but was not yet able to incorporate his replacement. If the jig was no longer to be used at the end of the Tragedy, it may be because Kempe had moved on. The Q1 speaks most directly to the possibility of additional entertainment of the kind that would have suited Kempe’s jig-making, and it certainly is of the length that could have accommodated such entertainments. The point of this is to note that the play texts themselves signal a shift that may take place over several years, between different performances of the play. To get at this level of detail, it is of course necessary to revise our preconceptions about the play. While we have speculated about Kempe’s involvement in the initial conception of the play, it is speculation built upon material located in the historical record or found in accounts about the habits and habitudes of the company and their contemporaries. By looking beyond our own habitudes, we open up the possibility of seeing the play as a far more complex object, not a reflection of ourselves, but also not altogether untouchable. If the play was first written more than a decade earlier than conventional wisdom holds, attempts to understand the play as method must therefore be prepared to extend to a wider compass in order to capture a sense of the “purpose of playing” to which the play in its various guises must have been addressed. That we can only know of such purposes through the printed text demands that our next step must be to unravel the story of the transition from stage to page, as Masten described it, of this particular play in its different versions.

CHAPTER TWO PATRONS, PRINTERS, AND PLAY TEXTS

According to William Empson, the “Hamlet problem” is a somewhat recent invention and, for around two hundred years after Hamlet had first been staged, nobody had even considered it a problem. The problem, since about the end of the eighteenth century, had been a psychological concern: why does Hamlet delay the revenge he swore to bring about so early in the drama? Against psychological concerns, Empson pits historical ones, and suggests instead that the problems for the audience in the first years of the seventeenth century amount to questions arising from historical context— chief among these are the Essex rebellion of 1601 and widespread concern about the succession at a time when the ageing Elizabeth had as yet failed to beget an heir—and the theatre itself. Accordingly, for Empson, there is no question of delay that need be considered when seeking to understand the play as it would have been understood in Shakespeare’s time. Yet our goal is not simply to understand the play as Shakespeare’s contemporaries would have understood it—the “tain” of Hamlet, as we are calling it, calls into play questions of method as well as of interpretation. As we argue for Shakespearean involvement before 1599, we invite consideration of a very different kind of delay: if Shakespeare and others had produced the play as early as 1588 or 1589, why was it not committed to print in an authorised publication until 1604? We have given thought to a suggestion that, from 1596 onwards, the death of Shakespeare’s son could have represented a psychological barrier to revisiting the play that bore his son’s name. Yet we also noted grounds to be suspicious of modern psychological readings of father-son relationships at a time when primogeniture was, as the name suggests, primary. Indeed, it may be that investigation into the publication of Shakespeare’s plays will lead us to conclude that, like the psychology of Hamlet’s delay, there is really no question of delay at all. There is, to begin with, no sense of a consistent relationship between performance history and the publication of Shakespeare’s plays, least of all prior to about 1597. Grace Ioppolo has argued in Dramatists and Their Manuscripts in the Age of Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, and Heywood that acting companies considered the printing of an active repertory play to

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be an unwelcome financial risk, and an increasing number of court cases from the era bear witness to the desire of companies to prevent the printing of plays without consent or to seek large payments in compensation from printers who did so.1 The Stationers’ Register, in this sense, proved to be a convenient legal asset to the acting companies, since an entry therein for any title provided legal protection by precluding anybody from putting it into print. There are several instances where a play was entered with the specific instruction that it be “stayed,” taken normally to mean that it is entered precisely to prevent any printing by the stationers—although we will have grounds to revisit this momentarily. We must remember that the relationship between theatre companies and the stationers was embryonic, and many of the strategies that we might now think of as standard were being developed through trial and error. Even a cursory account of the publication of the plays in the repertory of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, for example, shows that until 1597, the link between performance and print remained very sketchy. I have used a comparison between the work of Andrew Gurr and Roslyn Knutson—who list the plays belonging to the repertory of Shakespeare’s company but who are in disagreement over a number of titles—to develop a list that we might say represents at least a consensus view within Shakespeare scholarship. From these lists, we can confidently conclude that out of no fewer than fourteen plays owned by Shakespeare’s company in 1594, only four would appear in Quarto before 1597: Fair Em (1593), Titus Andronicus (1594), and the Second and Third Parts of Henry VI (1594 to 1595).2 All but three of these fourteen plays are identified by both as Shakespeare’s, although both list Henslowe’s 1594 Hamlet as a non-Shakespearean title within the company’s repertory. Of the eleven plays that both attribute to Shakespeare up to and including 1594, five do not appear in print at all until 1623: King John, 1Henry IV, Taming of the Shrew, The Comedy of Errors, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona all appear in print for the first time in the Folio. Perhaps the question should not, therefore, be one of why the play was not committed to print until 1604. Judged on the evidence of the remainder of Shakespeare’s output, the tendency seems to be that the earlier we date the origin of a play—for example, to about the time of the foundation of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, or before—the lower its chances become of having been published at all during Shakespeare’s lifetime. While only six of the eleven plays by Shakespeare from 1594 or earlier make it into print during his lifetime, ten out of the fifteen Shakespeare plays performed by the company from 1595 to 1603 are known to have been printed in Quarto, nine of them before 1605, with Troilus and Cressida delayed until 1609 before its appearance in Quarto. Of the five titles that did not make it into

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print in Shakespeare’s lifetime, we shall give more consideration shortly, but it is worth some basic accounting: one is the lost Love’s Labour’s Won, to which Meres referred in 1598 and of which it is suggested by some scholars that the play may be All’s Well that Ends Well by another name, and since All’s Well is among the four that did not appear until the Folio, it is possible that we reduce five to four by this prospect alone;3 two constitute the plays that are seen by some as Shakespeare’s personal foray into the War of the Theatres—As You Like It and Twelfth Night—and so they were unlikely to be viable in Quarto;4 and the remaining play, Julius Caesar, was likely to have been withdrawn from circulation after its debut season in 1599 for reasons that will be explained presently. What we can claim with some confidence, then, is that during the decade after The Lord Chamberlain’s Men were formed, every play that did not have a specific reason to be kept out of print was in fact printed during that same decade, excepting Troilus and Cressida—as is the case with Julius Caesar, there is, I will argue, good reason to also suspect that this play was pulled from circulation and that it was subsequently printed in 1609 due to changing circumstances. The mistake that we make in attempts to map a consistent relationship between performance and publication across Shakespeare’s career arises because both the acting companies and the stationers were in the midst of a period of rapid change. While the period from 1594 to 1603 is characterised by a high level of correspondence between Chamberlain’s plays in performance and those appearing in print, the decade after saw a sharp drop in correspondence, with only King Lear and Pericles out of Shakespeare’s twelve plays of this period appearing in print before his death. Curiously, six of the ten non-Shakespearean plays that are known to have been in the company’s repertory at this time appeared in print within a year or two of their initial repertory dates, with a seventh—Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher’s Philaster—appearing a decade after its first performances. The three missing plays were all performed in the first year of this late period of Shakespeare’s career: Gowrie, Robin Goodfellow, and The Spanish Maze are listed by Knutson as plays from 1604, but they have no known publication record.5 It is not impossible to detect some patterns in the publication histories of plays in the repertories of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men and The King’s Men. I have noted some figures above, but it is worth reconsidering these in more systematic fashion, by mapping the companies’ plays over three distinct phases, corresponding to the period before the formation of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, the period of operation of that company, and the period from the formation of The King’s Men until Shakespeare leaves the London stage. In summary, plays we identify as Shakespearean and non-

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Shakespearean, and as having been published in the period shortly after their repertory date or having been substantially delayed in appearing in print (or having not been published at all, so far as the historical record reveals to date) are as follows—repertory dates (to identify phases) are based on Knutson’s tabulations, the dates of the play’s First Quarto are provided in parenthesis (Q), and Shakespeare plays “not Printed” are those not printed during his lifetime by virtue of either a very delayed date of First Quarto (Q), being printed for the first time in the Folio (F), or having been lost altogether (L):

Publication Histories of Chamberlain’s and King’s Men’s Plays First Phase (plays with a repertory date prior to 1594) Shakespeare in Print: Titus Andronicus (Q1594); 2Henry VI (Q1594); 3Henry VI (Q1595); Richard III (Q1597); Romeo and Juliet (Q1597); Love’s Labour’s Lost (Q1598) Shakespeare not Printed: 1Henry VI (F); Comedy of Errors (F); King John (F); Taming of the Shrew (F); Two Gentlemen of Verona (F) Non-Shakespeare in Print: Fair Em (Q1593); Mucedorus (Q1598) Non-Shakespeare Lost: Hamlet (Knutson lists the Newington Butts Hamlet as a lost non-Shakespeare play)

Second Phase (plays with a repertory date from 1595 to 1603) Shakespeare in Print: Richard II (Q1597); 1Henry IV (Q1598); 2Henry IV (Q1600); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Q1600); Henry V (Q1600); Merchant of Venice (Q1600); Much Ado About Nothing (Q1600); Merry Wives of Windsor (Q1602); Hamlet (Q1603); Troilus and Cressida (Q1609) Shakespeare not Printed: All’s Well that Ends Well (F); As You Like It (F); Julius Caesar (F); Love’s Labour’s Won (L); Twelfth Night (F) Non-Shakespeare in Print: A Warning for Fair Women (Q1599); Every Man Out of His Humour (Q1600); Every Man in His Humour (Q1601); A Larum for London (Q1602); Satiro-mastix (Q1602); Thomas, Lord Cromwell (Q1602); The Malcontent (Q1604); Fair Maid of Bristow (Q1605); London Prodigal (Q1605); Sejanus (Q1605); Merry Devil of Edmonton (Q1608) Non-Shakespeare Lost: Cloth Breeches and Velvet Hose; Sir John Oldcastle

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Third Phase (plays with a repertory date from 1604 to 1613) Shakespeare in Print: King Lear (Q1608); Pericles (Q1609) Shakespeare not Printed: Othello (Q1622); All is True (Henry VIII, F); Antony and Cleopatra (F); Coriolanus (F); Cymbeline (F); Macbeth (F); Measure for Measure (F); Tempest (F); Timon of Athens (F); Winter’s Tale (F) Non-Shakespeare in Print: Devil’s Charter (Q1607); Miseries of Enforced Marriage (Q1607); Revenger’s Tragedy (Q1607); Volpone (Q1607); A Yorkshire Tragedy (Q1608); The Alchemist (Q1612); Philaster (Q1620) Non-Shakespeare Lost: Gowrie; Robin Goodfellow; The Spanish Maze (all three are listed by Knutson as having a first repertory date of 1604) According to such lists, if we wished to generalise about the relationship between the performance and publication of plays by Shakespeare and his company, it seems safe to do so on the basis of distinctions between these three relatively clear phases: in the first, up to 1594, there is a lack of clear correspondence between the two processes, although this is truer of the earliest years; from 1595 to 1603, a small number of plays are excluded from an otherwise direct correspondence between the repertory and print, so these exclusions demand explanation; from 1603, after a brief period in which three plays are excluded from print, the split appears in which Shakespeare’s plays are for the most part excluded from print while the contributions of all other playwrights—Barnes, Beaumont and Fletcher, Dekker, Jonson, and one or two unidentified others—enjoy a relatively quick first imprint. It is worth noting here that these phases also coincide with the formation of different companies, suggesting that the company might be worth considering further as a factor in the printing of plays. This will be explored in what follows. Hamlet fits quite well into both the first and second phases in terms of a question of delay: the conventional date situates it in the latter half of the second phase, and since it appears in print within a few years, there is no explanation required regarding any substantial delay, although the gap that separates performance from print does seem larger than for others in this period; if the play is one of Shakespeare’s first efforts, then we should not be surprised by its delayed publication, since the same holds true of other plays from the same period. We can account for the apparent paradox in which the play appears in two separate phases thus: revival. Whereas we considered the usefulness of picturing Shakespeare as a revising writer in the previous chapter, we may shift our attention here to Shakespeare the

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reviver, or, more to the point, to a company for whom any play was never entirely dead and buried if revival of the title was considered attractive for audiences. The case for Hamlet being an early Shakespeare play does not demand that we consider the play to have been in circulation throughout the period from 1588 to 1604; rather, it requires only that the common practice of reviving plays be included as part of the account. We can imagine a situation in which the play was first staged before 1589, was revived around 1594 and once more in 1596, before being shelved until around the time of Kempe’s departure, at which time it was found to be worth a further revival with or without the company’s leading clown. Indeed, a 1594 revival may have been preceded by performances during a 1593 regional tour by Shakespeare’s company, most likely Lord Strange’s Men: as Eddi Jolly notes at the beginning of an essay on the possibility of pushing back the date of the play, a plaque located at the entrance to the Golden Cross near Oxford University reads, “1593—The play ‘Hamlet’ by William Shakespeare was produced in the courtyard.”6 This curiosity is not usually listed among items of evidence for or against the standard urHamlet account, and for this reason was not considered in the previous chapter, because its provenance is unclear. We do not know, for example, when the plaque was erected, but it is certainly later than the date of the actual performance, so it cannot be considered as contemporary evidence. Yet we must give the claim some credence, since we know that the leading companies of the day regularly undertook tours of the counties, and we must not forget the claim made on the title-page of the Q1 text of Hamlet that it had been played diverse times at Oxford and other places. Dorothea Kehler argues that the Q1 text portrays Gertrude—her name is Gertred in the Q1—in a light that is more attuned to Catholic doctrine, suggesting that the Q1 text is linked to performances on regional tours, in locations where Catholic sympathies were stronger.7 Even in the revival of a play, then, due attention had to be paid by the company to changed locations and circumstances. A play that was popular years ago may be popular again, but new material may need to be accommodated to link the play more closely to the interests or concerns of each new audience; and within a short space of time, a play that had been popular in one region might need to be changed to make it popular in another location. The demands of geography and history weighed upon the early modern playing company. Identifying a consistent link between performance and print is deeply compromised by the practice of revivals. As Lukas Erne points out in his brief analysis of the publication history of Shakespeare’s plays, there is no evidence to indicate that the company considered a play to be beyond its stage life once it appeared in print, since numerous plays were revived

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within a few months of the publication of their first imprint.8 What may be true of some other companies, as per Ioppolo’s account, is manifestly not true of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, a sage reminder that we must avoid generalisations if at all possible. Indeed, in Erne’s account, and as we have noted already, the timing of publication tells us nothing about a company’s intentions: “If we wish to discern the true attitudes toward publication of playbooks in the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries—and Shakespeare’s in particular—we must follow Peter Blayney’s instruction to view such publications from the angle of the London stationers, publishers, and booksellers rather than from that of the actors and dramatists only.”9 By such reckoning, the only generalisation we could make works in the direction from the stationer to the company, not vice versa, with the point that the link between performance and print can only be measured in relation to the perception by a stationer that a play is popular enough to warrant the investment. Popularity in performance is one measure, to be sure, but it is not the only one. After about 1599, there is a possibility that Shakespeare’s name became a bankable commodity in its own right. Even if a given play did not enjoy a profitable run in the theatre—for any reason, including the ever present menace of the plague sweeping through London and its region10—this negative index could be offset by Shakespeare’s name, regardless of the size of the audiences at The Globe. This line of reasoning seems to run counter to the evidence we have just considered of the three phases coinciding with the formations of Shakespeare’s different companies. From the stationer’s perspective, perhaps the question of the delay in publication of a play written before Shakespeare’s name acquired a market value of its own is a moot point. A play text first had to make its way into the hands of a stationer, and we have no reason to think that the failure of the company—or of the playwright, or of anybody else, for that matter—to put Hamlet into the hands of a stationer before 1596 is any different than for any of other play of the time. If the play was out of circulation from 1596 to around 1600, it would have been possibly worth selling off to a stationer from the company’s perspective, but equally likely to have been relatively low in worth from the stationer’s perspective at least until after the name of Shakespeare acquired its elevated market value. It is thus not until around 1600 that we might expect to see the demand for a published version of the play reaching its initial peak, when we view it through the eyes of a stationer, and by that time it was back in performance. Even as we explain the delay from the play’s earliest performances, circa 1588, to its authorised publication, in 1604, though, we hit upon what may be a far more compelling question of delay. If the play acquires a demand from a

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stationer’s perspective after 1600, we may wonder at the delay between registration and print: on 26 July, 1602, a play named “The Revenge of Hamlett Prince Denmark” was entered onto the Stationers’ Register for James Roberts but Hamlet was not in fact printed by the same stationer until 1604. Whence, we may wonder, the two year delay before the Q2 Hamlet is printed? The Q1 Hamlet was, of course, in print in 1603, but Roberts was not involved in this imprint. The question of delay to which we shall now turn is this question of the two years from the claim being made on the printing rights by Roberts to when he finally printed Hamlet. It is on this question, and the potential it will provide for addressing the related issue of the relationship between company and print history—the three phases we have identified—that a significant portion of our efforts to identify the method in the play will ultimately hinge.

“I.R.” or the Atypical Stationer We have seen that the relationship between performance and print may be resistant to the desire to generalise, particularly where Shakespeare and his companies are concerned. Yet before we presume there is a question of delay hanging over the two year gap between registration and print in the case of Hamlet, we should consider whether these processes are equally resistant to generalisation. Registration of a title was not a hard and fast contract between stationer and author, for want of a better word, nor was registration compulsory before a given title could be printed by a member of the company. The entry of a title into the Stationers’ Register was first and foremost a legal safeguard of an individual stationer’s rights over that title. It is not until 1622 that serious moves were made on behalf of the Stationers’ Company to insist on registration of all printed titles, but this was not fully mandated until a Star Chamber decree of 1637 stipulated that every book must first be “lawfully licenced and authorized ... and shall be also first entred into the Registers Booke of the Company of Stationers.”11 Yet we should be very clear that what interests us here is not the question of titles needing mandatorily to be entered into the Register before being printed; rather, we are concerned with the question of whether a two year delay between registration and print run was normal, once a stationer did lay his claim on the title via the Register. As early as 1588, an ordinance passed by the Stationers stipulated that once any title was out of print, the owner of the copy should “within Sixe monethes ... reprynt or begyn to reprynt the same and procede orderly with the ympression to ye finishing thereof,” else it shall be “Lawfull for the Journemen of the said Company to cause and gett any suche book or copy to be printed to ye use of ye

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Company.”12 While this ordinance refers specifically to titles that were “out of print” rather than new titles—and Robert Detobel has argued that the distinction is immaterial in this instance13—it nevertheless draws our attention to both the desire by “ye Company” to want books routinely kept in circulation for as long as possible (presumably for the benefit of book sellers) and the material difficulties that may be associated with getting an out of print book into print if another stationer or anybody else withheld the copy—the ordinance refers to the need for a stationer to “cause and get any suche book,” suggesting that obstacles may have been anticipated, and in the case of play books, this could extend to the players failing to make a new copy available. Even under the reign of King James, by which time the book trade was ensconced and the Stationers’ Company enjoyed complete oversight of the industry, only about four in five registered titles ever made it into print.14 While there is thus no principle of direct equivalence between registration and print, we do have enough information to be able to determine whether a two year delay was normal either for Roberts or for publications arising from the repertory of the Lord Chamberlain’s and King’s companies, with particular reference to the works attributed to Shakespeare. Using the same list of plays to which we referred in the previous section of this book—to wit, the plays for which Gurr and Knutson are in agreement—we can track all of the relevant entries in the Stationers’ Register. Prior to 1594, none of Shakespeare’s plays nor any other item acquired by the company for use in their initial repertory shows up in the Register. Love’s Labour’s Lost and Mucedorus, one of which is Shakespeare’s—both of which predate the formation of the company—were not entered into the Register but both are released in Quarto in 1598. King John, Taming of the Shrew, and 1Henry VI, which probably predate the formation of the company, do not appear in print until the First Folio, but were also never entered into the Register. Having noted this, however, the last two titles possess curious histories that compromise any certain pronouncements. An entry for “A pleasant Conceyted historie called ‘the Tayminge of a Shrowe’” is in the Register for 2 May, 1594,15 but there remains no scholarly consensus on whether this refers to Shakespeare’s play or some other play with a similar title, and there is further debate over whether this was the play recorded in Henslowe’s diary as having been performed at Newington Butts in June.16 Also, the convoluted history of the three Henry VI plays shows that on 12 March, 1594, “a booke intituled, the firste parte of the Contention of the twoo famous houses,”17 and so on, was entered by Thomas Millington into the Register, while on 19 April, 1602, Millington transferred his rights to four books, two of which were identified in the Register as “The first and

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Second parte of HENRY the VJt[h].”18 This suggests that the second part (3Henry VI) was deemed by the stationers to have already been signed to Millington by virtue of his registration of the first part (2Henry VI). In what follows the formation of the company, there is the sharp rise in correlation between plays in the company’s repertory and the involvement of the stationers, as noted in our list of the three phases. Comparison of the full lists of titles provided by Gurr and Knutson shows that only six plays out of 60 listed for the company’s repertory from 1594 to 1610, beginning with the plays performed at Newington Butts, never appeared in print, so far as we know (we shall omit the Newington Butts Hamlet from this list, since its provenance is what materially concerns us here). Three of these appear together in the repertory of 1604, signalling the end of the second phase. Another of the six is the disputed Oldcastle, which Knutson lists as a separate title but Gurr lists as a likely misidentification of a performance of 1Henry IV, which appeared in print in 1598.19 A fifth is the play called Cloth Breeches and Velvet Hose, which was registered on 27 May, 1600, but no print version survives.20 Of particular interest here is the fact that Cloth Breeches was entered for Roberts. The remaining lost title is Love’s Labour’s Won, but we observed already that this may be another name for All’s Well that Ends Well, which appeared in print in the Folio. Of the remaining 54 titles, 16 appeared in print for the first time in the Folio, 13 of which were entered in the Stationers’ Register for the first time on 8 November, 1623, with the other three—Antony and Cleopatra, As You Like It, and 3Henry VI—appearing in the Register before this date but in somewhat contentious fashion, and all three of which are then entered again in the entry of 1623.21 We have already seen that two parts of Henry VI had been registered in 1594 and transferred in 1602, so the inclusion of a third part in 1623 is most likely a last attempt by Christopher Blount and William Jaggard to protect all the potentially unregistered titles that were to be compiled in the First Folio. In the case of As You Like It, the title was certainly not previously registered: it only appears in the Register in an occasional note dated 4 August, 1600, along with three other titles and a brief statement to the effect that all four are “to be staied,”22 which we shall consider in greater detail very shortly. Suffice it to note for now that the title was not registered on the basis of this occasional note. Antony and Cleopatra is the most curious of the three, since it certainly was registered to Edward Blount, alongside an entry to him of Pericles, on 20 May, 1608.23 The latter appeared in print in 1609, but Antony had to wait until it was registered a second time, in 1623, to appear in print, and we will note also that Pericles was not included in the Folio. Importantly, half a dozen lost plays and the sixteen plays published for

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the first time in the Folio seem to indicate a significant proportion of plays that were, during the life of Shakespeare, bound never to be published. It is only the monumental achievement of the Folio editors, seven years after Shakespeare’s death, which would turn the equation around, leading to a higher proportion of plays that finally appeared in print. Again, to be clear, we are concerned here with the question of the Stationers’ Register, so we shall turn our attention specifically to the entries of titles in the company’s repertory, to see what kind of interval usually passed between registration and print. The first title in the Register, among those that we definitely identify with the company, is Titus Andronicus, registered to John Danter on 6 February, 1594;24 it was printed in Quarto later in that year. The next title appears when Millington registers the first Henry VI play in March, with the Quarto appearing in the same year. There is then a hiatus of more than two years until Richard II was registered to Andrew Wise on 29 August, 1597;25 it appears in Quarto by the end of the same year. Richard III followed soon after, with an entry to Wise on 20 October, 1597, and the appearance of the Quarto later in the same year.26 Romeo and Juliet also appeared in Quarto at this time, although it is widely considered to be one of the “bad” Quarto texts, and Knutson does not list it as having had any preceding entry.27 We might note here that on 5 August, 1596, Edward White registered two ballads, “one intituled. A newe ballad of ROMEO and JULIETT,” which being entered as a ballad is clearly a new verse retelling of the much older story set to verse in English by Arthur Brooke in 1562.28 Its proximity to the release of the Q1 of Romeo and Juliet early in 1597 may give us food for thought. White was responsible for a number of titles that were not considered previously here because of disagreement between Gurr and Knutson concerning any possible connection to Shakespeare. Titles like Arden of Faversham, Solomon and Perseda, King Leir, and John of Gaunt were all registered to White from 1592 to 1594.29 White’s entry of 1596 does not, of course, assist us in linking the registration of a new ballad to the “bad” Quarto, but we note their proximity purely out of interest, given that one may have served as inspiration for the other. Regardless of any connection between this 1596 entry and the Quarto of 1597, we can observe a pattern in the other plays listed so far: in each case, an entry in the Register is followed soon after by the appearance of the same title in print. The same holds true for 1Henry IV (registered 25 February, 1598,30 and in print the same year), A Warning for Fair Women (anonymous, but identified on the title-page of its 1599 Quarto with The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, registered on 17 November, 1599),31 and in fact for all bar seven of the company’s 26 titles registered between 1598 and 1608. Rendering account in sum, but discounting the dubious 1596 Romeo

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and Juliet entry, of 31 titles registered between 1594 and 1608, no fewer than 24 appear in print within a few months of the entry in the Register. Of the seven odd plays out in this list, two have already been mentioned: they are the 1608 registrations of Antony and Cleopatra and Pericles, and they are the last two plays out of the 31 we are considering. This leaves five plays out of the preceding 29, spanning from 1594 to 1608—that is, from Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus to the anonymous Yorkshire Tragedy32— which were registered but then not released in print within the six month window stipulated by the ordinance of 1588. Of particular relevance to us here, all of these five anomalous plays were registered to James Roberts and, so far as can be ascertained from perusal of the Stationers’ Register, they are the only five plays Roberts registered. Based on the evidence, we can make two seemingly competing claims: the plays from the company’s repertory, once entered into the Register, usually made it into print within a few months; but in cases in which Roberts was the stationer responsible for entering a play in the Register, there was usually either a delay or the play was bound in fact to never appear in print. If we accept the principle that publication should only be considered in terms of the stationer’s perspective, we must at least recognise that in this case we are dealing with a not altogether typical stationer. The “I.R.” who printed the Q2 text “for N.L.,” a full two years after he had entered the title in the Stationers’ Register, seems to have routinely done the opposite with the plays of Shakespeare’s company than what was normally the case. If the company was displeased with such delays in the printing of the plays once they had been entrusted to a stationer, they would surely have sought to block any further involvement by that stationer. We know, for example, that the company later tried on three occasions, in 1619, 1637, and 1641, to have publication of their plays without their consent outlawed by the Stationers’ Company.33 The practice to which they were referring was of course printing without consent and this invariably entailed no registration of the title by the offending stationer. In the years that Shakespeare was involved with the company, the preferred practice for dealing with piracy of this kind seems to have been simply to produce a version that they were happier to see appearing in print, hence the “newly augmented” versions of Love’s Labour’s Lost (1598), Romeo and Juliet (1599), and of course the Q2 Hamlet in 1604. Yet the Q2 Hamlet stands out here because it had previously been registered to the man who was responsible for printing the augmented version—neither Love’s Labour’s Lost nor Romeo and Juliet had been registered before the appearance of the unauthorised text. The relationship between Q1 and Q2 Hamlet is thus unique, at least from the perspective of the stationers.

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Figure 2.1 Title page of Q2 Hamlet (1604).

Erne suggests an explanation for the Q1-Q2 publication history: Ling and Trundell had licensed but not entered their manuscript in the Register, and Simmes printed it without any of them realising that it had previously been registered to Roberts; after the breach had been discovered, Roberts chose to capitalise on the success of the first edition rather than exposing the breach, and co-opted Ling into backing his copy, “Newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much againe as it was, according to the true and perfect Coppie,” as the title page of the Q2 claims in relation to Ling and Trundell’s text.34 Erne’s explanation does indeed “fit all the evidence,” as he suggests, except he is not concerned with addressing the discrepancy that interests us here: Erne explains perfectly well why Roberts elected to capitalise rather than punish after the Q1 text appeared, but fails to explain why Roberts delayed printing the title before the Q1 appeared, despite his already registered interest. While the Q1-Q2 relationship is unique, it is worth considering the other four titles that Roberts registered: he becomes involved with a play from the company’s repertory for the first time when

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he registers Merchant of Venice on 22 July, 1598,35 and he appears again on 22 October 1600, transferring his interest in this same play to Thomas Heyes, the title then being printed “by I.R. for Thomas Heyes” before the end of that year;36 on 27 May, 1600, Roberts registers Cloth Breeches, a play that was never printed;37 two days later, he registers A Larum for London, a play that would later be printed for Edward Allde by William Ferbrand in 1602, although there is no evidence of the rights to the title having been transferred to Allde in the two years after the title was first registered by Roberts;38 in 1602, Roberts registers Hamlet, and was the printer of the Q2 of 1604 to 1605; and on 7 February, 1603, he registers Troilus and Cressida, a play that remained out of print until 1609, after Roberts had already left the business.39 Roberts would seem to be particularly atypical, then, to the extent that an entry under his name in the Stationers’ Register was not a commitment to a quick print run. All other stationers who saw fit to register one of the plays of The Lord Chamberlain’s or King’s Men, also saw to it that there was an ensuing print run shortly thereafter. Yet perusal of the activity of Roberts as a stationer will show that in every other aspect of his business, he was not one to delay publication of an item once he had registered it: on 20 September, 1595, Roberts registered Gervase Markham’s poem of Sir Richard Grenville,40 a title that he would publish later in the same year;41 on 8 September, 1598, Roberts registered John Marston’s satire, Scourge of Villainy,42 which he also printed in 1599,43 and which was among the satires that, as we shall see, was burned by royal decree in the same year; later in 1599, on 1 October, he registered a novel, The historye of the life and fortune of Don Frederigo Di Terra Nova,44 and it was printed before the year was ended;45 and there are many more that follow this pattern throughout the next six years. While Roberts seems to have been less than willing to print the plays of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men once he put his name to them in the Register, he was an otherwise most proficient printer, capable of churning out a title immediately after declaring his interest in it via the Stationers’ Register. Furthermore, Roberts was the printer on two new editions of plays by Edward White: Arden of Faversham (1599) and Titus Andronicus (1600). In both cases, the title had been published for White more than half a decade earlier: Arden was printed in Quarto in 1592 by an unidentified printer and Titus had been printed in 1594 by John Danter; and White registered both titles shortly before their first imprints. Titus was certainly a Chamberlain’s Men’s play when it was reprinted in 1600, but the repertory status of Arden remains unclear despite numerous publications by scholars debating its authorship and provenance.46 It may be that in discussing the history of involvement between Roberts and The

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Lord Chamberlain’s Men, we might be able to add one piece to this puzzle surrounding Arden of Faversham, since Roberts by every other account seems to have troubled himself only with plays from one company, so an imprint of Arden under his name may well be a clear indication that it was in the repertory of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men in 1599. We may wonder, then, if the key factor is the playing company itself. In 1916, Alfred W. Pollard attempted to analyse the relationship between the printers of Shakespeare’s Quartos and his company, concluding that the imperative to print was heightened at those times when the players were prevented from performing due to either theatre closures or being “disgraced at Court”—Pollard refers here to the Essex rebellion of 1601 and the implication that The Lord Chamberlain’s Men had aided him with a performance of Richard II on the eve of the coup—but also that such periods of inactivity made them more susceptible to pirated publications.47 The figure of Roberts is central to this account: according to Pollard, John Danter printed pirated versions, to which the players responded swiftly by selling to Andrew Wise the three plays he registered and published, and these were followed by a further two plays to Cuthbert Burby, and then Roberts was enlisted specifically by the players in 1598 to register The Merchant of Venice with a “staying entry,” a task he later also undertook for both Hamlet in 1602 and Troilus and Cressida in 1603. If Pollard is right, Roberts did not delay, as such; rather, he was purposely engaged to register these plays so as to prevent their publication by any other printer. Pollard’s ideas have been challenged in subsequent years, most forcibly perhaps by Peter Blayney, whose detailed analysis of the titles in print and those in the Stationers’ Register provides ample grounds for dismissing Pollard’s core distinction between the two kinds of irregularity: titles that appeared in print without ever having been registered; and titles that had been registered but were printed by someone other than the stationer who entered the title.48 Blayney points out that such “irregularities” were far from irregular, and that any theory of “piracy” built around the tracking of irregularities of this kind is groundless. While I occupy the same camp as Blayney on such matters—refusing to see “irregularities” in a process that was sporadic in any case—I retain the word “pirate” hereafter on those occasions when it is necessary to refer to any specific title for which there is also evidence that it is either a version prepared for print by somebody other than the company or playwright to whom the play can be attributed or a publication that was opposed by the company or playwright. Even if we reject Pollard’s systematic account of piracy, though, his claims about the actions of one stationer in particular are worth considering given that what Roberts did with five plays—three of which are covered by Pollard’s

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discussion of Shakespeare plays—is quite out of character for either Roberts himself or the remainder of the publication history of the plays in the company’s repertory throughout Shakespeare’s career. We cannot be certain about the nature of any agreement between Roberts and The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, but it is worth adding that Roberts was already tied to the company by virtue of being the printer solely responsible for the printing of play-bills, a monopoly he had secured upon the death of John Charlewood on 1 May, 1594, so he certainly had more than occasional business with them, as he did with their rivals as well.49 The entry of 1598 for The Merchant of Venice is telling: it is registered with the provision “that yt bee not printed by the said Iames Robertes; or anye other whatsoever without lycence first had from the Right honorable the lord Chamberlen.”50 The entry does not contain any clear statement that it is a “staying entry” as Pollard had described it. What the entry does tell us explicitly is that licence to print the title rested ultimately with The Lord Chamberlain rather than with the stationer to whom the title was registered here. There is no comparable provision on the 1602 entry for Hamlet: “A booke called the Revenge of HAMLETT Prince Denmarke as yt was latelie Acted by the Lo: Chamberleyn his servauntes.”51 While there is no provision of licence here, Chamberlain and his servants are identified by name for the purposes of identifying the title with an acting company and their patron. Why, then, the provision of 1598, but not one for 1602? Since receiving its Royal Charter in 1557, the Stationers’ Company held a monopoly stake in the London book trade and certainly possessed the capacity to punish infringements with fines, destruction of equipment, and imprisonment, as is amply documented in the Records of the Court of the Stationers’ Company.52 Yet the greater threat to dramatists and publishers clearly always rested in the powers inherent in the Privy Council: who, as the council to the monarch, ruled on potentially seditious texts; who, even following due legal process, could subject suspected offenders to torture; and who were also known to have enlisted informers from within the book trade to provide evidence of any potentially seditious document.53 In June, 1599, the powers of the Privy Council were enacted in such a way as to dispel any doubts that they maintained absolute control over the book trade and the theatre, when a wide reaching order was put into effect to impose significant restrictions on the printing of satires, in particular, it also placed restrictions on “English historyes”—more drastically, perhaps, the order resulted in the burning of many books, including all titles that were known to have been printed without licence.54 This decree is known colloquially as the Bishops’ Ban. After this ban, the ultimate “aucthoritie” to delimit the rights of printers was understood by all to be invested in the

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Stationers’ Company and the Privy Council it served. The entry of 1598 might read in hindsight like an act of hubris on the part of the Lord Chamberlain—declaring that powers of licence rested with him alone— but after 1599 such acts of hubris were unlikely to be repeated. When Roberts entered Hamlet on the Register, then, no claims were made for the abiding authority of the company’s patron. In 1603, when he enters Troilus and Cressida, a provision is added with reference to “sufficient” authority, but which is not identified with any specific individual, and it is in fact a rather common clause in the Register to refer to the powers of the Privy Council or the bishop who examined and authorised any title before publication. While a direct claim about the legal authority of the Lord Chamberlain only exists in the first of these three entries, we need not assume that the authority of the Privy Council automatically negated any relationship between the company’s patron and the printer under whose name selected titles appears in the Stationers’ Register. On the contrary, the existence of such authority might necessitate Machiavellian dealings between patrons and those whose services they enlisted. On the stationer’s side, any dealing with the patron of one of the major companies would be indistinguishable from business with a member of the Privy Council, so it is a relationship that would surely have been treated most gravely. Erne is right in suggesting that the publication of plays in Elizabethan England tells us more about the stationers, publishers, and booksellers than it does about the wishes of the playwrights or the companies, but when we drill down to the level of specific printers and companies, we find a capacity for leveraging the company’s role a little more than this overarching claim allows. In the case of Roberts, for example, we find the exception that might be otherwise taken to prove the rule, which is to say that nothing we claim about Roberts can undermine Erne’s claims in any substantive way, nor should we want to do so. The exception is important to observe here because we are concerned, after all, with Roberts and The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, not with the London book trade writ large. As Walter Wilson Greg pointed out in contradiction of Pollard’s claims in 1956, “Roberts’s name appears in the imprints of about 150 known books, but in the great majority of cases it is as printer, not publisher.... Roberts was mainly a trade-printer, printing books for other stationers and only occasionally venturing on a serious publication.”55 Along these lines, we can note that on 12 February, 1604, Roberts registered “the Customers Reply or Second Apologie,” but with a provision that if it “shalbe thought fytt to be printed Then Master Robertes shall haue the Woorkmanship of the printing for the Company and be paid for his work,”56 suggesting that he was eager by this stage of his career to be very explicit about wanting

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only the printer’s stake in any title, thereby leaving ultimate responsibility for the title with any other stationer who cared to take on the investment. Incidentally, this title was printed by Roberts later in 1604. We should suspect that the publication history of Shakespeare’s plays registered by Roberts tells us nothing about the printer except perhaps to the extent that his undertakings were usually determined by the wishes of others. While Greg rejects Pollard’s theory concerning Roberts, his chief argument nevertheless supports the notion that Roberts was a printer by trade, not normally driven by any desire to assume full responsibility for the publication of a title. Rather than undermine Pollard’s main claims, Greg’s argument gives us good reason to wonder why, then, such an anomaly exists in his pattern of activity: the five plays he registers, he delays printing; these also happen to be the only five Chamberlain’s plays that, once registered, were delayed. If Roberts is not one to make big calls on the fate of registered titles, then a decision regarding the registration and subsequent delay in the printing of these five titles must be linked to somebody other than Roberts himself. The only other constant factor in these titles is the company, and on the first of the five titles, the authority over the title is identified in writing with the company’s patron, the Lord Chamberlain. Instead of a question of a delay by Roberts, then, we turn our attention to the company and its patron. The onus is on us, indeed, to establish whether the historical record can be made to yield up a reason for wanting each of the plays registered by Roberts to be withheld from public circulation at precisely the moment of their registration.

The Roberts Memoranda: Dissolution Before we consider the three Shakespeare plays that were delayed by Roberts, I want to first clarify the case for drawing a neat box around these plays in the discussion that follows. My argument will be that Roberts was engaged to prevent publication of these titles for an indefinite period, but we err if we presume that the motivation was the same in all cases; rather, I will present various different scenarios that might compel the company or their patron to want the plays suppressed. I will, by necessity, draw a box around the three Shakespeare plays not because they are Shakespeare plays per se but because these are the only plays in which we find clear evidence of both Roberts being involved in registering the play and the company consenting to a subsequent print edition. We know, for example, that Roberts registered Cloth Breeches in 1600, but no record exists of any imprint, so we lack sufficient textual evidence on which to mount a study of the reasons for wanting the play suppressed at that time. In the case of A

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Larum for London, we do possess the play in question, at least in so far as we possess the 1602 imprint, which appeared two years after the title was registered to Roberts. It is highly likely, however, that this is a “bad” text, given that neither Allde nor Ferbrand signed over Roberts’s interest in the title. Curiously, two entries in the Register late in 1602 may be related to this question, but they seem to generate more mystery rather than solving the problem: first, on 5 September, Ferbrand registered “for his copie to printe when he hath gotten better Auchthoritie A true discours of all the sallies which the souldiors of Grave haue made since the siege,” and so on, a title that seems to refer to the defeat of the Earl of Leicester’s forces at the Dutch town of Grave in 1586;57 and on 14 October, an entry was started in which a title was to be entered to Ferbrand “when he shall haue sufficient Aucthority for yt,” but a blank space remains where the title was to be inserted.58 The first of these entries suggests that Ferbrand was interested at this time in siege stories, while much of his previous activity in the Register had been for ecclesiastical titles like “the songe of MARY the mother of CHRIST” (1601)59 or jest books like Jack of Dover (entered on 3 August, 1601).60 The second entry suggests that after commencing the registration of Ferbrand’s next title, the warden, “master Waterson,” stopped, presumably to verify the title itself or its authority, but then never returned to complete the entry. Could Ferbrand have been attempting to register The Siege of Antwerp, which was the second part of the fuller title of A Larum for London? We cannot know, to be sure, but the timing of these entries in the Stationers’ Register, coincident with Allde and Ferbrand’s edition of A Larum for London, or the Siege of Antwerp must give us pause, at the very least. The Allde-Ferbrand imprint lacked the full support of the stationer in whose name the title had been registered two years earlier, and the title that Ferbrand was now trying to register did not meet with final approval. We can be fairly certain, though, that neither the company nor Roberts made any attempt to subsequently produce a “newly augmented” version, since no other extant version survives. If we want to pinpoint a reason for why there was no desire to follow up with their more authorised version, we need only point out that the play is attributed, at least in part, to Thomas Lodge,61 whose involvement with The Lord Chamberlain’s Men was always more mercenary than Shakespeare’s shareholder status: recall that it was from Lodge that the reference to Hamlet at The Theatre in 1596 is obtained; there is some evidence that Lodge was a contributor to parts of one or more of Shakespeare’s earliest plays (2Henry VI and Taming of the Shrew,62 for example); at least two other plays believed to be part of the repertory of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men—Mucedorus and A Warning

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for Fair Women—have been attributed to Lodge;63 and Shakespeare’s As You Like It is clearly based on Lodge’s novel Rosalynde, Euphues Golden Legacie (1590); but Lodge was also a contributor of plays to The Queen’s Men and The Lord Admiral’s Men during Shakespeare’s early career, and he enjoyed a productive life outside of his connections to the theatre. In other words, Lodge was no Chamberlain’s man, not exclusively, and by around 1600 he had withdrawn in any case from these ties to pursue a career in medicine and to devote his scholarly attentions to translations of the classics.64 If A Larum for London is principally Lodge’s play, then, he no longer had any connection with the company by the time that Allde and Ferbrand published their version in 1602. Having been awarded with his medical degree in the same year, he could also ill afford to be seen to want to revive his old connection with the theatre by putting his name to any attempt on the part of the company to pursue the matter with the Stationers’ Company. As with Erne’s elegant account of the likely motivations driving the Q1-Q2 relationship in the case of Hamlet, all we have done with A Larum for London is indicate a reason why there was no attempt to pursue legal recourse, and in this case we also suggested a reason for why no “newly augmented” version followed either. What we have not done is explore the reasons for wanting the play to be withheld from publication in the first instance, if this was indeed a factor in having Roberts register the title. If the Allde-Ferbrand version is in fact a “bad” text, then we should be wary of basing any solid claims about the play’s suppression on its content or its context. Given that we have more evidence to work with in the case of the Shakespeare plays with which Roberts became involved, discussion of the content and context of each play will help us to build a strong sense of the circumstances that would have made suppression of each text more viable a proposition than consigning it to print for the sake of a short-term profit. Having done this with the three plays for which we have stronger direct textual evidence, then, we can consider revisiting A Larum for London at the end of this chapter, to direct our thoughts toward the possible reasons for attempting to suppress this play. I need also to be clear, though, that by claiming Roberts only registered five plays, I am rejecting the rather popular notion that he was responsible for what may well be the most famous of all the so-called “staying entries” in the Stationers’ Register: four well-known plays from the repertory of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men were recorded together as a single group in the fly-leaf of occasional notes appended to the beginning of the Register, with the provision “to be staied” clearly written alongside (see Figure 2.2).

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Figure 2.2. Second fly-leaf to the Stationers’ Register, Book C. Reproduced with the permission of the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers.

The document constitutes the occasional notes for the period 27 May to 4 August, 1600, and can be transcribed thus: my lord chamberlens mens plaies Entred viz 27 may 1600 A moral of ‘cloth breeches and To mr Robertes velvet hose’ 29 may 1600 To hym

Allarum for London 4 Augusti

G.*S.

As you like yt / a booke Henry the fift / a booke Every man in his humour / a booke The commedie of ‘muche A doo about nothing’ / a booke

to be staied

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This transcription closely resembles that produced by Edward Arber in his edition of the Stationers’ Register, save for two key differences that I will discuss further.65 I have rendered the second entry in italics, and I have included the “G.*S.” that Arber omits. Yet Arber’s omissions have not been directly responsible for the emergence of a belief that all six of the titles here are “Entred” for Roberts. Indeed, a note place by Arber after the second title should have already been sufficient to dispel this belief: “[The next entry has nothing to do with the preceding. The ink of it is now of a different colour.]”66 Accordingly, the “To hym” attached to the second title should not also be read as carrying forward to the following four titles on the fly-leaf. Yet this belief has persisted, since at least 1890, in which year Horace Howard Furness mentioned in his New Variorum edition of As You Like It that the play had been stayed at the request of the players, due to the “bad reputation” of Roberts.67 For Furness, as for many, there is simply no doubting that the notes for 4 August, 1600, apply to Roberts, in the face of no alternative name being listed. The idea also underlines the conclusions offered by Michael J. Hirrel in what is, to my way of thinking, the best reading of these memoranda offered to date. As Hirrel points out in a detailed analysis of the implications of some of the elements of the document missing from Arber’s transcription, the word “Entred” is actually misaligned with the preceding word, “plaies,” the “29” given in the second date had originally been “27” but a single pen stroke has altered the number afterwards, the pen used for the whole of the entry for “Allarum,” including the date, is different from the pen used for any other item on the fly-leaf—it is for this reason that I have presented the second item in italics to mark the distinction missing in Arber—and the pen for the items that follow is also different again, as Arber himself notes.68 Based on these observations, Hirrel argues that the fly-leaf entries represent casual notes made by Stationers’ Company clerk Richard Collins at two successive meetings of the Court of Assistants, and the matter under consideration in all of these cases was linked to an attempt by The Lord Chamberlain’s Men to block Roberts from making a claim on the titles.69 In the first case, Hirrel concludes, the Court decided in favour of Roberts, enabling him to enter the first two titles into the Register proper, but in the second meeting, they decided in favour of the players, resulting in the note by the clerk that the plays are to be “staied” from registration. Hirrel’s argument is compelling, especially given his detailed scrutiny of the records of the Court of Assistants. Yet I am not convinced that his “solution” is the most elegant that can be offered in relation to these flyleaf notations. Hirrel’s solution hinges on the claim that it was the players that sought to block the plays at the Court, but he concedes in part that the

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majority of disputes heard by the Court “typically arose between stationers themselves.”70 Hirrel rightly notes that the Court did “entertain petitions from outsiders,” including “complaints by writers about unauthorised publication of their books,” but there is no evidence to suggest petitions from playing companies enjoyed the status of an author’s individual claim against a publisher.71 If the fly-leaf in the Stationers’ Register is indeed the clerk’s record of two disputes before the Court of Assistants in 1600, there is every reason to suspect that these disputes involved warring stationers. Roberts is involved in the first dispute, without question. Hirrel’s reading of the timeline of these first two entries, to be sure, makes perfectly good sense: the clerk entered the name of the company and the first title, then added the second title only when Roberts had returned it for consideration by the warden, two days after the Court had heard the matter. “Entred” is reflected in the fact that both titles are also entered in the Register itself on exactly the dates indicated on this fly-leaf note, so the word “Entred” was also probably added after the first title was properly registered, hence the misalignment of this word on the page. In short, the title was entered first, and the name of Roberts was added after the Court decided in his favour. If the matter was a dispute between the players and the stationer, there would have been no reason to even enter the title in the first place, pending resolution. Let us put ourselves in the mind of Collins, so far as this may be possible: if the Court were to decide in favour of the players, the titles would not subsequently be entered into the Register at all, so it would not be necessary to take down the titles in a fly-leaf note. The only reason for the clerk to have entered the title, then entered Roberts’s name, would be if the title was always going to end up being entered into the Register, with the Court only determining which stationer would be given the copy. If we pursue the idea that The Lord Chamberlain’s Men engaged the services of Roberts to enter titles for the express purpose of suppressing them, then it stands to reason that they would not have disputed his claim on the titles in question. The fact that the company is listed by the clerk as the header to the two entries for the “plaies Entred” should indeed be taken to mean that their claim was never under threat, and can even give us reason to suspect the company was recognised by the Court at this session, meaning that the company may well have had a representative present at Court when the dispute was heard. With this in mind, given that Roberts was awarded both titles by the Court from the 27 May session, it also may be the case that a company representative addressed the Court in support of Roberts, rather than speaking out against Roberts. We should remember, too, that Roberts had previously registered The Merchant of Venice in 1598 and had not, at the time of the meeting of this Court, 22 months later, produced a print run

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of the title—it would appear at the end of the year following the transfer of the rights to Thomas Heyes in October—so it seems even more unlikely that there would be any ruling in favour of Roberts on this occasion unless the company had actually declared their support of his claim on two new titles in May, 1600. I agree, then, with Hirrel’s timeline, but not with his conclusion about the disputants in the meeting of the Court of Assistants on 27 May, 1600. Hirrel also believes like Furness and others that the lack of a name in the margins of the note for 4 August means that it refers to Roberts. While he takes other scholars to task for using the 1876 transcription by Arber as the basis for interpretation of the memoranda and insists, rightly, that attention to the original handwriting reveals much that is lost in the transcription, he is equally at pains to dismiss one of the bits of text that is in the original but absent from Arber: the “G.*S.” that stands alongside the second block of four plays is omitted from Hirrel’s transcription. He does this because, he explains, it “is of course a subsequent accretion upon the document.”72 It is a fair point in any analysis of a document that betrays a history of emendation and accretion for the scholar to be suspicious of the more obviously late changes, and Hirrel’s suspicion of what appears to be a much later hand is well founded, to be sure. Yet I think it is also fair to at least want to ask about the possible relevance of all of the accretions on the document, given that Hirrel’s reading of the fly-leaf refers to specific features of the original handwriting to construct a viable timeline for the addition of new textual matter. Given Hirrel’s focus on the initial timeline of the memoranda, the later addition of “G.*S.” is an unnecessary feature of the text. I am, however, more intrigued by the fact that at some point in the history of this document, somebody saw fit to add these initials next to the 4 August note. The argument against giving any thought to these initials can be made primarily on the basis that it is very clearly in a different script. While the information transcribed by Arber and Hirrel is clearly in Secretary Hand, as used in most clerical work of the time,73 the marginal initials are in the more generic italic form of the English current hand.74 Because this hand has also survived with minimal variation for over four hundred years, it is no help in estimating the delay between the entry of 4 August, 1600, and the addition of these initials. Handwriting differences are not only an issue in deciding whether or not to give any credence to these marginal initials; indeed, different hands appear to have been used for each section of these memoranda. Hirrel claims that both memoranda were written by Collins, although he points out there are clearly three different “pens” involved on the document. We should add that the penmanship is also quite distinct in

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all three cases, which we might pinpoint by focusing on any letter, but the “r” shall prove sufficient for our present purposes: in the first, the “r” in “mr,” “morall,” and “breeches” is a standalone letter resembling the Greek majuscule for sigma, “Ȉ,” whereas in the run-on lettering, as in “lord,” and “Entred,” it forms a single loop with closed downstroke; in the second, the only “r” entered, in “Allarum,” appears like a squared “u,” the opposite of the run-on form used in the first hand and which is identified by Muriel St. Clare Byrne as being associated with cursive rather than formal hands;75 and in the third, the run-on form is very similar to the formal style used in the first, but the standalone “r” at the end of “humour” is written with a far more pronounced flourish than any offered in the first hand. Variations are not unusual to see in Elizabethan orthography, but we would expect to see a much higher degree of consistency, in any case, than what is displayed in these few instances. It is fair to assume, then, three different men entered these items on the fly-leaf. Thus, we can agree with Hirrel in terms of the timeline in which changes were made to the first entry, but we counter the claim that Collins entered all three fragments of the document. With this in mind, the idea that a single clerk made no attempt to enter the name of the stationer involved in the hearing to which the second memorandum refers because he knew it referred to his own earlier notes becomes untenable. Of course, there is no need for a single clerk to have been involved: a second clerk could have written “to hym” to indicate the connection between the second and the first items, and then a third clerk could just as easily have decided exactly what Hirrel argues in relation to Collins, and omitted the name of a stationer on the basis that it was the same as the one referred to in items one and two. Yet it is ultimately the presence of the fourth hand on the fly-leaf, I suggest, that complicates attempts to link the second of the memoranda to Roberts: the subsequent accretion disregarded by Hirrel and left off altogether by Arber is of uncertain date, to be sure, but should not be viewed as a complete irrelevance, especially since somebody, some time, felt it important to attach these initials to the 4 August entry. Let us presume that Roberts was not involved in the dispute that went before the Court on 4 August, 1600—under what other conditions would the clerk not have entered the name of a stationer on this memorandum? The most immediate one that springs to mind would be if the Court was intended to hear a dispute but did not do so because either disputant failed to attend or the case was not heard. Such a situation would not be viewed lightly, of course, and there would surely be ramifications for a stationer who failed to front the Court. Yet if one of the stationers were to shuffle off this mortal coil before the case could be presented to the Court, then it is more likely that the titles would be put to one side until consideration

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could have been given to the estate of the deceased, alternative claims on the disputed titles, and so forth. At this point, we consider the demise of a stationer named Gabriel Simson, or “G.S.” as he is sometimes presented in the pages of Stationers’ Register. Simson was a stationer who printed titles between 1585 and 1600, but whose death can be dated to shortly before 11 August, 1600, since it is on this date that his stake in the apprenticeship of Thomas Watkins, son of prolific stationer Richard Watkins—who died a year earlier—was handed over to his widow, Frances.76 Simson was still active as a stationer as recently as March of that year, since he was fined in that month for his part in the printing of a banned title, “the table of good counsel.”77 If Simson was meant to have presented before the Court on 4 August to lay a claim on any of the four titles under consideration, his death on the eve of proceedings would undoubtedly have caused a “stay” in those proceedings, a sense of the term that was certainly in common use at the time.78 In other words, I contend that in this particular fly-leaf entry, at the very least, the verb “to be staied” could refer in legal parlance to the proceedings themselves rather than to the titles in question, and I suggest it may be worth examining other entries in which this verb is used to look to the valence of the legal meaning throughout. For our present purposes, the important thing to remember is that, as Hirrel has demonstrated, the entries in question do pertain to legal proceedings and so the legal use of the term is not out of place here. By 11 August, the widow Simson was finalising her husband’s affairs, including his business with the Stationers’ Company, and the matter of the apprentices was the first necessary consideration. It is worth observing that of the four titles presumed by many to have been successfully blocked by The Lord Chamberlain’s Men with this entry, three in fact appear shortly afterwards in the Stationers’ Register and all three appear in Quarto by the end of the year or early in 1601: on 14 August, Every Man in His Humour was entered for Cuthbert Burby and Walter Burr and was printed in early 1601; on 23 August, Much Ado About Nothing was registered to Andrew Wise and William Aspley, and it appeared in print before the end of the year under these names; and Henry V was registered to Thomas Pavier on 14 August, 1600, in a list of titles that are “thinges formerlye printed” and which were now being consigned to Pavier.79 Among these titles are two that had been previously entered in the Register on two separate occasions: The Spanish Tragedy was registered to Abell Jeffes on 6 October, 1592,80 and the play of Edward I (also known as the play of Edward Longshanks) was also registered to Jeffes on 8 October, 1593; both were transferred to William White “by assignement from Abell Jeffes” on 13 August, 1599.81 The Pavier list appears almost exactly a year later, and it is clear that he

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had by this time successfully staked a claim on the titles despite White’s preceding interest in them. As You Like It was not registered formally until 1623, prior to publication of the Folio, so it would seem to be the odd one out but, as we have seen, it may represent one of the titles that was initially destined never to appear in print, given the likelihood that it included some references to the War of the Theatres. If the company were involved in the dispute earmarked for the Court session of 4 August, they might well have been successful in blocking this title, at least. The claim made by Pavier on Henry V is also curious when we note the appearance of the print version which is viewed by many scholars as one of the “bad” Quartos of Shakespeare’s plays,82 and it is very likely that the Quarto was printed by Thomas Creed for Thomas Millington and John Busby before the title was entered into the Register, especially when we recall that Pavier listed all of the titles covered with this entry as having been formerly printed. The printer of the “bad” Quarto of 1600 had in fact registered a “booke intituled /. The famous victories of HENRYE the FFYFT / conteyninge the honourable battell of Agincourt” in 13 May, 1594, and was the printer responsible for a Quarto that bore this same title in 1598.83 There is little doubt that this is not Shakespeare’s play in an earlier form, and that it is the Queen’s Men’s title to which we have already referred, although Seymour Pitcher has argued that the play is an early Shakespeare effort and that the “bad” Quarto and Folio texts are the products of a series of revisions of the older text over the course of many years.84 In any case, when Creed printed the “bad” Quarto of Henry V, he may have exploited a possible loophole in the logic of the Register: any play text that had been revised was still potentially covered by earlier registration under the same title. To lay claim on the title, Pavier would have had to argue that there was no continuous copy between the earlier text and the title he sought to register. If Pavier was embroiled in this dispute with Creed, it is also likely that Millington and Busby would have been interested, if not involved in the dispute directly, since Pavier’s claim would effectively also nullify any stake they might have held in the newer text by virtue of their association with Creed in its publication. What seems to be clear, of course, is that Roberts had nothing to do with any aspect of this dispute, but the players themselves and by extension the playwright did have a significant stake in it, as its outcome could have radically impacted on the status of all revised play texts. If Hirrel is right in claiming that the memoranda on the fly-leaf to the Register relate to meetings of the Court of Assistants—and I believe he is—then closer inspection of the Register itself provides evidence of the disputants likely to have been involved: claims were being made on the titles in the entry of 4 August by Pavier, Wise and Aspley, and Burby and

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Burr—of this much we can be certain, since these are the names for whom three of the titles in question were registered within weeks of this session of the Court. Given earlier claims by Creed and White on the titles that Pavier registered at this time, we can also confidently assume that they were involved in these disputes, and we are suspecting equally the likely involvement of Millington and Busby through their link to Creed. The clerk attending the Court of Assistants on that day felt obliged to single out four plays associated with The Lord Chamberlain’s Men for special note on a fly-leaf of the Register, and to group them together as a job lot. For mine, this suggests a single figure was involved across all of the disputes over these four titles, even if the opposing party was different in each case. Yet the unavailability of this figure for Court on this date for some reason prompted a staying order on the titles in question rather than simply the finding of the Court in favour of those who were in attendance. As I suggested, the death of the figure involved, and the looming question of the settlement of the deceased estate, would give the Court grounds for staying this matter. Gabriel Simson seems as good a candidate for such an outcome as any. A former partner of William White, Simson would have viewed his old partner’s continued publishing activities with interest, and would therefore have noticed White’s involvement with the theatre, which commenced after the two ceased to be partners sometime in 1596 or 1597. Whereas their earlier partnership was responsible solely for the printing of ecclesiastical and moral conduct books, White would later be responsible for publication of The Spanish Tragedy and Edward I, as we have seen, and he was involved with both the “newly augmented” Quarto of Love’s Labour’s Lost in 1598 and the second edition of 3Henry VI in 1600.85 It would not be unthinkable to imagine that Simson, who had been penalised in 1600 for publication of a banned conduct book, would have been tempted to try his hand at the kind of venture for which his former partner was finding renewed success. If he had in fact decided to make a claim on four titles from the repertory of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, Simson could have been viewed by the players with kindly disposition if his former partner had recommended him to them; regardless of the disposition of the players toward him, however, his demise left the Court with no alternative than to hold resolution over until a future date. Based on these observations, I propose that in the initials “G.S,” added by a fourth hand as a subsequent accretion to the fly-leaf memoranda, we have the necessary clue we need to the identity of the claimant for the four “staied” titles, no matter how much later his initials were appended by some knowing individual. Moreover, the death of this stationer in the days before the meeting of the Court of Assistants which was to decide the

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disputes over these four titles is reason enough for the entry to have initially been recorded as a stay in proceedings. Simson is not alone in possessing these initials, to be sure. One of the Assistants who served at the Court was Gregory Seton, although we have no evidence that Seton attended the Court any earlier than 1601.86 Seton was an active stationer from 1577 to 1608—except for a hiatus from 1600 to 1607, during which he served with the Court of Assistants—but he was not known for printing play texts. In May, 1600, during which time Roberts was staking a claim on the first two titles in the memoranda, Seton would have been busying himself with printing “Twoo sermons” that had been entered for him in March, after which he took up his duties with the Court. The same initials were shared by any number of prominent figures in the late Elizabethan period, such as George Sandys, subsequently Treasurer of the colony of Virginia,87 George Somers, who had sailed with Essex in 1597,88 or even the actor Gabriel Spencer, who likely played with Shakespeare’s company in 1597, but who had been killed in the famous duel with Jonson in 1598.89 None fit the circumstances and timing that are represented in the second of these memoranda as well as Simson, though. Importantly, in no sense can we presume that Roberts was involved in any disputes over the four titles that populate the second memorandum, and we should certainly not view the fly-leaf note as evidence that Roberts actually registered these titles, as it is patently clear from the Register proper that he did not.

Anthony Shirley’s Small Delay in Venice The claim that the initials “G.S.” from the second memorandum refer to Gabriel Simson is supposition, admittedly, but I maintain that teasing out such threads of evidence for as far as the historical record extends is a necessary part of the business of dispelling assumptions that stubbornly persist despite being founded on an even greater leap of faith than what is implied by the nature of the suppositions in which we are engaging here. Simson’s death provides a rationale for what the historical record shows to be true—that the dispute over four titles from the repertory of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men was left unresolved by the Court of Assistants on 4 August, 1600—but it requires a causal connection to be made at this end of the process in the absence of any connection being established in the historical record. To the historian, this is nothing new, but historians also rightly baulk at interpretive excess. As the scope of this book covers what I am calling a textually-evidenced cultural history of Hamlet, the lessons to be learned from historians will never be far from mind, so I stop short of declaring any link between Simson and the Register fly-leaf notes to be

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historical fact. Even without such a link, a study of the rest of the Register showed that there is sufficient evidence, in any case, to dismiss the claim that James Roberts was involved in a dispute with the players over the four titles listed on the memorandum. If the titles in question were the subject of disputes between the players and any stationers, then the stationers who actually registered the titles would stand out as the most likely claimants. The reader may be wondering, perhaps, why I would go to such lengths to dismiss this claim, given that Hamlet is not one of the plays listed on the fly-leaf, in either memorandum. I shall reiterate at this point that one focus of this chapter is on the question of Roberts’s delay, and a feature of this discussion is an attempt to argue that either the playing company or their patron used Roberts to suppress titles when such action became necessary for them; he did this by undertaking a stationer’s equivalent of hiding the title in plain sight: registering it to prevent other stationers from printing the text, while not intending to print the text himself. If prevailing claims about a dispute between the company and Roberts for the six titles listed on the Register fly-leaf were correct, the argument I seek to present here is rendered untenable, so it was necessary to be thorough in the examination of Hirrel’s solution to the problems presented by the document, even as it responds to the older body of assumptions I sought to also dispute. It is also worth noting, as Hirrel does, that the Roberts Memoranda—as the two entries on the fly-leaf are collectively known by some scholars— are also often seen as a crucial piece of evidence in the publication history of Hamlet. For those who have puzzled over the delay in publication of Hamlet by Roberts, the belief that he was directly involved in placing the second entry on the fly-leaf lends itself to the suggestion that the company did in fact enlist his services to block plays for the purpose of preventing piracy, because it goes together with the belief that it was Roberts who requested that the plays be “staied” without actually being registered. For my part, the second memorandum proves nothing of the sort, since I do not think it is connected to Roberts at all, but it has also been necessary to demonstrate this point in detail to remove the second memorandum from the body of evidence that Hamlet scholars have for many years considered as essential in any study of its publication history. What we must now look at is the evidence that exists for the nature of Roberts’s involvement with the company, which overlaps directly with a question of why the company would want each of the plays he registered to be suppressed. If we remove the “staying entry” of the four plays on 4 August, 1600, from our purview, we nevertheless remain potentially beholden unto the assumption by some, à la Pollard’s explanation, that a decision to enlist the services of Roberts was linked to the prevention of piracy. When Hamlet was printed in 1604,

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it was not registered anew by the man who had initially entered it into the Register in 1602. This is not the case for the other Shakespeare plays that Roberts is assumed by Pollard to have stayed from publication by putting his name and that of the playing company on the register—The Merchant of Venice and Troilus and Cressida. Both titles were subsequently entered a second time immediately before the print run on the first Quarto of each began. The difference between the publication history of Hamlet and these other two texts is easy to pinpoint: the unauthorised appearance of a rival Hamlet precipitated a need to act, one way or the other, to either capitalise or punish, as has been discussed above. Yet in other cases of the company responding to piracy, the title had not yet been registered to a stationer, so as far as the Stationers’ Company were concerned, no prior claim on the title had been officially declared except by virtue of having prepared the copy of the title for print.90 The case of Hamlet is thus unusual for its time and would undoubtedly have been a matter for the Court of Assistants if Roberts had sought to pursue a claim against Ling, Simmes, or Trundell. Yet if we look to the other two Shakespeare plays that Roberts registered and then delayed, we may garner a clearer sense of why he sought not to pursue the matter in 1603. Let us begin by considering Roberts’s involvement in The Merchant of Venice. In the year leading up to the entry of this title in the Register, The Lord Chamberlain’s Men were looking like a company that was engaging directly with the stationers in the publication of their plays. Whereas the publication history of their repertory had been sporadic prior to this time, as we have seen, in 1597, the two Richard plays had both been registered and printed, and in early 1598, 1Henry IV followed, while an unregistered version of Romeo and Juliet also appeared in the same year, this being the “bad” Quarto. Furthermore, Burby’s “Newly corrected and augmented” text of Love’s Labour’s Lost appeared in 1598. These last two items give us an indication that the company’s newfound level of involvement with the stationers was in part to deal with the issue of piracy, the augmented version of Love’s Labour’s Lost suggesting that this imprint was meant to supersede a less authorised earlier version,91 and in response to the “bad” Quarto of Romeo and Juliet, the company later responded by preparing a second edition for Burby, with a similar claim to being newly corrected, in 1599.92 The issue of piracy, at least as it was seen by the company, could explain why The Merchant of Venice was entered into the Register amid a series of registrations and publications at this time. Yet it does not explain why the title then failed to appear in print amid that same flurry of activity, nor does it explain why Roberts signed over his stake in the title on 28 October, 1600, after which it promptly appeared in print under the name of

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the stationer who now held the right, Thomas Heyes, with Roberts named (“I.R.”) as the printer.93 One clue to help us answer these questions may lie in those other plays that the company appear to have consented to being published at this time. With the exception of Love’s Labour’s Lost—printed in response to the earlier pirated version—the other plays that The Lord Chamberlain’s Men were sending out for publication throughout the period from 1597 to 1598 were plays that we now classify as Histories. The Merchant of Venice may at first impression seem similarly out of place. For those unfamiliar with this play, it presents two parallel storylines: in one, Antonio the Christian merchant has taken a loan from the Jewish usurer Shylock, who demands a literal “pound of flesh” when the loan is defaulted; in the other, Antonio’s friend Bassanio wins the hand of Portia by passing the test involving three caskets. When the play was registered to Heyes, it was entered simply as “the booke of the merchant of Venyce,” but when it appeared in print, its full title was “The Most Excellent Historie of the Merchant of Venice.” If we maintain that this handover of the rights to the title was undertaken by Roberts with the blessing of the company—and we suspect that it must have been since they had entrusted him with two other titles in May, 1600, and were to do the same with two more titles in 1602 and 1603—then it follows that the company’s manuscript copy reflected that the play was a “most excellent History,” and they were happy for it to be printed as such. Yet we should add that of the three History plays published from 1597 to 1598, only the last, “The Historie of Henry Fovrth,” laid claim on its title page to being a work of this kind. As we have seen, both Richard II and Richard III were identified as Tragedies, and were also listed by Meres in his assessment of Shakespeare’s best works for Tragedy. With the “Historie” of 1Henry IV, then, the company arguably staked a claim on a new form, and the association with the historical context for the two Richard plays may have been expected to generate interest in the new genre.94 The company would have been aware at this time of the potential risks in dealing with historical materials: there is evidence in the Quartos of 2 and 3 Henry VI and Richard II of censorship of substantial sections of text, either by the Master of the Revels Edmund Tilney or by the players themselves, prior to being consigned to print,95 and when the comic figure of Falstaff had originally been created with the name of Oldcastle in 1596, living relatives including Lord Cobham (the then Lord Chamberlain) took offense, necessitating a rewrite of the character.96 Had Roberts published The Merchant of Venice in 1598, it would have been the second work in succession by the company to lay claim to being a History play, and it would have been the first of their plays in print to re-orient the genre away

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from English history. Our subsequent knowledge of the evolution of the Elizabethan History play informs us that there is no real sense in which The Merchant of Venice can lay claim to belonging to this genre, and it is possible to read the word on the title-page as meaning simply “the story of the Merchant of Venice,” a meaning of the word “history” that was in use at the time.97 Yet if the play was billed in 1597 to 1598 as the “Historie” of The Merchant of Venice, then the players might have found good reason to subsequently be wary about having used this term. Recall that in 1599, when the Privy Council launched its assault on the book trade, one of the restricted forms was “English historyes,” the obvious reason being that Histories presented a particular version of the past as it related to the lives of those still living or of those related to the living. A History play had the potential to make a specific truth claim about the status and stature of important people in the present day, so the form became a target for the censors. Indeed, as the players already understood from direct experience, any treatment of historical materials could be seen within a contemporary frame as topical or even seditious. We note, of course, that the Bishops’ Ban was handed down a year after Roberts entered The Merchant of Venice into the Register. The two events could be seen as potentially linked, though, when we also recall that the use of informers was widespread, and there is no reason to think that the repertory of one of the two most powerful playing companies in London was not being kept under close scrutiny. It is entirely likely that after 1Henry IV was published as the first self-proclaimed “Historie” the players or their patron became aware of rising dissatisfaction within the Court as some sign of the looming crackdown on Histories, and sought protection through self-censorship. For a sense of how the players could catch wind of such matters, let us picture a scenario in which an errant or inebriated informer gives away too much information to the players. Yet it is just as likely that information could come more directly from the Privy Council itself, a member of which was the Lord Chamberlain, patron of the company in question. We shall see there is another candidate—a figure who was arguably even closer to the crown than the company’s patron— but at least we can reinforce the point about the likely fear of a crackdown on Histories by noting that when the title was registered by Roberts, in the middle of 1598, the word “Historie” was not in the entry: “a booke of the Marchaunt of Venyce or otherwise called the Jew of Venyce.”98 A suspicion about the possibility of a crackdown on English Histories might have been a concern for the company, true, but we should wonder if it is sufficient to explain an act of direct self-censorship. Even if the Lord Chamberlain himself knew a full year beforehand of the pressure building

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within the Privy Council to precipitate something like the Ban of 1599, he surely had the capacity to use his position to apply some pressure of his own in the opposite direction, arguing to the members of the Council that neither Histories nor plays—nor, for that reason, History plays—posed a threat to the stability of the Queen’s rule. As William Jones has recently argued, while the Ban eventually focused attention on satirical works with questionable or immoral content, subsequent support for the Ban in John Weever’s 1599 Epigrammes in the Oldest Cut, and the Newest Fashion highlighted the extent to which any attack on the Juvenalian satirical mode was seen in contemporary context as being justifiable in defence of the stability of nation.99 Indeed, we might wonder if the eventual nature of the Ban was softened as a result of influence in this respect by the company’s patron: “English histories” were allowed by the Ban of 1599, so long as they had been vetted by “some of her maiesties privie Counsell,” and the following mandate placed restrictions on all “playes,” but dictated more generally only that they be “allowed by suche as haue auchthoritye.”100 In any case, if the Ban was bound to be viewed by the public as justifiable in terms of the stability of the nation, the Lord Chamberlain would have known that the company’s Venetian History was an unlikely target for the same level of censorship as eventually meted out to satires in general. Yet for one powerful contemporary figure, I suggest, there was the very real possibility that The Merchant of Venice might have inadvertently struck a nerve rather too close to home, around the middle of 1598. Scholars have long noted that the character of Henry Bolingbroke in Richard II was written to parallel Shakespearean contemporary Robert Devereaux, who had become Earl of Essex in 1576 and whose lineage came directly from King Edward I, thus providing him with a claim to the throne should Elizabeth provide no suitable heir.101 I will attempt here to show that the putative Essex-Richard II link can lead us to propose an equally viable Essex-Merchant link. It was Richard II, after all, that Essex would ask to be played on the eve of his attempted coup in 1601. Richard II was published in 1597, but it gained notoriety by virtue of suspicion that it tapped into an already widespread use of the nickname “Richard II” for Elizabeth, as Evelyn May Albright showed in a 1927 essay that maps the parallels at length.102 Thus, when she was asked why a play depicting the demise of Richard II should concern her Majesty, Elizabeth replied, “I am Richard II, know ye not that,” suggesting it was a nickname of which she was well aware.103 This was in 1601, of course, and then, nobody involved with the play was ever found guilty of treason, nor was the text declared seditious, since it possessed—among many potentially subversive topical allusions—just as many claims to being a History play that establishes the

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teleological rationale for what followed in the events depicted in the Henry IV and Henry VI plays and in Richard III, culminating in a rather positive depiction of the monarchy of Henry VII, Elizabeth’s grandfather. In other words, while suspicious ears might well have heard in the play a modicum of topical support for Essex, hence his decision to request this play on the eve of his march on London, the players just as easily could have argued their innocence on the grounds that the play was a late addition to a series of plays that had already demonstrated support for the reigning monarch. We shall give consideration to the trial of Essex and the players’ defence against potential charges of treason shortly, but for the present moment we shall fix our attention on this idea that a play loosely based on Essex could be accommodated by a History play sequence in which the justifications for Elizabeth’s reign are mapped out in a dramatised version of the past. What does Richard II have to do with The Merchant of Venice? The answer is Essex. By 1596, the question of the succession was becoming a particularly troubling concern. It is at this time that Essex was gaining significant popularity, and anybody gazing into a crystal ball for signs of the next monarch could well have hit upon the Earl as a strong contender for the throne. For several years, he had been in charge of forces lending assistance to the French in the war with Spain, and his greatest triumph had come at Cadiz in 1596. A play that paints some degree of support for Essex without fully revealing its hand, such as Richard II, would provide a solid investment in future royal favour, and the play was written around 1595 or 1596.104 The Merchant of Venice is thought to have been written a short time afterwards, most likely well into 1596, and indeed a key piece of evidence for dating the play is Salarino’s reference to the ship named Andrew, the description of which matches in specific details one of the ships—the Saint Andrew—captured by Essex at Cadiz.105 In addition to such obvious references to Essex’s success, the play’s depiction of its Jewish usurer Shylock also involves a link to Essex. In 1594, the physician to Elizabeth, Rodrigo López, was arrested, tried, convicted, and executed for conspiring to kill both the Queen and the pretender to the throne of Portugal, Antonio Perez. His accuser was none other than Essex and it was Essex who sought to turn the opinion of the public and the Court against López on the basis that the physician was a Jew.106 Shakespeare scholars tend to agree that López is a model for Shylock, particularly in the rhetoric used by Essex and his followers against the condemned man in 1594, and a long-standing association of López with the popular iconography of the typical Jewish conspirator ensued (see Figure 2.3). Yet as Chris Fitter has explained, whereas Richard II seemed a potentially seditious text only in hindsight, in the aftermath of Essex’s rebellion, The Merchant of Venice

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Figure 2.3 “Lopez Compounding to Poyson the Queene,” in George Carleton, A Thankfull Remembrance of Gods Mercie (London, 1630): 164.

could have inadvertently struck an immediate and personal nerve with both Elizabeth and Essex, since its depiction of anti-Semitic Christians is decidedly unflattering, and in the final moments of the play, Shylock is afforded a truly “tragic stature,” suggestive of a sympathetic take on the fallen López.107 Unbeknownst to either the playwright or the company at this time, Elizabeth remained not convinced of her physician’s guilt, and delayed his execution, only to acquiesce when no way to save him without losing face presented itself—even then, she refused to invoke the crown’s right to his lease and allowed this to pass to his widow.108 Written when public opinion of Essex was peaking, The Merchant of Venice undoubtedly tapped the popular stock image of the Jew on which Essex had relied when he turned against the monarch’s physician, a highly trusted position. As Stephen Greenblatt suggests, Shakespeare might have witnessed the execution and been sickened by the manner in which López was taunted by the crowds when he professed his love for Elizabeth and Christ in his final moments, and the depiction of the Christian jibes in his play thus rebounds on its speakers.109 All of this, of course, only explains what the play does in relation to its immediate context in 1596, but does not yet explain why the company might have sought to withhold it from print in 1598. This is where we need to move the Essex story forward a couple of years. During 1597, Essex had been in charge of an ill-fated campaign to the Azores, in which he defied the Queen’s direct orders by

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first pursuing the treasure fleet before attending to the Spanish Armada, and after the failure of the campaign he withdrew from all administrative and political responsibilities for the year.110 Just as rapidly as the Earl’s star had risen in 1596, it had fallen in 1597. In an attempt to regain lost favour, toward the end of 1597, Essex sent Anthony Shirley—who had sailed with Essex in the failed Azores campaign—on a diplomatic mission to Ferrara. Yet before Shirley arrived in Ferrara, his objective had already been made obsolete by the Duke of Ferrara’s submission to the Pope, so Shirley travelled on instead to Venice to await further instructions. Essex spent several weeks mulling over Shirley’s fate and eventually determined that he should travel with his twenty-three companions to Persia with a new mission, the objectives of which were twofold: persuade the Shah to join forces with the Christian crusaders against the Turks; and establish improved trade arrangements for English merchants.111 Shirley’s team sailed from Venice in late May, 1598 and landed in the Venetian-owned Greek port of Zantes some twenty-five days later, where they were put ashore as a result of a disagreement with the Italian crew.112 From there, they made their way to Candia, Cyprus, Tripoli, Alexandretta, Antioch, and Aleppo, where they stayed for a further six weeks before securing their passage to Baghdad and beyond. By all accounts, the journey was a fraught one, and given that their mission was in part to establish safer trade routes for English merchants, it is clear that Essex fully expected it to be a venture that involved significant risk. By late May of 1598, then, with Essex’s future favour hanging in the balance, a team under Anthony Shirley, the Italian form of whose name is Antonio, was sent out from Venice on a merchant venture with significant risk. Thus, a man who would later enlist The Lord Chamberlain’s Men to perform for him a play first produced in 1596, a play which he saw as favourably depicting his personal claims against Elizabeth, could easily have seen in this other play of late 1596—a play that contained obvious references to Essex and his exploits at that time—an unwanted threat to the success of his newest venture in May, 1598. A play that already draws attention to Essex and which presented merchant practices in ambiguous light, and which at times is unequivocal in its depiction of the callousness of traders and bankers, which focuses on trade routes out of Venice, and which is presented as the “Historie” of a Venetian merchant, thus laying claim to some level of historical accuracy: this would all have rendered the play unfit for further public scrutiny in the eyes of Essex at this moment in time. We know from the list of Francis Meres from 1598 that Merchant was still held in high regard, at least in the opinion of that commentator. We know of course that Meres did not list any plays as “History” plays,

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although a number of plays that are classified in print as Histories are also listed by him as Tragedies. In the case of The Merchant of Venice, Meres lists the title as a Comedy, suggesting, perhaps, that it was billed as such in a performance with which he was familiar. We have of course noted that Meres is not the most reliable source in terms of classifications; his lists merely lend support to our sense of which of Shakespeare’s plays was still regarded highly by this one commentator circa 1598. During the middle of 1598, the company could have been made aware that this latest “History” play, which contains clear references to Essex’s successes of 1594 (López) and 1596 (Cadiz), now posed a threat to his latest venture by virtue of its newly topical reference to a mission that Essex preferred to keep secret at least until its chances of success were going to be more certain. He need not have posed the threat to the company in these terms, of course. Given that a History of Henry IV had recently been published, bearing the name of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, Essex could easily have disguised his own true concerns behind warnings of a looming purge on Histories and plays, or both. Duly warned, one course of action available to the players would have been to suppress their play themselves. We arrive at such a conclusion not entirely by guesswork: we have been attending to matters of specific historical interest, rather than reading the text only in terms of a general overview of broad trends or widespread practices. Indeed, our task is to draw various details together and to argue for a contingent or even a causal set of connections, a task not foreign to the historian. We shall use the same approach in tracking plausible reasons for the delay separating registration from publication in the case of the other Shakespeare plays registered to James Roberts, including Hamlet.

The Not So Unhelpful Baron Hunsdon After Roberts had entered The Merchant of Venice into the Stationers’ Register in 1598, a lull in the publishing of plays associated with The Lord Chamberlain’s Men followed. There was of course Love’s Labour’s Lost, which seems to have been published as a response to an earlier unofficial publication, so it must have been in the pipeline beforehand. The popular Mucedorus—a play thought at one time to have been by Shakespeare or at least to have involved his hand in the capacity of a reviser113—appeared in Quarto, though without a preceding entry in the Register, in 1598. After this, for over twelve months, no other printed version of a play associated with the Chamberlain’s Men appeared, nor did any play of theirs appear in the Register until the entry on 17 November, 1599, for A Warning for Fair Women.114 The events that prompted Roberts to insert a blocking entry for

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The Merchant of Venice in mid-1598 seem therefore to have precipitated a downturn in the publishing activity of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men. The Privy Council order was handed down in March, 1599, so a sustained lull by the company beforehand suggests that inside knowledge could indeed have been made available to them. Thomas Middleton and John Marston were not so fortunate, as their satirical works were among those burned in the purge. Afterwards, both would become more active in the theatre. In the Ban of 1599, plays were largely unaffected, except to the extent that the blanket requirement for ecclesiastical authority applying to all titles in the Stationers’ Register would also apply thereafter to plays. In the year following the crackdown, the publishing activity of the company increased significantly, as seven of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men’s plays appeared in print before the end of 1600, with The Merchant of Venice the last to appear in this sequence. That the publication history of the company’s repertory shows a sudden cessation of activity for a year from mid-1598 is, I feel, itself possible evidence that the company became aware of a looming Privy Council Ban or at the very least that they were warned off publication, and the sharp upturn in activity shortly afterwards speaks to the sense of liberty felt by having been relatively untouched by the orders eventually handed down. At this point we might recall the appearance of Roberts at the Court of Assistants in May, 1600, to defend his claim on two non-Shakespearean titles in the company’s repertory. The fact that Roberts had registered The Merchant of Venice two years earlier, but had not yet consigned the title to print, would surely have been a black mark against him in the eyes of the Court, comprised as it was of senior members of the Stationers’ Company. If, as I have suggested, the players or even a representative of their patron had made a presentation on Roberts’s behalf—hence the memorandum on the fly-leaf of the Register—then the Court would no doubt have made it clear that using the Register to block plays was depriving another stationer of his livelihood. Roberts was granted his right to two non-Shakespearean titles, so we may presume that the backing of the players or their patron counted for something, but we also know that any declaration he made to the Court to commit to putting these titles into print was misleading. This gives us yet another reason to suspect that Roberts took no part in any disputes in the August session of the Court of Assistants, since he could scarcely make a claim on four more titles from the repertory of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men without having produced a single imprint to show for his commitment to the two titles for which he was given the rights some three months earlier. Instead, on 28 October, he signed The Merchant of Venice over to Heyes, seemingly on agreement to retain his services as the

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printer on the title, since his press was then responsible for the Quarto that appeared immediately afterwards. Rather than staking a claim on the four titles from the famous “staying entry” of 4 August, then, Roberts would have been well-advised to lay low while securing the Lord Chamberlain’s permission to at last print the title he had initially blocked and, afterwards, securing an agreement with another stationer willing to take over the legal rights of a title that Roberts himself knew to be still a potential risk. We have also noted that Roberts printed Titus Andronicus for Edward White in 1600, which was a reprint of the Quarto of 1594. Previously, in 1599, he had also been used by White to undertake the printing on Arden of Faversham, itself a previously published title. I think the publication of these two titles need not complicate the narrative we are developing of the use of one stationer to deliberately delay titles. On the contrary, Roberts’s involvement as the printer of the two titles in question fits neatly into a scenario in which he appears at Court in May, 1600, with the intention to lay claim to Cloth Breeches and Velvet Hose and A Larum for London but for the sole purpose of preventing their appearance in print. His failure to have printed The Merchant of Venice might more easily be overlooked by the Court if he had been engaged twice in the past two years to print titles from the repertory of the company whose titles he now sought to register. For the company’s part, reprints of old titles would hardly present a threat from the censors. Furthermore, we can imagine that if a representative of the company or their patron spoke in Roberts’s favour before the Court of Assistants in 1600, it might have by this time been possible to provide the Court with a full assurance that the unprinted Merchant of Venice would appear in print before the end of the same year. The reasons for blocking the play in mid-1598 appear to have been removed, eighteen months later. If the play was withdrawn because it might be seen as a potential target for a crackdown on History plays, the threat seemed less fearsome from late 1599: among the seven plays published from late 1599 to the end of 1600, three were History plays, two of which are identified in such fashion on their title pages—“The Chronicle Historie of Henry the fift” (Henry V) and The Merchant of Venice—and the other, 2Henry IV, being by implication a History since it was the second part of a play that had been identified as a History in 1598: “The Hystorie of Henry the fourth” (1Henry IV). During 1599 the company had made a grand new home for themselves at The Globe. Furthermore, by 1600, the fortunes of Essex and Shirley had significantly changed. In 1599, Essex had been sent to Ireland to lead the new campaign against the rebels, but he had returned to England in direct contravention of the Queen’s orders in September and so he was promptly arrested and confined to York House, where he would remain until after

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his trial in August, 1600.115 Shirley, on the other hand, met with such great success in Persia as to have been granted the title of Mirza by the Shah and had returned to Italy as an emissary of the Persians.116 It was in Rome that Will Kempe, seeking to extend his fame following his nine day dance to Norwich, met with Shirley, an encounter that would later be satirised in 1607 by John Day, William Rowley, and George Wilkins in The Travailes of the Three English Brothers, so it is safe to assume that by late 1600, word of Shirley’s successes filtered back to London whether by official or unofficial means.117 Any hint that The Merchant of Venice could continue to be a risk for the adventurous Shirley, or any sense that Essex cared either way, had evaporated. At the end of an active period of publication, with his company now comfortably installed in the new theatre, the Lord Chamberlain could have been sufficiently at ease to reward Roberts for his part in the earlier undertaking by giving consent to print the play to which he had been given the rights. After the active period of publishing through 1600, the company’s publication run slowed again in 1601, Ben Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour being their sole imprint for the year, but then picked up again in the first half of 1602, with four plays registered and appearing in print. Of these four plays, only The Merry Wives of Windsor, registered in January, bore the name of Shakespeare, and was clearly an exercise in capitalising on the popularity of Sir John Falstaff from the Henry IV plays. On 26 July, Roberts was again enlisted to put his name to a Stationers’ Register entry, this one being Hamlet. This moment also marks another sudden end to the publishing of the company’s repertory, as nothing else appeared in print until Hamlet was itself published in an authorised imprint—the Q2—in 1604. During this interval, there was some continued activity involving the stationers and The Lord Chamberlain’s Men with Troilus and Cressida, of course, being registered to Roberts on 7 February, 1603. A most important date follows soon after this, with the death of Elizabeth on 24 March being a crucial precursor to any activity that followed in 1603. On 25 June 1603, Andrew Wise passed his rights to the two Richard plays and 1Henry IV to Matthew Law, in whose name these plays appear for a second time in the Register, after which Wise disappears from the public record.118 It is not altogether clear why Wise transferred the rights to these History plays but not Much Ado About Nothing, which he had already registered and printed in 1600. Given what I have argued about possible tension over the printing of History plays in 1598 to 1599, though, we may fairly surmise that with the rise to power of James, renewed tensions over all printed Histories, in any form, would have been felt throughout the publishing industry in the first half of 1603 in particular. Historical accounts that painted a peculiarly

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positive account of the rise to power of Elizabeth through her monarchical line were suddenly not likely to be favourably received by a new Scottish monarch. We are not directly concerned with these English History plays now, though, since we need not imagine that Wise was acting on behalf of the company when he transferred his rights to Law. It is worth adding here simply that Law protracted the publication of his newest acquisitions over the next few years: 1Henry IV would not appear in print again until 1604, Richard III in 1605, and Richard II in 1609. Importantly, the Lord Chamberlain’s company appear to cease their activities with the stationers almost a year before the death of Elizabeth, except for the registration of Troilus and Cressida a full six weeks before the change in monarch. Elizabeth’s death and a question of why Wise transferred his rights in some History plays soon after are frames of reference, to be sure, but need not be seen as directly relevant. We need instead to go back to 1602, to consider the full period of inactivity through to 1604. If the company was to enjoy newfound favour with James, as his decision to anoint them as The King’s Men tells us was certainly the case, they nevertheless did not view this favour as a license to reactivate their engagement with the stationers until over a year after the new monarch’s ascension: after Hamlet, the next play to appear in the Stationers’ Register is Marston’s The Malcontent, which was not registered until 5 July, 1604. If, as Scott McMillin advises, we should “read acting companies,” how are we to read this sudden withdrawal from engagement with the publishing industry for almost two years?119 More to the point, could we ever imagine that the entry of Troilus and Cressida in 1603 or the hiatus for which it represents the singular exception were precipitated by Elizabeth’s demise? Short of imagining that any member of the company possessed a true gift for precognition, there would seem to be no causal link. Yet I want us for a moment to concern ourselves with the identity of the company’s patron or, to be accurate, with their identities—we use the plural here because there was in fact more than one Lord Chamberlain during the period in which the company operated under this name, and at one point they ceased to operate under the name of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men while their patron did not hold that particular office. To begin, Henry Carey, the First Baron Hunsdon, was a cousin of sorts to Elizabeth through the Boleyn line, his mother Mary at one point being a mistress to Henry VIII, and his aunt Anne having been Queen—rumours abounded throughout his life that he may be an illegitimate son of the late monarch. No enmity existed between Carey and Elizabeth and she would reward his loyalty by appointing him Lord Chamberlain, the keeper of the crown’s domestic affairs, in 1585.120 In 1594, he adopted the patronage of

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a company of actors, and provided them with a semi-permanent base near central London. In doing this, Carey was participating in the creation of a duopoly that supplanted the monopoly previously enjoyed by the Queen’s Men: Carey’s son-in-law Charles Howard, the Lord Admiral, was given patronage of the second company, The Lord Admiral’s Men, and each was found a theatre and attached to a leading group of players.121 Carey was a strong advocate for the welfare of his company and supported Burbage’s plans to secure more permanent arrangements for the company in London at Blackfriars Estate. When Carey died on 22 July, 1596, Burbage’s plans were stymied when Henry’s son George took over the patronage of the company. As Gurr explains what transpired in the next few months, the company went from being secure at The Theatre with plans to build at Blackfriars to being devoid of a home at either: the new Baron Hunsdon— George did not immediately acquire the position of Lord Chamberlain, so the company was for a short period operating under the name Hunsdon’s Men—withdrew his support for the venture at Blackfriars and was either unable or unwilling to persuade the owner of The Theatre, Giles Allen, to extend the lease on The Theatre beyond April, 1597; the death of James Burbage in February of that year further ensured that the plan would come to nought.122 The company was compelled to move to The Curtain until 1599, when Cuthbert and Richard Burbage completed The Globe with the timber from their father’s abandoned Theatre. The period of 1597 to 1598 is thus conventionally viewed as a period of crisis for the company, with the move to The Globe signalling the advent of a more stable golden age for the company and London theatre writ large. I do not wish to refute this notion that the collapse of James Burbage’s plans left his sons faced with a situation from which it took them a couple of years to literally rebuild, but I want to reconsider the view that this “crisis” scenario was precipitated by diminished support from this unhelpful new patron who was unhappy with one of the acquisitions he gained after his own father’s death. To read the company is, I suggest, also to “read” the man without whose patronage the company’s status would have collapsed. Consider again the situation in which the younger Carey withdrew his support from the Blackfriars venture. Although he reinforces the view that Carey was an unhelpful patron, Gurr concedes that the younger Carey was hamstrung as a resident of the Blackfriars district by the strenuous efforts of his neighbours to block the development planned by the older Burbage, and since Carey did not gain immediate preferment he was in no position to argue against the petition submitted to the Privy Council in November, 1596. After the death of Henry Carey, the post of Lord Chamberlain was granted to Lord Cobham, who as we have seen had recently been locked in

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a dispute with Shakespeare’s company over their use of the name of his ancestor, Sir John Oldcastle, for the clown in the Henry plays. Knowing that his company now faced a lack of support within his own precinct and with the hostile Cobham secure in the powerful Lord Chamberlain’s role, the Second Baron Hunsdon could do little more than join the petitioners himself or risk placing a target on his own back. When he did become a member of the Privy Council as the next Lord Chamberlain, Carey would of course be able to more directly influence future Council orders, and we can record here that on at least two occasions after the appointment of the younger Carey as Lord Chamberlain, Privy Council orders were issued in which the company’s position was significantly strengthened. A letter to the Master of Revels in February, 1598, reinforced the mandate that only the two companies be allowed to operate within Surrey or Middlesex— that is, in the outskirts of the city of London—and that a rumoured third company be immediately outlawed, thus stamping out a potential rival.123 Later, on 22 June 1600, a Privy Council order was handed down to again reinforce the duopoly and, with The Lord Chamberlain’s Men now housed at The Globe, to order that The Curtain be “ruined and plucked downe or to be putt to some other good use,” again reducing any chance of any rival company gaining hold in the region.124 It is worth observing further that the period of greatest engagement by the company with the book trade, as we have been describing it in detail so far in this chapter, comes not in the immediate aftermath of the formation of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, during the Henry Carey–James Burbage years of 1594 to 1596, but afterwards, when George Carey was patron and the majority share of the company’s finances was in the hands of Cuthbert and Richard Burbage. We noted three distinct phases in the publication of the plays of Shakespeare and his compatriots, with the peak spanning from 1594 to 1603, but even within this phase, we can discern a specific period of heightened activity—marked by high levels of correspondence between a play’s appearance in the repertory, its registration within two years, and its publication within six months of registration—spanning 1597 to 1603; to wit, the years in which the Second Baron Hunsdon had the patronage of the company. From 1594 to the end of 1596, only three of the company’s plays appeared in print, all of which must have been committed to print before The Lord Chamberlain’s Men had even properly formed since they do not include the name of the new company on their earliest imprints: the title page for Titus Andronicus lists variously “the Earle of Darbie, Earle of Pembrooke, and Earle of Sussex their servants” (see Figure 2.4); while the Henry VI plays and Taming of the Shrew list the Earl of Pembroke.125 Thus, in the two and a half years in which the company operated under the

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patronage of Henry Carey, not a single play appeared in print carrying the name of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men. Rather than presume that this is an index of any disinterestedness in the printing of plays by the elder Carey, we might simply note that the company’s patron died at the tail end of the two year period we are associating with the normal passage from repertory to registration in this period of the company’s operation. Against this, we might add that the “normal” two year period appears as a pattern during the period of 1594 to 1603, so the first two year gap between repertory and print that characterises the beginning of this period was not a continuation of an established pattern; instead, it established the pattern. Accordingly, it is only when Richard II and Richard III were entered into the Stationers’ Register in August and October, 1597—and both appeared in print before the end of the same year—that we should begin to think of a pattern.

Figure 2.4 Title page to the Q1 Titus Andronicus (1594).

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After Carey gained preferment as Lord Chamberlain in March, 1597, then, the engagement of the company with the stationers takes the sharp upturn in frequency that we identified as characteristic of a second phase. What, then, of Hamlet and Troilus and Cressida and, framing the activity involving Roberts with these plays, the period of disengagement between players and printers from 1602 to 1604? The company were not altogether inactive in this period, to be sure, as they continued to produce new plays and to perform during the winter sessions at court, just as they had done in every year since their formation.126 1603 was a bad year in general for the London companies, as one of the worst plague seasons forced an extended closure of the theatres, but the company appear to have been performing whenever legally possible, and they were of course given the patronage of the new monarch himself in the royal patent of 19 May, 1603.127 Indeed, the plague year of 1603 might be seen as a reason to expect the opposite trend: prolonged theatre closures might normally be viewed as providing the most opportune time for companies to keep plays from their repertory in circulation by releasing them for publication. There is reason to suspect that the competition for London audiences had been increasing by the end of 1602. Despite Carey’s best efforts to reinforce the duopoly via the Privy Council, a third company did establish itself in 1602: Worcester’s Men— including the former clown from Chamberlain’s company, Will Kempe— were invited to the winter court sessions in January and the Privy Council issued an order in March to limit London now to three companies.128 With the duopoly dissolving, the imperative to print might seem to be a logical step for a company, yet after a sequence of four entries in the Stationers’ Register from November, 1601 to July, 1602, the company’s activity with the stationers halted after the registration of Hamlet. The company’s play of Thomas, Lord Cromwell was registered and appeared in print in August, 1602, although this play was “almost certainly a memorial reconstruction,” as David Grote observes, possibly stolen by Kempe.129 Even if we include the Cromwell registration as a legitimate act undertaken with the consent of the company—their name is certainly included in the entry for this title in the Register130—we can note instead that for almost two years, from 11 August, 1602 to 5 July, 1604, when Marston’s The Malcontent is recorded, the plays from the company’s repertory are mentioned only twice, out of no fewer than 310 titles entered in all in the Register during this period.131 One of these two entries is for Troilus and Cressida, on 7 February, 1603, and the other is for Andrew Wise’s transfer of rights to the Richard plays and 1Henry IV to Matthew Law on 25 June, 1603.132 Apart from these two entries, covering three previously published titles and one newer title that we are assuming was entered only in order to be blocked, the company is

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all but absent from the Register for this interval. The company need not have been directly involved with the second of these entries, since it is simply a direct transfer of rights from one stationer to another, and we have noted this is the last appearance of Wise anywhere in the public record. I suggested also that his decision to transfer only the three History plays, and not Much Ado About Nothing, might have been influenced by renewed concerns about the publishing of History plays in the months after Elizabeth’s death. One issue that was not raised earlier is the context identified in the entry of 25 June: “Entred for his copies in full courte Holden this Day.” The handover from Wise to Law was thus not straightforward, since it was entered before the Court of Assistants, clearly suggesting a disputed claim over the title. The players are not mentioned in this entry, however, and Wise also signs over two non-dramatic works, meaning that we should have no reason to suspect the involvement of the players in the dispute. As I noted, Law was not particularly expeditious in producing a print run of his own on these previously published play texts, so we might suspect that earlier concerns about the publication of History plays remained real enough to cause him to be slow to capitalise on these new acquisitions, even though he had clearly needed to fight for the titles at Court. The entry for Troilus and Cressida also, incidentally, mentions that the copy is entered “in full Court holden this day,” which must mean that this title, too, was being disputed prior to its registration. The playing company is listed alongside this title, suggesting that they may have been involved in the dispute. We might wonder, then, whether the company had indeed sought to sever their connections with the stationers at this time, for all intents and purposes, but were unwillingly dragged into a dispute when a stationer sought to stake a claim on Troilus and Cressida, a play they had wanted to suppress: Roberts was thus called into action once again to counter with his claim on the title, and the company perhaps spoke on his behalf once more at the Court of Assistants. When we refer here to “the company” speaking on anything, of course, we should consider the extent to which the Lord Chamberlain himself might have had cause to do so, or at least to despatch a representative to speak. It is to this question that we shall now turn.

The Shadow of James A good deal of scholarly writing has examined connections between the Earl of Essex and many of Shakespeare’s plays of the late 1590s and the first years of the next century. We have seen that these connections are a likely factor in the suppression in 1598 of The Merchant of Venice. Yet

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we also noted that Essex rebelled against the monarch in 1601, failed, and was executed on 25 February of that year. Any dramatist who had written plays with a view to currying favour with Essex, future King, would now be in no doubt about the futility of such a gesture. On the eve of his march into London, Essex had of course paid for a special performance of a play he must have expected to help him in generating support for his venture, and he had paid handsomely: Augustine Phillips testified during the Essex trial that the company had argued the play to be “so old and so out of use that they should have small company at it” but given that Essex had paid them some forty shillings “more than their ordinary” for it, they staged the performance.133 The exorbitant amount paid by Essex may have well been what eventually exonerated the company in the eyes of the court during their appearance at Essex’s trial. Having been paid so handsomely, the players could have been seen by many at court to simply adhere to the stereotype of the money-driven professional class, and could thus be easily forgiven for being ignorant of the political ends to which their play could be turned.134 As for Richard II, we have seen that any reading of the play as supportive of any coup is shown to sit uneasily alongside the historical scope of its subject matter, an ambiguity that mitigates its subversiveness, thereby also minimising any direct conspiratorial agency on the part of the players. The Essex trial doubtless had an impact on the company, and we will explore the possible ways in which Q2 Hamlet can be read as a rebuke to the fallen Essex in Chapter Three, for example, but the effects were not lasting. A period of inactivity with the stationers during 1601 is possibly explained by the fallout from these events—either publishers saw them as a risk in the wake of Essex’s execution or they were themselves somewhat shamed by the affair and spent much of the year regrouping at The Globe; this notwithstanding the fact that they were to perform for the Queen on the day before Essex’s execution, which may have well been a case of the monarch demonstrating to the world that they remained her players, not to be used by any man to speak out against her.135 In any case, the renewal of their activity in 1602 suggests that the Essex trial was behind them within the year. We can observe that they seem to have been reluctant to return to the printing of controversial Histories: the first play printed after the trial was Dekker’s Satiro-mastix, registered on 11 November, 1601 and printed early in 1602; the second was Shakespeare’s comedy, The Merry Wives of Windsor; and the third, in May, was A Larum for London. The last of these was, as we have seen, quite possibly only an unauthorised imprint, since it was in all likelihood intended to be kept from print after it was registered by Roberts in 1600. Neither of the other plays is historical or significantly

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political in orientation, the Shakespearean comedy clearly capitalising on the popularity of the Falstaff character, and Dekker’s play is well-known as his late contribution to the so-called “War of the Theatres.” This “war” involved several dramas written by Jonson and Marston between 1599 and 1601, in which the writings and character of the other were lampooned or ridiculed. Yet to call it a war of “the theatres” overstates its scope, since the plays involved are known to have been played most likely not by any of the major companies at their large theatres; rather, they were staged by the children’s playing companies that had gained popularity at the time, the Children of Paul’s and the Children of the Chapel, and the war may have been staged precisely to add lustre to these new attractions as they sought to gain leverage against the “duopoly” of the two larger theatres, and to promote the work of the playwrights involved to a wider audience than they had previously enjoyed.136 Dekker’s Satiro-mastix, staged by both the Children of Paul’s and Chamberlain’s players, in any case, seems to have marked the cessation of hostilities. According to James Bednarz, Shakespeare chimed in to the war with his own As You Like It and Twelfth Night, from around 1600 and 1601 respectively,137 although we may recall the point already made here that if these plays specifically targeted fellow dramatists, either the playwright or his company preferred it all kept to the stage, as the two were never registered and did not appear in print until the Folio. Bednarz goes further, claiming that Ajax in Troilus and Cressida purges the figure of Jonson, thereby ending the war, an event documented, he argues, in the “little eyases” speech from Hamlet.138 My sense is instead that while As You Like It and Twelfth Night form an ideal pair of contributions to the “war,” neither Hamlet nor Troilus and Cressida need be read in this way. Reading these plays through the lens of the poets’ war risks understating the role of form in relation to the function of a text. Shakespeare’s two Comedies work better in this context, I think, than do the two Histories simply because the Comedies provide a far more robust vehicle for making direct personal comments on a living individual under the guise of a comical fiction. The History play, as Shakespeare had been developing it well into his career, operated topically; this is to say that it tended to pass comment on significant current events, policy, and state affairs—rather than private squabbles between fellow playwrights— from the relatively safe distance provided by the stage and the passage of historical time.139 Troilus and Cressida, for example, is more often read by critics as a belated commentary on the ill-considered actions of Essex in 1601, using an antiquated legend as a necessary dramatic backdrop. Such a reading was, in effect, already inscribed in advance by George Chapman’s dedication of his translation of the Iliad in 1598 to “the Most Honored

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now living Instance of the Achilleian vertues eternized by the divine Homere, the Earl of Essex.”140 As Eric Mallin explains, the alignment of Essex with Achilles functions as both flattery and critique, since Homer’s great warrior was also, for his leaders at least, a bothersome nuisance, as indeed Essex could have begun to seem to his contemporaries circa 1598.141 In Shakespeare’s version of the tale, Mallin adds, Achilles goes from being a mere nuisance to a contagious influence, a figure who is repeatedly drawn back into battles he does not wish to fight any more, but who invariably drags others into these conflicts with him: he becomes reluctant to finish what he started, sets up a theatre of resistance around him, and ends up dragging all involved into his unfinished battles. The analogy to Essex’s attempted coup and the degree to which the players themselves became embroiled in it is clear.142 Yet the analogy to Essex should prove no obstacle to printing the play by February, 1603, two years after the trial had concluded, during which time the play was registered by Roberts for the purpose of withholding it from print. To suggest a reason why the play should have been seen as potentially vexatious at the time of its suppression, we need to leave Essex and his execution behind us, and move to the far more pressing issue of the first few months of 1603: the succession plans of James. Elizabeth had been engaged in a long parliament late in 1601, during which her declining health was observed, yet no plans for a successor had been announced, as many had expected, so throughout 1602 uncertainty grew amid rumours of the Queen’s imminent demise. Essex’s betrayal continued to weigh on the mind of Elizabeth, who is said to have often wept for him well into her last year.143 During her last few years of life, Elizabeth had apparently found an unexpected ally in James VI of Scotland, but the secret correspondence between Secretary of State after 1598, Robert Cecil, and James indicate that the Scottish monarch had changed his attitude toward Elizabeth at the behest of Cecil, whose self-appointed role was to increasingly become the manager of a smooth transition to the new monarch.144 From his place of privilege near the apex of English rule, Cecil was able to manoeuvre with relative ease between the Privy Council and the Scottish court, removing obstacles that could conceivably stand in the way of James’s accession. Pauline Croft observes that the last such obstacle was the imminent peace with Spain that Cecil and James had each in their own way sought to bring about: “James, in their secret correspondence, persuaded Cecil that the possibility that the Infanta Isabella might assert her remote claim to the throne required that no negotiations should commence with Spain until after his own safe accession.”145 During Elizabeth’s last year of life, then, English domestic and foreign policy were surreptitiously already being

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driven by the next monarch through the mediating figure of Cecil. It is difficult to imagine that by early 1603, other members of the Privy Council were not party to Cecil’s manoeuvrings. In any case, since 1598, Cecil was certainly already as prominent in English politics as Essex, and the demise of the latter could have been seen as a triumph of Cecil: it was he, along with Edward Coke, who had identified disconcerting parallels with Bolingbroke at Essex’s trial.146 Consequently, of course, suspicion was thrown upon the players under the Lord Chamberlain’s patronage. Mallin’s reading of Troilus and Cressida rests on a notion that the CecilEssex rivalry was indeed widely figured in writing as typical of politics at this time, so a reading of Achilles as a corrupting and destructive Essex could easily be mapped onto the aftermath of Essex’s trial as an attempt to appease Cecil in some degree.147 Mallin does not ask: if Essex is Achilles, what part is Cecil’s? Instead, in Mallin’s reading, Cecil is more a general frame of reference by virtue of his rivalry with Essex, whose Achilleian influence on others focuses the theme of the death of chivalry within the play. Yet Robert Sharpe made the argument in 1935 that the play was able to be read with Essex as Hector and Cecil as Achilles.148 Let us recall that in the play, Achilles has Hector killed, so a topical reading will certainly incline toward Sharpe’s suggestion, if not to the fuller argument that he presents about the direct political influence of the rivalry between theatre companies. My suggestion, as the reader will by now have intimated, is that the influence worked in the other direction: rivalries between theatres were negotiated within the political landscape that shifted the goalposts regularly. Given Cecil’s role in bringing the company to the attention of the court during Essex’s trial, the company would certainly have wanted to maintain a keen interest in any signs of which way his future dealings may incline. To Chamberlain himself, as a member of the Privy Council with direct involvement in the domestic affairs of the crown, Cecil would have been a relatively easy target to monitor, even if his motives may not have been quite so easy to discern at all times. Only in March, 1603, did Cecil’s role become public knowledge, and even then only by implication, when he drafted the final proclamation that would hand the crown to James.149 Despite the neat fit of Sharpe’s topical reading, I am however inclined to imagine the company drawn to present Essex as a corrupting Achilles, precisely because it fits with the claim that they are at this time reflecting on circumstances in which they, like the eponymous characters of their play, were nearly ruined by the contagious influence of Essex. Of course, if Sharpe is inclined to read Essex as Hector, then it is quite possible that others may also have done so in 1602, a situation that would have been seen by the company’s patron as decidedly risky. If he at first felt that he

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could protect his servants, as soon as he gained a sense of the role of Cecil in realising James’s ambitions, Carey would have needed to ensure they did nothing to put either Cecil or James offside. Carey was in fact well positioned to learn of Cecil’s schemes sooner than most, not so much by virtue of his proximity to Cecil himself; it was his brother, Robert Carey, Earl of Monmouth, who could have gleaned something of the Secretary of State’s plans earlier than others because he governed the Scottish borders from 1598 until Elizabeth’s death. Late in 1602, he returned to London to visit the Queen, was present at her death in March 1603, and he promptly endeavoured to ride ahead of the messenger bearing news of the Queen’s demise to James so that he could be the first to pass on the news himself and offer his services to the new King.150 It is in such a climate, I suggest, that the suppression of Troilus and Cressida needs to be read. On the basis that Robert Carey could have gained knowledge of the Cecil-James plan by the end of 1602, it would then be no surprise to find his brother taking all necessary steps to protect himself—more than his company, perhaps— by ensuring that any vexatious associations in his company’s plays were to be placed under wraps in the first few months of 1603. Yet the play was dangerous for more reasons than any potential to be read as having been critical of Cecil for his part in the downfall of Essex. The play is, after all, focused principally on the love story of Troilus and Cressida, as it had been made famous in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde from some two hundred years earlier. The manner in which James had initially gained the hand of Anne of Denmark in marriage was the stuff of legend in his own lifetime: after Anne’s attempts to cross from Denmark to Scotland were thwarted, James sailed the North Sea in October, 1589, to fetch his betrothed, and the news in England prompted a flurry of interest. Elizabeth herself opposed the move, writing to James personally to berate him for a venture she deemed ill-considered, but others were wont to view these events in rather more “burlesquely romantic” terms, as Ruth Hudson contends.151 The marriage of James to Anne remained a popular subject of discussion beyond the border, given that it united two powerful realms at a time when England remained unattached in any such manner, and James himself was given to boast of his consort’s unique status as “the daughter, sister, and wife of kings,” as Croft observes.152 While the circumstances in which their marriage was achieved became legend, a question of the nature of its consummation festered as well, as rumours abounded both about the possibility that James in fact preferred the company of young men and about infidelities on Anne’s side.153 James was also romantically linked in the mid-1590s to Anne Murray, the Lady Glamis, about whom he wrote at least one poem, “Ane dreame on his Mistris the Lady Glammis.”154

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Indeed, James was no casual hack when it came to writing: as a youth he had been tutored by famous poet and historian George Buchanan and afterwards by leading Scots poet Alexander Montgomerie; and at eighteen he wrote a manifesto on poesy, the “Short Treatise Containing Reulis and Cautelis to be Observed and Eschewed in Scottis Poesie,” published in 1584 along with several sonnets in Essayes of a Prentise in the Divine Art of Poesie. Curtis Perry points out that while James is more widely linked now to his political writings and his book on demonology, his poetry “was at least fairly well known in England” during Elizabeth’s later life: “it is remarked upon by a number of contemporaries” as well as being excerpted in Englands Parnassus and Belvedere, and Jonson owned a copy of the Essayes.155 The reason why this is relevant to the present discussion is because in a rare moment of originality in his treatise, James referred to what we now usually call “rime royal” as Troilus verse, since it had been employed by Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde. Troilus verse consists of seven line stanzas, rhyming ababbcc, and was most appropriately used, according to James, for the treatment of “tragicall materis, complaintis, or testamentis,” such as in Chaucer’s depiction of the fated Trojan lovers.156 Importantly, James used this form himself in a poem in which the absence of an unnamed female subject—at least one commentator has read this as being Glamis157—is elevated to full tragic status. In “A Complaint of His Mistrissis Absence from Court,” the Troilus form is adopted to allow the absent mistress to be refigured as a catalyst for the catastrophic earthly phenomena that accompany her departure. Where James had written of his battles with the sea to acquire his bride in earlier poems devoted to Anne, he now turns these same forces against the illicit lovers. The sanctioned marriage to Anne was made the subject of an early sonnet, but as Morna Fleming reminds us, James had in his treatise already defined the sonnet as a vehicle for praise of authority or the recounting of historical events to which some significant change is owed, but “not, one notices, for love poetry.”158 I suggest that in the “Complaint,” James supplants Anne with the unnamed mistress, retaining the same earthly circumstances, but in the process he reconfigures them as myth and replaces the subject of praise with the subject of tragic love. In other words, for James, his own foray into the writing of a form that he calls “Troilus verse” is a very personal matter: it records in no uncertain terms the fact that his affections do not reside with his consort, and it also portrays a universe in which he is not the master of all that he surveys. The speaking subject and his mistress are left to the mercy of the gods, including Apollo, and yet James regularly identified with Apollo in most other aspects of his life, and it was indeed in this guise that James was represented as the central figure in the group

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of poets with which he had surrounded himself in Scotland: the so-called “Castalian Band.”159 From his use of “Troilus” to designate a particular verse form and his own poem that exemplified this form, we can deduce that James possessed a strong personal connection to Chaucer’s version of the Troilus tale, both in form and subject. Anybody who knew of this would be chary of putting into print a new version of the Troilus tale, particularly if it strips away the devotional love from the story and replaces it with a negative portrayal of baser human drives.160 The “Complaint” remained unpublished—which is not surprising, given its apparent rejection of the consort—and is likely to have only been read by the inner circle of poets that James had gathered around him. This is not to say that the relevance of this poem ceases at the edge of his inner circle. The poets and courtiers that James had gathered around him were also regular visitors to London and formed friendships and associations with prominent literati in Elizabethan London. Jonson, in particular, developed strong associations with members of the inner circle and was immediately elevated in stature when James gained the throne of England: he was appointed to write the entertainments welcoming Anne and Prince Henry at Althorp and Highgate on their journey to London in 1603, he was author of the panegyric greeting James to his first parliament in 1604, and he was given residence at the home of Lord D’Aubigny, a favourite of the new monarch, for about five years from late 1603 or early 1604 onwards.161 Given Jonson’s pre-eminence in these earliest activities that relate to the transition to the kingship of James, we must presume that he was already in the minds of those who sought to effect this transition, if not necessarily in the mind of the King himself, in the period immediately beforehand. My suggestion is, therefore, that Jonson, for one, could have been privy to the unpublished poetry, or at least to an account of it by any of James’s inner circle, keen to impress upon the English literary giant the tastes of the master-in-waiting. Jonson was also heavily involved with The Lord Chamberlain’s Men at this time, which may even partly explain this company’s preferment after James came to power, and so any knowledge he may have possessed about James’s peculiarly personal application of the verse form he called “Troilus verse” would have dictated that the play bearing the same name was perhaps best pulled from circulation ahead of the ascension of the new monarch. If a stationer emerged in the first two months of 1603 to lay claim to the title, as the reference to the Court of Assistants in the registry entry for Troilus and Cressida suggests, Roberts could have been drafted in by the Lord Chamberlain himself to execute the same plan executed twice before: register the title and then promptly hide it from view.

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The Bowes of Outrageous Fortune Robert Carey’s plan to ride to Scotland ahead of the official messenger immediately after Elizabeth’s death was not kept entirely secret. A letter from Edward Bruce—who was a pivotal go-between in the Cecil-James correspondence—to Sir Henry Howard, dated the day after Elizabeth’s death, informs us that earlier, on the day that Cecil’s draft proclamation had been despatched to James, Carey also sent a messenger to advise him of the Queen’s rapid decline—Carey’s man visited James in his chamber “at 7 in the morning,” five days before Elizabeth passed away.162 Carey was not directly involved in Cecil’s plans, so his decision first to remove himself from the north in the months before Elizabeth’s death and then to offer his services to James, seems more like an attempt to inject himself into the picture only after having learned by some means of the situation. He had ample opportunity in 1602 to discover Cecil’s plans, although he may not have known exactly who was conspiring to assist James onto the throne. As the man specifically responsible for policing the border with Scotland, Carey could have intercepted any packages that went between the two countries during this time, but the letters related to Cecil’s scheme used none of the participants’ proper names, substituting instead a series of numbers: James was always referred to as “30,” Cecil was “10,” and so on. Bruce’s letter gives Carey’s name, from which we can confirm that the Lord Chamberlain’s brother was never included in the scheme. Before his service in the northern marches, in fact, Carey had been knighted by Essex for his part in convincing the Queen to allow Essex to return from the war in France, and so it is easy to imagine that as far as Cecil was concerned, Carey was always likely to have been Essex’s man, even after Essex was long in the grave. It would thus have been too dangerous for Carey to ask anybody in person about the scheme, so he was best served by returning to London to be close to the Queen, while also personally manoeuvring to be at hand to assist James himself, since he had never been included in the plans of other powerbrokers. It is equally unlikely, then, that the decision to withhold Hamlet on 26 July, 1602, is in any way directly related to Cecil’s plan to effect a smooth transition from Elizabeth to James. Throughout the Queen’s last months the issue of her successor remained a source of great uncertainty. When Henry Percy, Ninth Earl of Northumberland, wrote to James in late 1601 or early 1602, he noted that people had assumed “a greater freedom since essex death to speake freely of your title,”163 but this may well have been asserted purely to gain a favourable reception, and there are many good reasons to suspect that the ongoing succession crisis remained as dire for

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the majority of the population in 1602—if not worse—as it had been at any time in the past. Peter Wentworth died in prison, for example, three years after merely petitioning Elizabeth to settle the succession issue in 1593.164 That a climate of fear persisted in relation to the issue cannot be disputed, and indeed the secrecy with which Cecil and others coordinated the succession of James in Elizabeth’s final years stands as further proof that they wanted no word of their plans to reach the reigning monarch’s ears or eyes. It may have been certain for many members of the nobility that time was running short for the settling of old scores or for jockeying to secure ground ahead of the rise of a new monarch. It is within this climate that I think we can lend greater weight to a number of seemingly minor incidents around the time that Roberts put his name to the entry for Hamlet in the Stationers’ Register. We shift our attention now back to George Carey, who was staying at Dauntsey, Wiltshire, in July, 1602, from which location he and his wife sent several letters to Robert Cecil between 8 July and 31 July. Indeed, in the last of these, dated 31 July, Elizabeth informs Cecil that “my lord” had been taken ill on the day before but is by this day fully recovered, and she writes so that neither Cecil nor “her Majesty” will fear the worst if they come to learn of his illness by any other means.165 While neither of the brothers Carey seems to have been in on Cecil’s plans, it seems evident that they had very different relationships with the Secretary of State. The younger Robert complained in letters and later in his memoirs that “Mr. Secretary” failed to give him any assistance when needed at various points in his life, whereas George seems to have always remained in favour with Cecil despite the incredible tension that must have surrounded the Essex trial.166 At Dauntsey for an extended stay at the pleasure of family friend Sir Henry Danvers, Carey stayed active in his duties as Lord Chamberlain: a letter to Cecil, dated 15 July, defends one Captain Burley for being slow to return from war on account of his having been taken prisoner, from which he is at last to be freed on exchange.167 Of even greater relevance to us here is a letter of 8 July, in which Carey, signing as Lord Chamberlain, passes on his thanks to Cecil “for his great forwardness in the business between him and Sir Jerom Bowes, for the suppressing of Bowes’ works in the Blackfriars.”168 This snippet of correspondence gives us a glimpse of something that ran deep with the nobility and which was, appropriately enough, at the heart of the play to which we have now returned: revenge. The historical record seems to give us no further evidence of the nature of Carey’s request, so we do not know which “works” were suppressed by Cecil. Indeed, so far as I have been able to ascertain, there have been no investigations into this correspondence in which the Lord Chamberlain

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refers to the suppression of specific works as a matter of personal business between him and another man of rank. We have no record of what these works were, but we might be quite certain that the word “suppressing” at the time would be appropriate only to “works” of a printed or performative nature.169 For the record, Jerome Bowes made his initial fame as the ambassador who in a flash of patriotic fervour challenged the Russian Tsar, Ivan IV—also known as “Ivan the terrible”—in staunch defence of Elizabeth’s honour in 1583.170 He was also one of the first to be given a patent for manufacturing Venetian glass in England, which is worth mentioning here, at least in passing, given our greater interest in the “tain” of Hamlet. Yet another incident in the life of Jerome Bowes may be more immediately relevant: in 1577, Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, believing himself to have been slandered, demanded Bowes be banished from parliament. Subsequently, in a letter to William Cecil, Lord Burghley and the Lord High Treasurer, dated 8 April, 1577, Dudley refers to a “sute touching plays to be granted to him & certayn others, &c.,” and comments on a discussion they had with then Lord Chamberlain, Thomas Radclyffe, Third Earl of Sussex, regarding “the perpetuytie that they sutors desiered” and the desire of the Queen that these three would oversee the suit.171 In other words, Dudley was among the small group given oversight of what would seem to be a ban relating to the granting of plays to Bowes, the duration of which was perpetual, but after his personal relationship with Bowes had taken a sharp public downturn. Remember at this point that Dudley was the patron of the Earl of Leicester’s Men, a company whose existence is dated to well before this incident, with records of Leicester’s patronage of an acting troupe going as far back as 1559, and they had been granted a royal patent on 10 May, 1574.172 During the 1570s and the first years of the next decade, Leicester’s men became a dominant force in the emerging Elizabethan theatre, as a touring company and as the principal performers at The Theatre after 1576. In the years that followed, a number of other companies began to perform in London, creating a competitive climate in response to which The Queen’s Men were formed in 1583, all but gutting Leicester’s Men for over a year.173 In such a competitive climate, it is not hard to imagine Leicester would exercise whatever power he possessed to limit the emergence of any rival companies. Should a man with whom he had been involved in a personal conflict also emerge as a theatrical rival, we can be quite certain that he would seek to block the granting of plays to him, turning the court against his new rival. We may wonder at how this relates to the request by George Carey, a quarter of a century later, to have a suppression order enforced against Bowes at Blackfriars? After Dudley died in 1588, several of his

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players moved on to other companies before eventually reforming, six years later, as The Lord Chamberlain’s Men. We can be quite certain that Dudley would have perpetuated the rivalry with Bowes up until his death: while accounts of Dudley’s Machiavellian tendencies are in all likelihood exaggerated, he nevertheless did possess a reputation in his day for being stubborn with a grudge.174 Bowes was in Russia during the early 1580s, but he had returned to England before Dudley’s death and indeed found himself in trouble with the court once again in 1587, when the Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer recorded a petition lobbied against Bowes for the mismanagement of a personal will being executed under his direction.175 We may wonder if Dudley’s rift with Bowes was perpetuated even beyond his death, through the company he owned and its personnel. The residents of Blackfriars built a warehouse for Bowes in 1597, a few months after these same residents—George Carey included—had blocked Burbage’s plan to construct a permanent theatre in this district. The second signature on the petition of November, 1596, is one Henry Bowes, who is identified in a number of documents as the brother of Sir William Bowes, out of the same lineage to which Jerome Bowes can be traced.176 This Henry Bowes was deputy to Lord Eure in the northern border patrols from 1596 to 1598, in which capacity his name appears regularly among the Border Papers, although his name is conspicuously absent from February, 1596 to May, 1597.177 Thus, during the same period in which Henry Bowes is absent from the northern records, his name appears on a petition back in London, blocking the production of the theatre at Blackfriars. Furthermore, the company involved had previously been in the employment of the man who had blocked an attempt by Jerome Bowes to gain access to the emerging theatre industry. Within a few months of the petition, Jerome Bowes can also be found back in Blackfriars himself, receiving a generous donation of £133 and a warehouse from the inhabitants. Recall that we have previously considered the possibility that George Carey was not at all an unhelpful patron of Shakespeare’s company and that by signing the petition to block a new theatre at Blackfriars he was acting under duress to some extent. If pressure had come from a Bowes faction at Blackfriars, Carey may even have been ignorant of any sense that this was, for Bowes, an old score that needed settling: the patron of Burbage’s company had prevented Bowes from gaining a foothold in the theatre in 1577, and now Bowes had an opportunity to forestall the plans of Burbage’s new company to tighten a stranglehold on the London scene. For Carey, there would have been no personal motivation to perpetuate a rift between Dudley and Bowes, but the petition of 1596 can be seen as having dragged him into a two decades’ old conflict, unwittingly or not.

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Curiously, of course, it is Henry and not Jerome whose name appears on the petition. We should add that it was also not the name of Ralph Bowes on the petition: this is relevant because Blackfriars records show that it was Ralph Bowes who leased the “greate howse and Certein other pcells of the premisses” from William More for a period of 21 years, from 31 March, 1596, and that Jerome Bowes later leased two rooms from George More as well as placing “certein Glasses therein” on reserve, for a period of sixteen years, from 23 April, 1596.178 I shall point out that this is not the Ralph Bowes we previously encountered as the man who cleverly used the Stationers’ Register to secure a monopoly on playing cards—that Ralph Bowes continued to vigorously police his monopoly until his death in 1598.179 The Ralph Bowes who had leased the Great House at Blackfriars in 1596 was mentioned in a despatch of 22 November, 1597, in which Cecil gave a warrant to Lord Burghley for Ralph Bowes, “son and heir of Robert Bowes, Esquire, deceased,” to be charged with payment of the northern garrison from the Berwick treasury.180 Robert was the brother of Sir George Bowes, who was father to Sir William and Henry—making Ralph and Henry first cousins—and accords to them both a significant stake in protecting the northern borders, with familial links to Durham, as well as an obvious link to the Blackfriars estate, in the records of which location both names appear in 1596. I believe that we see here evidence of a plan by Jerome Bowes to stake out territory for himself, his glass manufacturing business, and his family, at Blackfriars from about seven months prior to the scuttling of Burbage’s plans. Jerome was a distant cousin, but it seems to me that he was at this time seeking to align himself closely with the more reputable members of the Bowes line, following his earlier flirtations with authority—which, we have seen, may have been a consequence of Leicester’s involvement—in order to secure both a business and a personal residence at Blackfriars. It is also evident here that before Jerome would have been entrusted with any lease in the precinct, the more reputable cousin Ralph, son and heir of the man who had been entrusted with the northern garrisons, was first asked to take out a significant lease and for five years’ longer duration as security against the claims of Jerome. James Burbage had purchased his stake in Blackfriars on 4 February, 1596, but in less than two months, the Bowes family had begun to make a move on the same piece of real estate. Such actions strike me as a bold rejoinder to Leicester’s company, eight years after his death, by a man with a lifelong grudge of his own. Having gained favour with the residents at Blackfriars, Bowes is then gifted additional property on the site and a sizeable sum of money in what was most likely an investment in his glass manufacturing business on the site. Carey had

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been a resident at Blackfriars at least since 1584, which is the date of the lease given to his father,181 but was now faced with a popular new resident who had plans for expansion that encroached on interests of his own. Yet if it began as a grudge with Leicester’s old company, Bowes was perhaps unwittingly making an adversary of Carey, who in March, 1597, only a few months after the residents’ petition against Burbage was presented to the Privy Council, was made Lord Chamberlain—his preferment came too late to revive Burbage’s plans before the old actor’s death, but with plenty of time to work on other forms of restitution. On 26 June, 1601, Cuthbert and Richard Burbage began expanding their inherited stake in the Blackfriars precinct by purchasing additional rooms on the site as well as a number of other curious items: the deed of sale is an extraordinary document detailing numerous legal protections for all of their existing interests in the site, and includes, for example, “that little porch ledinge into the saide Mesuage above by this pnty fogayned and solde nowe in the tenure of Thomas Boone ... within the saide yard ledinge to the glasse house of the saide Sir Jerom Bowes knight conteyninge in bredth fower foote of assize & in length five foote and two ynches of assize.”182 In addition to the “little porch,” which the Burbage brothers could purchase at that time for themselves, the deed included a future provision for the purchase to cover, in the event of the passing of “Margarett Poole widowe,” her inherited stake in the “yard or way of the saide Sir George More which leadeth toward the glassehouse nowe in the tenure of Sir Jerom Bowes knight on the North.”183 This is no mere claim on the rooms within the residential space of the precinct; this is a grab for the ownership of the pedestrian thoroughfare on the site, namely the ground through which Bowes himself would need to walk on his way to his own glass warehouse. Shakespeare’s company had been foiled five years earlier in their attempt to add the Blackfriars to their stable home at The Theatre, but now they were firmly established at The Globe, the younger Burbages were making a powerful new claim on the Blackfriars site, and they were settling old scores in the process. The theatrical space built by James Burbage had been in use more recently as the venue for performances by the Children of the Chapel, in what amounted to the use of a loophole in the original ban on playing on the site, because they were being promoted as choral performances, but this arrangement remained fraught at all times, and Carey’s company was involved only to the extent that the Burbages owned the site and leased it to Nathanael Giles, the master of the boys’ company. It was not until 1608 that the company, by then the King’s Men, acquired a full shareholder interest in the Blackfriars Theatre and dissolved the lease arrangement.

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The purchases made at the Blackfriars by the brothers in the middle of 1601 were an important step in the direction of ensuring that their father’s vision for Blackfriars would come to pass and, perhaps just as importantly, in placing discomfiting pressure upon Bowes. A year later, Carey seems to have decided to do what Dudley had already done before him, that is, to ensure the suppression of Bowes’s works; indeed, Carey’s request may well have been rationalised on the basis that the earlier suppression order against Bowes was made to stand in perpetuity. Cecil could certainly have no qualms against enforcing an order against Bowes if his own Queen had previously agreed to put it into effect, and if it was initially set down that it was to be enforced by the trio that included Cecil’s father and the former Lord Chamberlain, the position now held by Carey himself, even if by that time the order was a full quarter of a century old. Without knowing the exact nature of the works that Carey had asked Cecil to suppress, we are at least able to construct an account of the relationship between Bowes and Carey that dates back to an older feud in which the players in Carey’s own company had been embroiled, and an order that as the Lord Chamberlain, Carey would now be fully expected to be able to enforce. I present the history of these old feuds mainly because it seems to me impossible to ignore the fact that there are only eighteen days between the letter in which Carey thanks Cecil for suppressing works by Bowes at the Blackfriars and the entry of Hamlet in the Stationers’ Register to Roberts. Censorship was, I suggest, clearly a matter that Carey was thinking about during his time at Dauntsey. That he called on Cecil to intervene directly in the suppression of the works in question suggests that he did not fully expect that the Court of Assistants could have been relied upon to accept a petition directly. If Carey had been directly opposed to Roberts registering any play in the earlier disputes heard by the Court, this letter of 1602 suggests that he could surely also have called upon Cecil to enforce a ban on the printing of plays by Roberts if there arose the need to override any authority held by wardens of the Stationers’ Company. It is more logical to envisage Carey enlisting the services of Roberts to protect titles on those occasions when it may have been suspected that the plays themselves could have been a thorn in his side if an enemy chose to draw attention to them. We have seen that such circumstances may have existed on the occasions that The Merchant of Venice and Troilus and Cressida were registered to Roberts. In the case of the former, the mighty Essex had good reason to want the play suppressed but without wanting to have the company that he saw as a potential ally exposed as peddlers of seditious writings; in the case of the latter, it was the players and quite possibly their patron who stood to lose everything if the text was made available in a

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form that would be freely accessible to the man who would soon be King. In the case of Hamlet, which is bookended by these other two sets of circumstances, we can at least confirm that Carey had been concerned with the suppression of new works and the settling of old scores in the days immediately beforehand. What remains is to identify the circumstances that, at this precise moment in time, could have compelled him to want to keep this particular text under wraps, but it will be worth asking further if these circumstances also address the issue of the cessation of involvement with the stationers for two years from July, 1602.

Negotiations with Denmark, etc. There is no reason to suspect that Hamlet had been made the focus for a dispute heard by the Court of Assistants, as is evidently the case for two non-Shakespeare plays registered to Roberts in 1600 and as is certainly true of Troilus and Cressida in 1603. When we looked at the conditions under which Roberts may have been asked to register The Merchant of Venice in 1598, we were able to identify circumstances that were directly contemporary to the entry being made, pointing to an intervention made by or on behalf of the man who would later use the company for his own purposes on the eve of an attempted coup. The circumstances under which Troilus and Cressida could have been seen as a threat to the company or their benefactor existed from the moment the play was presented to the public, but were likely to be only immediately risky from the moment that James took the throne of England: until that time, it mattered not that the play might offend the King of Scotland. As Roslyn Knutson’s work on the repertory of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men has shown, given the wealth of contemporary satirical plays and plays drawing on the “Matter of Troy” at the time, demand for Troilus and Cressida in 1602 would have been very high, yet the play enjoyed only a single repertory run through the winter of 1602 to 1603.184 Even then, the evidence that the play was staged at all is scant: the entry in the Stationers’ Register includes “as yt is acted by my lord Chamberlens Men.”185 It also seems certain that even if the play was staged at any time during the winter of 1602, it was not continued into the following year—1603 being, after all, the plague year during which the theatres were closed for an extended interval—and it was given no revival when the theatres were opened again. Ahead of its 1609 publication there is no evidence that the play was staged in a revival. While the first edition of the 1609 print run included the claim that the play had been performed by the King’s Men at The Globe, the second edition removes this claim and states that it is a “new play, neuer stal’d with the Stage,” suggesting

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either that the play had never been staged or that the stationers responsible, Richard Bonion and Henry Walley, now wished to distance their text from a history of performance.186 The stationers added an epistle, nevertheless commenting on the author: “when he is gone and his comedies out of sale, you will scramble for them and set up a new English Inquisition.”187 For Richard Dutton, “the point of this epistle is that it is announcing a reading version of the play, new to a print readership and one that is superior what had doubtless been performed in a cut text by The King’s Men at The Globe.”188 Whether the play was never staged or was only staged briefly in 1602 to 1603, there seems no suggestion that it saw the light of day again between its registration in 1603 and its appearance in print in 1609. I mention this possibility about Troilus and Cressida because it does lend itself to a belief that the company or the Lord Chamberlain himself decided to keep this text well away from any public scrutiny after only a very brief period in the sun. As Knutson points out, the play would have been highly fashionable at that time, so the company may well have had high hopes for it, yet it was despatched from the public domain with a suddenness that suggests the company were very much frighted with fire, false or otherwise. At some point in late 1602 or early 1603, as we have seen, Carey may have gained knowledge of dealings that were designed to effect a smooth transition for James, and via Jonson or some other channel the company had learned of the importance for James of the content and form of the Chaucerian Troilus. That the play was registered following a dispute at the Court of Assistants leads us to suspect, however, that the final catalyst for using Roberts to suppress the play through the Stationers’ Register occurred when another stationer had decided to seek to publish the play in 1603. Thus, the entry gives us the context for the suppression of the play at this precise moment. For the two Shakespeare plays that Roberts suppresses either side of Hamlet, then, we are able to identify a very specific and immediate situation prompting the decision to have the plays blocked. Without this degree of specificity, any argument in favour of a deliberate undertaking by the company or their patron is difficult to sustain. We are, in a sense, obliged to demonstrate that suitable motive and opportunity existed. I recognise that such individual circumstances do not sit well with what normally passes for cultural history—we seem instead to be in the realm of biography—but I maintain that any cultural history is far richer when it finds room for individual variations within the patterns and structures of a culture. When the historical record shows that we are confronted with what statisticians label an “outlier”—a single observed phenomenon that sits much further from the average than the majority of units in a distributed sample—we should investigate it closely rather than

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dismiss it as irrelevant to a study of broader cultural grids. The historical outlier is what speaks with particular urgency to the need for specificity in our explanations, since the outlier also begs the question, to some extent, of its divergence. If it is different from the norm, we must account for this difference in the manner of what I have described as “exception handling” rather than remove it from our purview. We have identified trends in publication of the repertory of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men and The King’s Men, and observed that five outliers can be linked to Roberts. Yet we noted also that these five plays represent outliers in Roberts’s own career as a stationer. Three were most likely the subject of a dispute heard before the Court of Assistants. The further we drill down, the more we discover that the texts have little in common that could enable us to build a consistent account of their divergence from the purported norm. In other words, we need to account for each on its own terms, as being divergent from the norm in its own way. Based on our investigations into the possible reasons for the company wanting The Merchant of Venice and Troilus and Cressida to be suppressed, about the only thing that we can say is common to both—apart from Roberts—is the impact of complex power relations on decisions that are made by people at any level of the Elizabethan or Jacobean social order. In each instance, a person who is closer to the centre of power, however temporarily, is able to exert pressure on the players and the stationers, which reminds us that no matter how much we may wish to see things from the perspective of either the players or the stationers, they invariably also had to answer to a higher power in every aspect of their daily lives. We must also recognise that a person could also drift closer to the centre of power or further away from it as roles changed hands or people fell into or out of favour with the crown: George Carey was able to exert pressure as Lord Chamberlain that he had been unable to apply as Second Baron Hunsdon; and Essex went from being a likely claimant to the throne to an outcast Earl in a very short space of time. The desire to want to read Shakespeare’s plays as being either wholly subversive or compliant, for example, tends to focus on the monarch alone as the centre of power, but this disregards the full complexity of the relations of power attenuating monarchical rule throughout society at this time. Very few subjects of the crown ever dealt with the monarch directly, so their lives were ordered instead, day after day, by the power relations inhering only in their immediate social circles. If we want to understand the decisions made by the players or the stationers regarding specific play texts, we should be mindful that these decisions may well have been guided by the whims of their lords and masters. This is not to deny the players or stationers any agency, but it demands that we recognise the potential of this agency to

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be limited or at least responsive towards people whose interests the players and stationers were impelled to serve. When Roberts registered Hamlet on 26 June, 1602, it was the fourth play entered for him in the Register, and it was entered without dispute. In the weeks before Hamlet was registered, Carey had been settling scores with Jerome Bowes, by asking for Cecil’s help in suppressing the works that Bowes had been seeking to produce at the Blackfriars Estate. This gives us some context for an act of self-censorship by Carey’s company of players, but does not give us a specific reason for the suppression of Hamlet, in particular. If, as I have been arguing so far in this book, Shakespeare and his companions had been in possession of the Hamlet play in one form or another for well over a decade by this time, we should be even more eager to want to know the reason why the play was to be suppressed now, late in June, 1602, and not at any time in the decade beforehand. Troilus would be registered seven months later with, as we suspect, the imperative that James not be likely to see in print a new version of the Troilus tale that may offend his personal sensibilities. Might a similar cause be attributed to the decision to suppress Hamlet? Troilus was of course a relatively new play and it seems evident that as soon as its capacity to offend a monarch-in-waiting became known to the company or their patron, it was removed from circulation. Hamlet had, perchance, been in and out of circulation for much longer. Unlike Troilus, its apparent references to James did not rely on obscure knowledge about James’s affinities with Chaucerian verse: James was, of course, married to Anne of Denmark since 1589, and we have already described the extent to which the succession of the Danish throne after the death of Anne’s father Frederick mirrored a number of the circumstances outlined in Hamlet, as in the Danish history on which it is based. This is to say that even if the play was written before Frederick’s death, the circumstances under which Feng had once seized power over the younger Amleth according to the nation’s history books were suddenly on the verge of being echoed in the potential for John to seize power over the younger Christian. In short, Belleforest’s tragical history very nearly became actualised in 1588. We should also not lose sight of the fact that James’s mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, was executed on 8 February, 1587, and that James had, for a time, broken off diplomatic relations with England.189 For at least a year afterwards, James was being entreated to avenge Mary’s death, with voices of support coming from both sides of the border for him to seize the crown of England by force. While James later mended diplomatic ties with Elizabeth, and gave her assurances that there would be no attempt from the north during England’s campaign against the Spanish in 1588, the shadow

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of Mary hung over the border relations between Elizabeth and her northern cousin until the end of her reign.190 It would not have needed a particularly insightful mind to detect this shadow—or, dare we suggest, the “shade”— of Mary in the ghost crying for revenge in Hamlet in the years after 1587. Yet, surely, in neither of these scenarios is the play likely to have offended James: Hamlet’s thwarted ambition suggests sympathy for Anne’s brother, Christian, and the exhortation to avenge the dead regent speaks to support for those Catholics who would have had James instated on the throne. If anything, then, the play could have been seen as particularly dangerous for the players based on what it seems to have been suggesting in relation to Elizabeth, and this was a danger far more immediate than any represented by a possible future successor. Yet if we go in search of parallels with the execution of Mary in the play we are bound to come up short: the voices crying for revenge represent the only real parallel between the deaths of Mary and Hamlet senior. Dig any deeper and the two begin to diverge greatly at the level of detail, and the play’s resemblance to the Danish history on which it is more directly based, rather than to Scottish relations circa 1587, becomes apparent. The degree of adherence to the Amleth tale aids the play in distancing itself and its subject matter from Elizabeth: as the stories of Amleth and Hamlet both rely fundamentally on the Danish elective system, there is no danger that the events described in the play could be mistaken for a representation of the English system; and, besides, Shakespeare was writing English History plays from early in his career, so any message that was made about the English monarchy was more likely to be found embedded in these plays which treated as their subject matter the Queen’s own immediate family heritage. Being so close to Danish history, then, Hamlet could have been seen as a comment on the governance of Denmark, particularly in the wake of the troubled succession of Christian IV. Indeed, to an English audience, the play could serve as more than a mere jibe at the Danes, since it reminds its audience that nothing has changed across the North Sea in several hundred years—the elective method of succession remains deeply flawed and open to corruption. As it had been in the tales of old, something remained rotten in the State of Denmark. If James had married Anne in order to secure his status as a European monarch, the Amleth tale serves as a warning against relying on the Danish monarchy for any stability in rule and inheritance. Hamlet compounds the warning by shifting the setting to Elsinore, which was the home of the current Danish crown, and, of course, by killing off the entire court in a tragic twist on an already tragical history. In the next chapter, we shall examine some of the ways in which Hamlet can be read as passing comment on aspects of Elizabethan life as well as some of its

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key figures, but in terms of any overt stance on the English monarchy or even the question of succession, it suffices here to observe simply that the play seems somewhat detached from these matters and focuses on a nonetoo-flattering portrayal of the governance of Denmark. In this respect, then, the play could certainly have been viewed by a contemporary eye as being critical of Denmark and its potential impact on affairs of State with other nations. In the eyes of Anne of Denmark, in particular, even if the play appeared to offer a sympathetic view on her brother Christian (as being mirrored in Hamlet’s thwarted ambition), the parallels with her own family would have been an unwelcome object lesson in the corruption to which her family’s governance was prone, a clear slight on her uncle, and an attack on her mother, if nothing else. In 1587, Elizabeth saw off the perceived threat from Mary and the victory over the Armada in 1588 enhanced her grip on the crown, so the prospect of Anne of Denmark being a candidate for Queen of England will have seemed remote in the extreme. Yet her marriage to James in 1589, which attracted plenty of attention in England, may well have given a group of players reason to baulk at the prospect of staging any play that depicted Denmark as rotten. We should recall at this point that the evidence for an early Hamlet play centres on performances before 1589 and again in 1594 and 1596, which suggests that there may well have been a significant gap of more than four years between performances. The prospect that there was a performance at Oxford in 1593 is, as I have suggested, tantalising support for the idea that the play was revived first in the provincial venues before it was performed in the outskirts of London at Newington Butts in 1594. The marriage of Anne to James could well be seen as a reason for the play to have been shelved after 1589. Our outline of the publication history of Shakespeare’s plays tells us that in 1589 there was not yet any established, consistent engagement with the stationers so the idea of suppressing a dangerous play with the aid of a stationer was simply not yet a consideration. By 1593, the risk of the play being a threat to a future Queen of England may have dissipated, as Londoners became aware of the growing rift between Anne and James: it was at this time that the rumours about an affair with Lady Glamis began to circulate, rumours that not even the birth of Prince Henry on 19 February, 1594, could dispel, and James immediately exacerbated things by having the child removed to Stirling Castle where he was to be raised by the Earl of Mar, expressly against Anne’s wishes.191 The play was performed in 1594 and again in 1596, suggesting that any perceived danger was gone. This was a time during which James was establishing that Anne would have no say on matters relating to the governance of his kingdom, let alone on matters related to their children.

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After 1596, as we have seen, the Hamlet play was apparently shelved once more. This could potentially have been due to the impact of the death of Shakespeare’s son, as described in Chapter One of this book. We need not always look for external pressures being brought to bear; to be certain, there are also always internal pressures, the magnitude of which can lead to career-defining changes in direction. By around 1600, though, the play was back on the repertory. In the next chapter we will consider the reasons for reviving the play at this time, but for now I want to focus once more on the question of its suppression in June, 1602. Sometime during 1602—the surviving letter in question is undated—Northumberland wrote to James to enlist support for the enterprise to which Robert Cecil had committed key nobles. We should assume that Northumberland’s initial letter was penned during the first half of the year because among the reasons he provides for wanting James to be King of England, he pinpoints international loyalties: “what out of your allyes by denmarke, the ancient league wythe france, and the irishe, wyche perhapps myght be at your deuotion.”192 He states, in other words, that James would bring to the English sovereignty improved relations with neighbouring Denmark, France, and Ireland. This suggests that at the time of writing, there was no prospect that relations with these neighbours would improve before the end of Elizabeth’s reign. In the case of Denmark, this was certainly not the case in the second half of 1602. In October, Cecil sent a group including Lord Eure, Sir John Herbert, and Daniel Donne to the neutral city of Bremen to conduct negotiations with an envoy of the King of Denmark for the purpose of securing a treaty and guaranteeing better trade relations.193 Cecil’s official correspondence from this time reveals that the arrangement had been in planning since at least June: Northumberland must have written to James well before this, since it is hard to imagine that a man who was soon to become one of Cecil’s trusted secret correspondents would have been ignorant of these attempts by Cecil to secure improved relations with Denmark. The efforts to which Cecil went in setting up the negotiations suggest, as we shall see, that he was keen to leave nothing to chance: rather than relying on James to use his connection to Denmark, via Anne, to smooth relations between England and the Danish King, Cecil sought to ensure that Anne would already be welcomed by virtue of the fact that a treaty had been negotiated to improve trade relations between his country and hers. As early as June, Sir Stephen Lesieur had travelled to Elsinore to deliver Cecil’s letter of invitation to the Danish court, and was expected to return to London soon after 4 July.194 On 20 July, Cecil wrote to Lord Eure with the request that he lead the English delegation in these negotiations and, on 25 July, Cecil received Eure’s agreement and Lesieur’s notes. The

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notes are headed simply “Negotiations with Denmark, Etc.,” and outline necessary requirements from Cecil for letters of commission, the copies of prior agreements between England and Denmark dating back to Henry VI, letters to be given to the Archbishop and Magistrate of Bremen requesting the use of the city, and so on.195 While the Danish reply did not arrive until September, and Cecil sent his delegation off in October, his official papers show that by 25 July, his plans had thus progressed to the point where he could allow no internal obstacles. Importantly, Eure’s letter refers to being imposed upon to manage the “secrecy and weight” of these negotiations, a claim that may be hubris on his part but which nevertheless indicates to some extent Cecil’s desire to manoeuvre with care in this matter. With this in mind, we might recall the date of the entry for Hamlet in the Stationers’ Register: 26 July, 1602. It happened while Carey was staying in Dauntsey, but we have noted that the Lord Chamberlain remained active at this time and had enlisted Cecil’s assistance in ensuring the suppression of works in the weeks beforehand. It is entirely reasonable to expect that with sensitive secret negotiations due to commence with the Danish at short notice, Cecil could have asked Carey for an assurance that the play about the tragical history of the Danish court would be suppressed in kind. Equally careful regarding the reputation of his playing company following the Essex trial, Carey would have been keen to ensure that a suppression order was not documented from Cecil directly, and could have offered instead to engage in an act of self-censorship. Importantly, if we accept Cecil’s looming negotiations with Denmark are in any way connected to a decision by Carey or his company to enlist Roberts to register Hamlet in order to keep it from appearing in print, and if we conclude that Cecil’s plans to negotiate a treaty with Denmark are linked to his more secretive negotiations with the next King of England, then we also may suspect that Carey himself could have discerned the way in which the winds were blowing. While he was most likely not party to Cecil’s dealings with James, Carey required only a little nous to see that the dealings with the Danes were a sign of bigger things on the horizon, related especially to a particular Dane living at that time in Scotland. Even without knowing the full extent of Cecil’s complicity in the transition to a new monarch, Carey could easily have seen that Cecil was fashioning for himself a key role in the new regime, well in advance. Cecil’s negotiations with Denmark represent a solid reason for Carey to have wanted to remove Hamlet from circulation in July, 1602, but it is also likely that the deeper political ramifications of Cecil’s dealings at this time would have given Carey cause to suspect that all engagement with the stationers thereafter could be risky. So long as all plays remained the property of the playing

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company, they could be contained, and any handwritten manuscripts or prompt-books could be easily destroyed if required. Once the play text was in the hands of the stationers, the company lost the capacity to control its circulation. James Roberts seems to have been the exception, of course: a stationer who could be counted on for maintaining regular dealings with the players via his rights to the printing of play bills, and was therefore the best candidate to be used by Carey’s company to register plays as a form of self-censorship. After Roberts was enlisted to pull Hamlet from general circulation in mid-1602, it seems fair to conclude that for all intents and purposes, Carey saw any involvement with other stationers as a significant risk, at least until the personal predilections of James could be ascertained with more certainty. Regarding the stationers, the company then closed ranks for the next two years, during which time the company gained the patronage of the King on 19 May, 1603, and whatever influence Carey had enjoyed over the players waned, ceasing unquestionably with his death on 9 September, 1603.

Alarum or Non, After All Some brief revision may be in order. I have argued that Shakespeare’s company lacked any regular engagement with the book trade until around the time that George Carey acquired the company from his father, in 1596; for the next few years, the company developed a quite regular relationship with the stationers; in 1598, Essex’s plan to resurrect his diplomatic career via his man in Venice prompted the company or Carey (or both) to devise a way to control the censorship of their own repertory, and a stationer with whom they already had a regular working relationship was used to register The Merchant of Venice in order to withdraw it from circulation; in 1600, this same stationer appeared before the Court of Assistants with a claim on two further plays from the repertory of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, and was duly given the rights to these plays, the Court quite possibly finding in his favour based on a good report from either Carey or a representative of the company; with the Essex-Shirley plan no longer an obstacle, Roberts signed The Merchant of Venice over to Thomas Heyes, no doubt for a fee, and took on the job of printing the play himself, also for a fee—Heyes is no doubt the man who invested in the publication, then, and who obtained any subsequent profit; of the two plays suppressed in 1600, one never appeared in print and the other appeared in print in late 1602, without any evidence that Roberts had ceded his claim on the title; after Essex’s failed coup, the company appears to have ceased engaging with the stationers for a short time but they returned to dealing with stationers by 1602, during

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the middle of which year they felt compelled to suppress Hamlet and, at the same time, they ceased all further publishing activity for two years, including the plague year of 1603. I have argued that the last two events are related to Carey’s sense of the degree of involvement of the Secretary of State in manoeuvring James onto the throne. During the hiatus, though, in February, 1603, they learn of a risk presented by Troilus and Cressida, and promptly engage Roberts to suppress this title as well. The title would thereafter remain out of circulation for as long as Roberts remained active as a printer: it was re-entered in 1609 by Bonion and Walley and printed the same year, after Roberts had been bought out by William Jaggard in 1608—as we have seen, Bonion and Walley sought to distance their print version of the play from its performance history. David Bergeron observes further in relation to their epistle that they had “intervened to change the direction of the play away from the theater, underscoring the power of the publisher to alter the text and affect its reception.”196 A corollary to this may be that the publishers of the 1609 text also sought to distance their work from Roberts and any relationship he enjoyed with the players. We have been able to develop this account of the nature of Roberts’s involvement with the company based on knowledge of the content of the three Shakespeare plays in question along with a detailed examination of the historical events of relevance to the lives of the men whose interests were served by both players and stationers. The two non-Shakespearean texts present obstacles to the same kind of analysis, since the content of one is lost and that of the other is based on what is in all likelihood an unauthorised or pirated version, two years after the title was suppressed by Roberts. In the case of A Larum for London, though, we can now make one historical observation that will add greater weight to this reading of the degree to which the events in the lives of their lords and masters may have impacted on the decisions made by players and stationers in relation to the company’s repertory. Just as Cecil’s plans to facilitate a treaty with Denmark in 1602 might well have been a reason for the suppression of Hamlet at that time, the play about the sacking of Antwerp by the Spanish in 1576 could have been suppressed in 1600 because of attempts to broker a peace with Spain at that time. On 6 March, 1600, George Carey hosted Louis Verreyken at dinner, and entertained his guest with a performance of 1Henry IV (or John Oldcastle).197 Verreyken was there as Ambassador for Archduke Albert of Austria, and headed the contingent who had arrived in England to mediate between the representatives of Elizabeth and Phillip III of Spain. Roslyn Knutson has pointed out that the Spanish Netherlands, Antwerp in particular, were important bargaining chips in Verreyken’s negotiations.198 While it is recorded that Verreyken watched the play he

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saw at Carey’s home with “great Contentment,”199 any anti-Spanish play based on George Gascoigne’s The Spoyle of Antwerp would hardly have been cause for similar contentment. We have maintained that the content of any version staged by Carey’s company in the first half of 1600 cannot be known in any detail, but it is safe to assume that at least by association, A Larum for London would have evoked Gascoigne’s central propagandist leanings even if it did not echo them directly, and the 1602 printed version does indeed portray the Spaniards negatively, as heartless killers. A letter by John Chamberlain to Dudley Carleton, dated 10 May, 1600, indicates that negotiations with Verreyken’s team were due to end that week, albeit without a satisfactory conclusion.200 The question of the peace between Spain and England remained very much up in the air in the weeks that followed, particularly in the aftermath of a conflict involving “nine or ten goode marchant ships” and two Spanish galleons off the coast of France at that time, as described by Chamberlain.201 It is quite likely that Carey wanted to suppress A Larum for London much earlier than the date on which it was finally entered into the register: 29 May, 1602. We have seen, of course, that the title was the subject of a dispute to be heard at the Court of Assistants on 27 May, which would have forced Roberts to wait until the date of that hearing to register the play. At least Carey could be contented with the knowledge that any title awaiting a Court hearing would be in no danger of appearing in print until the dispute was resolved, but it also certainly suggests that Carey would have wanted Roberts’s claim to be favourably considered by the Court, hence the likely presence of a representative of the company, as we had noted in the earlier discussion of the “Roberts Memoranda.” Even without more certain knowledge of the content of the company’s repertory version of the play, we can make a reasonable case for the play being suppressed on the basis that it presented for Carey a risk of embarrassment, at least, or even of a potential diplomatic incident leading to disfavour in the eyes of Elizabeth. I doubt that we can underestimate the value of the peace with Spain, which would pose problems for many writers and performers who had gained mileage from negative portrayals of Spanish militancy in the years of conflict beforehand. Those whose propaganda had previously served as a call to arms for the English could now find their words read as a threat to the peace being sought anew by Elizabeth. In such a climate, Carey would surely have deemed it politic for a play with an anti-Spanish theme to be kept from circulation. The fate of A Larum for London serves as a reminder, then, that the potential for subversion or sedition remained always on shifting terrain. A play that seemed to serve the interests of the State at one moment could, with a sea change in national policy, suddenly

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appear as seditious or at least tactless. It is along similar lines that I think we need to view Hamlet’s history of revival and then publication as having been in some degree at the mercy of events that were beyond the control of any playwright or his company. The players and, just as importantly, their patron certainly had some level of control over how they chose to respond to events that impacted upon their daily practices, and in this sense we can read a play as method in the sense that its repertory life and its consignment to print are determined in part by the company’s response to events that are shaped by powerful men and, perhaps less directly, by very powerful women: Elizabeth, of course, and to a lesser extent Anne. We have considered possible external factors for the play being removed from the repertory only briefly in the previous section, as repertory dates remain notoriously difficult to pin down in any case, so our approach has been guided by the intervals between known references to the play in performance, as part of a more general account of the lasting impact posed by the play’s potential to offend the current and the likely future Queen of England. Thanks to the fastidiousness of the record keepers of the Stationers’ Company, we possess much greater certainty about the dates on which the printing rights to plays were signed over to stationers, and it is on this basis that we were able to discern the atypical nature of Roberts’s involvement with Shakespeare’s company as well as to identify contemporary events likely to impact on any decision by Carey or his players to suppress their own plays. In relation to Hamlet, in particular, we can at last draw on this account of its likely suppression to develop a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between the different versions that were to appear in print thereafter, to which the next chapter is devoted. For now, I want to end this chapter with a comment about Valentine Simmes, to whom the task of printing the Q1 of Hamlet fell. Toward the end of 1603, Simmes was named in two entries in the Stationers’ Register: both were entered on 5 December, 1603, the first being an order that he surrender all copies of “the welshbate. and all the ballades that he hath printed of the Traitours lately Arrayned at Winchester” and the second being an order to pay a fine for printing these texts without licence, “And not to meddle with printing or selling any of the same bookes or ballades hereafter.”202 Recall that one question we asked about the publication of the Q1 and Q2 texts of Hamlet is why Roberts did not seek to have either Simmes or the two publishers punished for printing a text for which he held the rights. At the end of the same year in which Q1 was published, Simmes was in fact punished for that very offence, but not in connection with this title. Roberts was not inactive at this time, registering A True and

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admirable Historie; of a Mayden of Consolens on 29 October and printing it before the end of that year,203 so he is bound to have known of Simmes being punished for printing other titles without licence. That Simmes escaped punishment for his part in the publication of Hamlet is due, I suspect, to the very nature of the arrangement under which Roberts had entered the title into the Register. If Roberts had indeed entered it at the behest of the Lord Chamberlain, with a clear agreement that he would not print the title, the stationer would have been in no position to make any decision about how to respond to the appearance of the Q1 on his own. If he wanted to consult the company’s patron, however, Roberts would have been presented with the difficulty of the company having changed hands in the interim. We might in fact suggest that Carey could have been removed from the reckoning on Hamlet’s fate—and consequently the fate of the stationers responsible for the Q1—any time after around 28 December, 1602, since this is the date that Thomas Howard, First Earl of Suffolk, was appointed Acting Lord Chamberlain, presumably because Carey was beginning to show signs of the illness that would take his life less than eight months later.204 This should give us cause to suspect that even if Carey had been principally behind all decisions made about the relationship between his players and the stationers before this date, he might have been incapable of a similar level of involvement come the end of 1602. This would lead us to suspect further that the decision to enlist Roberts to register Troilus and Cressida less than two months later probably rested with the players, on the basis of knowledge about James that had come direct from Jonson. Alternatively, it may simply be that as his health declined, Carey clung to any prospect of a return to good health and preferment, and the dispute over Troilus and Cressida at the Court of Assistants represented a rare opportunity at that time to exercise the power he was in danger of losing absolutely. In any case, we must assume that Carey’s influence over the relationship between The Lord Chamberlain’s Men and the stationers all but disappeared when King James himself took on the patronage of the company. Importantly, if Carey was pivotal in establishing stronger ties between the company and the stationers, as the history of publication of their repertory has indicated, then the removal of his influence might also be a factor in the company’s continued disengagement with the stationers throughout 1603. Since their new patron was the King himself, the players would have been understandably at a loss about how to approach their new patron to intercede on their behalf in any matter, let alone on a question of self-censorship. It is no small irony that after gaining the patronage of the King’s, the players would have lost any way of knowing how the monarch

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or the Privy Council were swaying on any subject, since it was Carey’s management of the company from the position of Lord Chamberlain that may have ensured a close eye was kept on maintaining a balance between the two, and they were hardly likely to approach James for the same level of insight into affairs at Court. Previously, we also considered the prospect that Will Kempe may have been responsible for supplying Nicholas Ling and John Trundell with the text for the Q1 Hamlet, and it fitted the story of Kempe’s own decline into destitution and death to suspect that the play appeared in print too late to turn around his failing fortunes. This suggests an imprint late in 1603, as Kempe was buried at the beginning of November, 1603. If Roberts had wanted to dispute the Simmes imprint through the proper channels, then, he would have had no reason to fear a backlash from Carey, and if he took his concerns to the players, he could well have found a group disinclined to punish a publisher for an act in which they would have recognised the hand of their old clown, whose demise also rendered him beyond the reach of earthly punishments. For both the stationer and the players, then, the appearance of the Q1 represented an opportune moment to do nothing at all, since they no longer had a direct channel of communication with the Privy Council. There remained good reason for caution so long as the players and Roberts suspected Hamlet to still be a play about which either James or Anne would be displeased. If either came forward with a claim against Simmes or the publishers, they would of course draw attention to themselves and their link to the play they considered to have been worth suppressing a little over a year earlier. On the question of whether he should have been punished for his part in publishing an unlicensed title, Simmes had managed to dodge a bullet. Unbeknownst to him, those who had a right to call for his punishment were laying low for fear of reprisal from a much higher authority. Having allowed him to dodge one bullet, the players and Roberts could have been waiting to see if he had attracted another. Simmes was of course punished for illegal activity, for different titles, and to the tune of a little over eight shillings.205 The fact that Simmes was not punished for printing Hamlet is, as we suspected from the outset, a key to understanding what enabled Roberts and the players to feel that they should capitalise on the success of the first imprint. Yet we initially conceived of the problem in terms of why neither Roberts nor the players wanted Simmes punished, as if it were only ever a choice for them to make between punishing or following suit. By mapping Roberts’s activities onto a richer and much broader historical canvas, we can see now that in the end the decision came down to two very different extremes, each of which focused on what Roberts had promised not to do

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yet which Simmes had done: if the Q1 Hamlet attracted the ire of a newly instated Privy Council, Simmes could be left to his own devices as the scapegoat the players and Roberts would need to wash their hands of the earlier history of the text; but if he escaped the attention of the censors, then they could write themselves into a new chapter of the long history of the Hamlet play by issuing a newly augmented version. A final test case of the potential risk posed by their old play came early in 1604, when Jonson was called before the Privy Council to answer the charge laid by Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, that the company’s new play, Sejanus His Fall—staged by the company at court during the 1603 to 1604 season— amounted to “poperie and treason.”206 The play was particularly germane to anybody wanting to gauge the state of play in censorship under their new monarch since, as Annabel Patterson argues, it is a play that explicitly stages an act of censorship, and thus speaks “to a climate of excessive, even perverse interpretive ability by the government and its agents.”207 Jonson escaped punishment for this title, but would later be imprisoned in 1605 for his part in Eastward Ho!, a play that contains clear anti-Scottish sentiments.208 In early 1604, though, Jonson was induced to make changes to his Sejanus, with the amended version being registered on 2 November, 1604, and appearing in print early in 1605.209 With Simmes escaping any attention from the censors and Jonson escaping with nought but an edict to make changes to a text that had been labelled as treasonous, Roberts and the players might well have felt that any earlier fears about the dangers posed by Hamlet were finally shown to have been unfounded, and a path was finally clear to produce their own published version of the play, the result being the appearance of the Q2 Hamlet later in 1604.

CHAPTER THREE UPDATING AMLETH: ELSENOURE AND SUCH

We now have as detailed a picture as we might hope to gain of the history of the play, consistent with the evidence around which debates have focused in the last hundred years. Importantly, this history reveals to us the error that we make when trying to make sense of the play as a single object of interpretation. The tain of Hamlet includes the story of a text that existed in numerous different forms, each of which could be said to have resulted as a particular response to a matter of concern for the playwright, his company, or their patron. The play’s development as a performance text in the years from 1588 to 1596, as considered in Chapter One, speaks to the influence of the figure of Will Kempe as well as to personal factors surrounding the life of Shakespeare himself. In the history of the play’s transition from stage to page, as considered in Chapter Two, though, the figure of the playwright begins to recede in importance, and we begin to apprehend the role played by more powerful figures in determining the fate of the printed word. It is to questions of how all of these factors can be seen to impact on the shape of the text in its various forms that we now turn. Of particular interest will be the possibility that a reading of topical issues addressed in the play helps us to solve some of the most persistent mysteries of “what happens” in the play, but also provides evidence for how the play text responded to topical matters. This is to say that topical content should certainly be taken as key evidence of a specific historical moment in which the text circulated, for the purpose of dating the text, but the manner in which the topical content is presented and the way in which the text was circulated—or, perhaps, removed from circulation—should also be seen as evidence of engagement between the text and its context. Topical readings of Shakespeare plays are nothing new. Leah Marcus provided a summary of past approaches to topicality or “local reading” in her introduction to Puzzling Shakespeare in 1988: when used in relation to Shakespeare’s plays, local reading had previously tended “to be associated with antiquarianism and the valorization of origins, with an older mode of historicism that deciphered texts in order to discover and fix the meaning of Shakespeare” even though “the scandal of topical reading is, of course, that it has achieved no such thing.”1 Marcus observed that in the hands of

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literary scholarship, topical reading had produced for the most part only revelations about the inadequacies of prior historicist methodology. More specifically, this means that scholars sought to discredit previous topical readings in order to validate newer topical claims: such a character in this play is really a parody of this historical figure; not that historical figure as claimed by so and so; and, accordingly, the methods used by so and so are inadequate for situating the play historically. In our consideration of the reasons for the players or their patron to want to self-censor certain plays, we have already seen the potential for any play to be read in terms of conflicting topical connections even in their own time. Rather than seek to claim priority for any single reading, I have sought to demonstrate only the potential for a reading that could be viewed by the players themselves or their patron as dangerous, especially in the light of changing historical circumstances or significant events within a precise historical milieu. Such precision, I maintain, counters the concerns that presentist scholars might direct—sometimes with good reason—at historically inflected approaches to Shakespeare and his plays. The concerns outlined by Marcus in 1988 have continued to be echoed throughout the past quarter of a century in presentist scholarship, with its suitably cautious view about any claims that topicality might provide a privileged window to the soul of the Bard. Eschewing such privilege, the textually-evidenced cultural history we are deploying here favours topical reading, but only in contingent fashion: a topical reference is useful primarily only to the extent that it can add to our knowledge of a timeline of production and reception for a play as well as in understanding how a particular play rises to the changing circumstances confronting the players at any given moment in time. Anything done in the name of precision must surely be worthwhile, yet if I often tread warily it is with good reason. Marcus points out that topical reading has become anathema to much of Shakespeare scholarship for the simple reason that it had also become a favourite technique in the writings of the anti-Stratfordians, who seek to identify precise dates and personages in the plays in order to prove that Shakespeare could not possibly have been responsible. Against anti-Stratfordian proclivities, Marcus presents a topicality that is more national in orientation than it is localised: it seeks to identify across a broad timeline—namely, the length of Shakespeare’s career—a number of ways in which Shakespeare’s plays responded to the big issues of their time. The two monarchs, Elizabeth and James, and the city of London become the monumental targets of such a broad-based topical reading. By being able to show that the later plays clearly speak to issues pertaining more to the Jacobean project of unifying Britain than to the issues of Elizabethan gender identity and censorship with which the

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earlier plays were obsessed, for example, Marcus succeeds in making a case for Shakespearean authorship: whereas those who are convinced of the Earl of Oxford’s hand in Shakespeare’s plays require that the plays cannot have been written after 1604, the year of Oxford’s death, a topical reading that situates later plays well into the Jacobean period dismantles Oxfordian claims. Marcus does not express her motives explicitly in these terms, but her discussion of the anti-Stratfordian controversies early in the book provides a frame and, perhaps, a rationale for what follows. My hope is that Chapter One of this book has already made an equally valid case for using precise topical readings to situate Shakespeare in the picture of an early Hamlet. While precise topical reading is dismissed as “Fluellenism” by Richard Levin, after the Shakespearean character in Henry V who was pedantic to a fault, Marcus points out that the practice often amounts to pedantry of a more sinister kind: iconoclasm.2 Yet precision, I contend, need not be mere pedantry, and is indeed a powerful tool in helping to counter the excessive Bardolatry that at times threatens to undermine the cause of Shakespeare scholarship from within. In using history to show that Shakespeare could easily have been on hand to write the Hamlet to which references exist in 1589, 1594, and 1596, I argued also that the task was necessary to counter both those iconoclasts who seek to attribute the play to another individual and those who cling to rather idealistic views of Shakespeare’s dramatic career, views according to which Hamlet can only have been written at the very height of his powers. It remains to be shown here that in addition to the weight of historical evidence, the text itself supports a date of composition earlier than 1599 or 1600. The argument we have considered regarding the provenance of the Q1 Hamlet suggests that if any version of the play will give us cues to an earlier date of composition, it is this one. Topical reading will by necessity thus need to be quite precise. The same approach should also help us to locate the Q2 text in terms of a putative date of revision. In dating these texts, we seek here also to recognise within them any cues to method; that is, to reiterate the questions posed early in Chapter One: what material did Shakespeare retain from his historical sources (and by extension, what did he alter), and so to what ends might these changes have been made? To reconfigure these questions here in terms of the history of the different versions of the play, we can begin by asking what material may have been retained and altered from Belleforest’s Amleth tale in a version of the play written in or around 1588, and to what ends—thereafter to ask the same of a 1594, 1596, or 1599 to 1600 production? To answer this, of course, we need to be clear about the degree to which we can claim to have access to any of the content of any earlier version, knowing that the version printed

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in Q1 was locked in by its actor-reporter—for which role I am penciling in the figure of Kempe—around 1603. By singling out Kempe as the actorreporter, though, it is possible to claim a degree of continuity between the Q1 text and the earliest version of the play, since Kempe appears a strong contender for having had some involvement in the initial development of the play in its earliest form, either as a “collaborator” in some loose sense of that term or at least as a leading actor for whom key sections of the play were written directly. The memorial reconstruction explanation relies on correlation between lines of several characters in both the Q1 and Q2 texts, compared to some significant differences in lines delivered by most other characters. As we noted in Chapter One, the elegance of the approach is compromised by the presence of lengthy strings of identical lines scattered amongst the lines of characters who also deliver many very different lines as well. I suggested that this could be explained by a somewhat more complex history in which the actor-reporter played a number of roles whose lines were consigned to memory, and at a later date these roles were altered with the addition or subtraction of new material. The difficulty in making such claims is that they are all but impossible to prove at the level of the text itself: a line that is present in Q1 but not Q2 could have been added during the memorial reconstruction as a new line rather than simply by being remembered from an older version of the play—we have no clear way of knowing whether the chicken or the egg was first to appear in this case. This is where the identification of topical material can be of great benefit, especially if the line present in Q1 contains a reference to matters of far greater interest in 1603 than in 1588, or vice versa. We have already seen, for example, that comparison of the closing lines of all three versions was able to address an issue related to the dead bodies on stage and the changes in entertainments at the end of a performance by Shakespeare’s company after the departure of Kempe. This earlier discussion also showed that the ending of Q1 was well suited to a performance in which a jig kicked off entertainments after the play, along with a retelling of the same story in most likely humorous fashion, which was of course achievable with a jig, a form predisposed toward witty ripostes as much as it was a form of amusing dance. Thus, by matching the different endings to what scholars have found out about the changing fashions in entertainments, we are able to connect the Q1 to an earlier context than the Q2 and F texts. Moving from the ending of the play to its beginning, I suggest that in the setting, Elsinore, we find the most immediate topical marker that can be used to connect the play to 1588 or thereabouts. Nowhere in either Saxo’s or Belleforest’s versions of the Amleth tale is a more specific name

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given to the setting than the generic regional identifier, Jutie (Jutland). It is not until Hamlet that the setting is identified more specifically as the great castle at Elsinore, although in doing this the play shifts the action away from the mainland to the northeastern point of the island of Zealand. There are good reasons for this geographical shift: Kronborg Castle sits on a promontory creating the narrowest passage between Zealand and the Swedish coast, the Øresund being no wider than three miles at this point, and it was built on the site of the fortress erected by Erik of Pomerania in 1421 for the express purpose of enforcing the Sound Dues or tolls for passage through these waters that are crucial to trade in and around the Baltic Sea; seeking to locate the seat of Danish power in the same strategic site, in 1574 Frederick commenced a project to transform the old fortress into a mighty Renaissance castle, and with the help of Flemish master builders, Kronborg Castle was completed in 1585, at that time one of the grandest buildings in all Europe.3 The township that sprang up around Erik’s fortress, for administering and protecting Danish interests within the strait, was Helsingør, which is Anglicised in Hamlet as Elsenoure (Q1), Elsonoure (Q2), Elsonower (F), and eventually, by later editors, Elsinore. In Hamlet, then, the name of the township is synonymous with the castle in which the majority of the staged action takes place.

Figure 3.1 “Coronerburgum,” in Civitates Orbis Terrarum by Georg Braun and Frans Hogenborg (1588): Book 4, Map no. 26.

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As suggested in Chapter One, the decision to relocate the Amleth tale to Elsinore makes sense in light of the whereabouts of Kempe and others in 1586 to 1587. Several scholars have demonstrated the value of reading Hamlet in terms of the architecture and decor of the historical Kronborg Castle as Kempe and his fellows would have encountered it, yet they do so invariably on the basis of assuming that the play was written around 1600 or later, the question thus being why the players would have waited for more than a decade to draw on their knowledge of the grand Danish castle in providing the setting for an updated version of the old tale.4 The idea of a play of this kind being written soon after the players’ return seems to me to be more feasible, circumventing such questions altogether. Indeed, the impression left by Kronborg on all who saw it at first hand provides us with a clear motivation for writing the play at all, and not simply for the choice of setting: soon after its completion and the relocation of all royal business to Kronborg, the new Danish capital acquired the nickname of “Little Amsterdam,”5 and the site was described in glowing terms in the commentary to the fourth edition of the collection of city maps by Georg Braun and Frans Hogenborg, Civitates Orbis Terrarum, published in 1588 (see Figure 3.1).6 Rather than imagine that Shakespeare was compelled for personal reasons alone to rewrite the Amleth tale, and that the stories told by Kempe and others convinced him to update the setting to contemporary Kronborg, we could easily reverse the equation and suggest that Kempe was so struck by the setting that he wanted to use it for a play, any play, and the Amleth tale seemed as good as any. Whichever way we read the initial motivation, the point remains that in 1586 the players who later formed the nucleus of the playing company alongside Shakespeare would have for their own part been left with a powerful impression of the actual setting adapted for dramatic presentation in the reworking of the Amleth tale. We have also already gained some insight into additional reasons why Kronborg would have been particularly topical from 1588 to 1589, from the death of Frederick II to the dramatic circumstances occasioning Anne’s marriage to James VI of Scotland. Given that Frederick’s death potentially set in motion a succession scenario that closely mirrored the situation outlined in the Amleth tale, both the historical tale itself and the present seat of Danish power must have seemed in 1588 to have been particularly compelling subject matter for dramatic treatment. That the Scottish King married into the Danish court in 1589 could have only served to add to the topicality of any representation of Danish royalty. The intentions of James to marry Anne and Elizabeth’s attempts to interfere in these plans were the subject of much interest and gossip at least at Court throughout 1588.7 Yet

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English eyes might also have been turned toward Kronborg in 1588 for reasons that were more immediate and closer to home than the foreign monarchical succession or any potential union between the house of Stuart and the Danish royal family. Relations between England and Denmark had been strained for some time, based in part on the decision by Frederick in 1560 to set a markedly higher levy on all English ships passing through the Sound than on traffic from Hanseatic merchants.8 Towards the end of Frederick’s reign, a continued hard line on English traffic through the Sound even prompted fears among the English of a revival of the tribute known as the “Danegeld,” last claimed from England around five centuries earlier,9 and there may be echoes of this fear in Hamlet, when Claudius states he will send Hamlet to England “For the demand of our neglected tribute” (III.ii.172). This line is absent from the Q1, though, for reasons that will soon become apparent. Despite some softening of the stance on English traffic by Denmark—an agreement had been reached in 1583 to reduce levies on English ships to achieve parity, with the English agreeing to a significant annual payment of 100 rose nobles as compensation for the increased number of English ships seeking to avoid the Sound by looking instead to the North-East passage10—the issue of Danish control over English shipping in the North Sea had already become a point of leverage in other affairs of State. As Walther Kirchner explains, this issue of the Sound Dues was regularly brought into play in negotiations related to Elizabeth’s plans to enlist Denmark in support of an anti-Catholic league and in Denmark’s plans to intercede in the war between England and Spain.11 Then, in 1588, matters came to a head when Frederick composed a letter to Elizabeth only five days before his death, complaining of the decision to establish a base for English merchants on the southern side of the Elbe, the effect being that the rich English trade throughout Eastern Europe would be able to bypass Denmark altogether.12 I make these observations about the role of the Sound Dues in Danish diplomacy because the shift of the seat of power to Kronborg cemented the link between the two. In 1588, after Frederick’s death, the sense that Kronborg may continue to represent the stable centre of Danish power in northern Europe was compromised, only three years after the great castle had been completed. Frederick’s death and the difficult succession that it prompted was not a distant affair for the English—it genuinely impacted upon their trade to the East as well as on the other affairs of State within which the trade question had become embroiled. It is thus no coincidence that in 1602, when Hamlet was suppressed, as I have argued, the obvious precipitating factor appears to have been the renewal of sensitive trade negotiations between England and Denmark. Updating the Amleth tale in

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1588 to include the new seat of Danish power means that the play would never be only about an ancient legend, so the setting of the play becomes absolutely crucial to an understanding of how it engages with matters of great importance in its time. Importantly, in the Q1 text, there are several significant cues to signal a Kronborg connection to an audience familiar, if only by reputation, with the most astonishing features of the site: although protected on the two southern sides by a moat with deep banks, the castle is also located on a small promontory that extends into the sea, such that the northern walls draw up hard against the coastline and the northernmost corner overlooks the strand stretching to the sea little more than a stone’s throw away; the southern corner of the castle is defined not by a tower but by a large platform enabling views and cannon sighting over the Øresund to the northeast and Helsingør to the south; and the vast Banqueting Hall contained a series of forty tapestries depicting over one hundred Danish kings.13 In the early scenes conveying the watch and the appearance of the Ghost, the audience is told that the platform on which the action takes place has excellent views of both sea and land, that it is large enough for them to need to call out to each other, rather than to merely speak to each other, from opposite ends, for the Ghost to beckon Hamlet to “a more remoued ground”14 without actually departing the platform, and that in doing so the Ghost may potentially lure Hamlet “into the sea,”15 by no means the last reference to the dangers of the sea. As Rebecca Olson has demonstrated, Kronborg’s tapestries also provide a suitable contemporary reference for the “dramatic arras” that guides so much of the action in the play.16 Importantly, such topical references to Kronborg’s architecture and decor, present perhaps from the earliest version of the Hamlet play, also represent significant dramatic additions to the Amleth tale of Belleforest. We have seen already that even if the playwright did source a Ghost from Belleforest—the “ombre” in the French version—the initial encounter with the Ghost, providing the play with its revenge motif, is new to the tale. In the scenes set atop the platform, the appearance of the Ghost is tied inexorably to this specific feature of the castle at Helsingør, even though the castle is not named as such in the play until well into the second scene. We have also seen that the arras behind which Corambis (Q1) or Polonius (Q2 and F) conceals himself in Gertrude’s closet represents an adjustment to the quilt under which the unnamed spy conceals himself in Belleforest, and we may suspect that this adjustment could easily be due to knowledge of the famous features of Kronborg Castle. It may be necessary, however, to moderate our sense of the importance of the arras, since there is in fact a crucial discrepancy between the Q1 and Q2 texts. In the Q1, the location

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in which Claudius and Corambis conceal themselves to spy on Hamlet and Ophelia—which is located in Q1 before Hamlet’s “fishmonger” exchange with Corambis—is “in the study,” when in Q2 and F, they are concealed “behind an Arras.”17 What should we make of such a relatively minor discrepancy? We could, for one, think that earlier versions of the play, of which residual text survives in Q1, did not use an arras for this scene but did use one for the later bedchamber scene and that, when the play was revived after 1599, the arras was added to the earlier scene to make better theatrical use of the large stage prop that would be easier to leave hanging throughout the play. Alternatively, it may be possible that the arras was present in both scenes even in the earlier versions, but that it was changed to “study” in the process of the actor-reporter’s reconstruction. Regardless of which of these—or indeed if any other option—holds true, we might nevertheless conclude that the decision to use an arras rather than Belleforest’s quilt in the bedchamber scene could have been inspired by Kronborg’s tapestries. In relation to the earlier spying scene, for which there is a direct analogue in the Belleforest tale, it may perhaps be more significant that these spies are the King and Corambis rather than the anonymous courtiers in Belleforest, and that the action takes place within the castle walls rather than in a secluded wood.18 Even as the dramatic action of Hamlet relocates the Amleth tale to the contemporary Renaissance castle which had become, by 1588, the centre of Anglo-Danish relations, there is perhaps one subtle sleight of hand that the playwright produces to complicate a sense that the Elsinore of Hamlet and Kronborg Castle are one and the same. Helsingør was by this time already routinely Anglicised as Elsinore: correspondence archived in the Calendar of State Papers and the private Cecil Papers, dating from as early as 1582, provides evidence that the preferred English form was Elsinore.19 Yet in Q1, Q2, and F, variant forms are adopted, as we noted. The name “Helsingør” is derived from the Danish for “narrow strait,” referring to the Øresund, on the shores of which the town sits. In the spelling adopted in the Q1, Q2, and F, I suggest, we find an indication that to an early modern ear, the location of the play was quite likely to signify as no place at all: the three forms of the final portion of the name in the three texts—“nour,” “noure,” and “nower”—are all listed in the Oxford English Dictionary as regional forms of the word “nowhere,” current from around the fifteenth century onwards.20 The final portion of the more common “Elsinore”— that is, “nore”—is not listed among these variant forms of “nowhere,” so I am inclined to think that in the play, the name is given so that in delivery it will parse as “nowhere” to an early modern audience. Furthermore, “Elsi-” is altered in the play texts to “Else-” or “Elso-” in what I suggest amounts

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to the use of the word “else,” in order to render the name of the location as equivalent to the phrase, “otherwise, nowhere.” This “otherwise, nowhere” might have played on the name of Elizabeth’s castle in Surrey, Nonsuch Palace, named by Henry VIII on the principle that none were such as this palace. The magnificent Kronborg did, of course, exceed Nonsuch in both scale and grandeur. Against the Tudor claims for their own palace, then, the “otherwise, nowhere” speaks to a fictive place in which “none such” is otherwise possible. In the very stroke with which the dramatist pulls the audience toward Kronborg, then, it seems that a contrary force is also set in motion within the name, nullifying or at least diminishing the force of the topicality that appears to demand recognition. In what follows, we shall attend to questions of topicality with an eye for precise historical referents but we will also need to be mindful of the extent to which the play does more than merely chronicle its age. As Hamlet himself says in all three versions, the players are the abstracts and brief chronicles of their time, but this role carries with it the power to affect the lives of the people they chronicle (II.ii.462-64). If topicality can be a frame through which the players can make a person subject to an ill report, for example, then what do we make of the potential negation of topicality in the form of a castle whose halls, ramparts, and bastions are otherwise, nowhere?

The Order of Things The Q1 text is, as we have noted, generally considered an inferior text, a “bad” Quarto, indeed, but of course this assessment is always based on comparison with both the Q2 and F texts, which differ from each other much less than the extent to which both differ from Q1. By the time that Q1 was unearthed in 1823, a generation of scholarship had locked in place a received version of Hamlet’s psychology based chiefly on the work of Coleridge, which was, as we have noted, a calculated misreading of the known Hamlet (which was, in turn, most likely an edition produced in the eighteenth century by conflating the texts of Q2 and F into a single larger, ideal text: either Nicholas Rowe’s 1709 edition or Lewis Theobald’s 1733 text). In his comparison of Q2 and F, Paul Werstine demonstrates that “much of the enduring mystery that is Hamlet/Hamlet has been produced through the editorial construction of Hamlet as the combination of the second-quarto (Q2) and Folio (F) versions.”21 Werstine’s analysis of the two texts convincingly shows that many of the supposed problems of the play are contradictions created by conflating the two versions, but when each is considered on its own terms, these problems dissolve. I note these observations here because they foreground the idea that the “enduring

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mystery” of the play, construed as it has been for over two centuries on the psychology of the central character, is a consequence of a subsequent editorial practice of conflation. Our reception of the “bad” Q1 was always going to be tainted from the outset, because the text was unearthed after the idea of relying on a Q2-F composite was adopted as standard, with its attendant if somewhat artificial complexities. Not only did Q1 suffer by comparison, then; it was roundly disregarded, as we have seen, and the task of accounting for any relationship between Hamlet and its sources remained focused on a Q2-F composite or at least on whichever of these two texts the scholar preferred as the more “authoritative” of the two. The argument in this book has been that Q1 may provide us with residual traces of a much earlier version of the play, recalled through the filter of the reconstructive process in which the text of Q1 was written soon before the imprint of 1603 was rendered at the press of Valentine Simmes. The decision to shift the action from Belleforest’s “Jutie” to Elsinore seems to me to be an early one, given the connection of Leicester’s top players to the Danish court. Yet topical insistence is not enough here: the risk with attempting to date any topical reference in the Q1 text is that we must first be certain that the reference is not contained in the lines that are also the hardest evidence for a memorial reconstruction—this is to say that lines delivered by the actor-reporter are, we assume, those that were used for a planned 1599 performance, so they cannot be used to confirm that a topical reference proves the line was added to the play any earlier. There are in fact grounds for thinking that of the three times the place name is given in Q1, two may indeed be attributable to a poorly crafted memorial reconstruction. In explaining the basis for this claim, I hope to demonstrate also precisely how evidence of memorial reconstruction can be tracked in the text. In what is conventionally designated as Act 1, Scene 2, Hamlet encounters Horatio and Marcellus, and asks Horatio what brings him from Wittenberg to Denmark. Q2 presents the exchange thus: Ham. Sir my good friend, Ile change that name with you, And what make you from Wittenberg Horatio? Marcellus. Mar. My good Lord. Ham. I am very glad to see you, (good euen sir) But what in faith make you from Wittenberg? Hora. A truant disposition good my Lord. Ham. I would not heare your enimie say so, Nor shall you doe my eare that violence To make it truster of your owne report Against your selfe, I knowe you are no truant,

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Chapter Three But what is your affaire in Elsonoure? Weele teach you for to drinke ere you depart. Hora. My Lord, I came to see your fathers funerall.22

In Q1, the same exchange appears thus: Ham. O my good friend, I change that name with you: but what make you from Wittenberg Horatio? Marcellus. Mar. My good Lord. Ham. I am very glad to see you, good euen sirs: But what is your affaire in Elsenoure? Weele teache you to drink deep ere you depart. Hor. A trowant disposition, my good Lord. Ham. Nor shall you make me truster Of your owne report against your selfe: Sir, I know you are no trowant: But what is your affaire in Elsenoure? Hor. My good Lord, I came to see your fathers funerall.23

The two appear similar, but on closer inspection, key differences emerge. Indeed, the only lines that are identical and in the same position are the final words of Hamlet’s first comment, the response by Marcellus, and the first line of Hamlet’s next comment. The only other line that is identical is the query by Hamlet, “what is your affaire in Elsenoure,” notwithstanding the fact that the line appears twice in this identical form in the Q1 text and Elsonoure is rendered as Elsenoure—this latter is perhaps the most minor of differences and could be accounted for as a result of the two different hands rendering the same word for the compositors of each version. The repetition of the Elsenoure line in Q1 must give us pause, but we can see in the Marcellus line and the lines either side of it the striking degree of resemblance that adds weight to the arguments of those who believe these lines in Q1, at very least, are taken directly from a Q2-based parts scroll. Paul Menzer has undertaken a thorough analysis of similarities in cues between the three main versions of the play in The Hamlets: Cues, Qs, and Remembered Texts. Menzer compares the lines spoken by each character, along with their cues—the lines or stage directions provided immediately before and after that character’s lines. His conclusion is that Q1 is not a performance text—that is, the text was written primarily for publication, as piracy theories also maintain—but instead of the category of memorial reconstruction, Menzer argues that Q1 represents simply the product of a process of “writing” that adheres to “contemporary terms and procedures of authorship.”24 Menzer proposes that the author of Q1 was no more a

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pirate than Shakespeare or any other playwright, whose stock in trade was the revision and revival of play texts from earlier performances. He makes this claim because he queries the adequacy of the category of memorial reconstruction, especially when used to dismiss the Q1 as a pirated text— Menzer’s bigger target here is the very notion of “piracy” as it is used in opposition to the integrity of a playwright. Even as he tackles the category of memorial reconstruction, however, close cue analysis by Menzer does bear out the suggestion that a number of parts in Q2 were used as the basis for sections of Q1. In the example we are considering here, the wording of Hamlet’s Wittenberg query, his acknowledgement of Marcellus, the reply from Marcellus, and Hamlet’s response up to the colon at the end of this line, are identical, save for slight differences in punctuation. This can be explained by the writer having Marcellus’s part, containing his line and the cues either side of it, for his blueprint. Menzer suggests based on cue analysis that Q2 was pieced together from parts as well, which means the author had attended to the needs of the actors in performance. Using the example of the Hamlet-Horatio-Marcellus exchange here, Menzer argues that by adding the “Marcellus” cue to Hamlet’s lines, Shakespeare “has seemingly taken pains to avoid the difficulty that precisely repeated cues could present,” thereby preventing the awkwardness faced by the Horatio actor, who may have been prompted by the first question to deliver his response prematurely.25 The author of the Q1 had the Marcellus part to hand, so reproduces the correct cue for Marcellus, but errs in repeating the Elsenoure query—not the Wittenberg query—in the ensuing dialogue. As Menzer suggests, the Q1 author is imitating what he remembers of Q2, so replicates the use of a premature cue; only, it is the wrong one.26 By this account, then, the first two instances in which the name of Elsenoure are given in Q1 may well be nothing more than poorly crafted replication of a single line from Q2. I am inclined, however, to think that the repetition of the line in this exchange in Q1 could be a conscious effort on a playwright’s part to give emphasis to the stronger of the two forms of query. In the same manner that we will see Hamlet interrogate Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and others regarding a question of their motives—we shall discuss these lines shortly—the author of Q1 rightly isolates the question, “what is your affaire in Elsenoure,” as the stronger statement in pursuit of Horatio’s motives. Whereas Q2 repeats a question about Wittenberg simply because it was obstructed in the first instance by Hamlet’s adherence to pleasantries, Q1 has him complete the pleasantries and then escalate by getting right to the point of his initial query: his goal is not to hear news from Wittenberg; rather, it is to discern if Horatio has a specific reason for being here, at Elsinore. When Horatio’s

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answer to this question is deemed unsatisfactory, he repeats the question verbatim, which gives to it a sense of importance that reworking the query may diminish. Importantly, I also think that the repetition of the phrase would work to embed the association in the mind of the reader of Q1 in a way that Q2 would not quite achieve in presentation of this early exchange on stage. The point of this is to reinforce the association between Hamlet and Elsinore, an association that would be all the more meaningful if the playwright was also closely associated with both the character and the location. Suppose, then, that the disgruntled Kempe was working on the Q1 text in 1603, armed only with the parts of Marcellus and some other minor characters: if the earliest versions of the play were inspired by his experiences at Elsinore, and if he had played the part of Hamlet in the earliest performances, when he comes to fill in the gaps between cues in the Marcellus part, Kempe would have strong personal reasons to want to make this association clearer. If, in spite of this suggestion, the first two uses of the name of Elsinore could be dismissed as a poor reconstruction after the fact, nevertheless, the third use of the name can in no way be linked to direct borrowing from the Q2 parts. In the equivalent to Act 2, Scene 2 in Q1, Hamlet reacts to the appearance of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—therein, “Gilderstone, and Rossencraft”—with a direct greeting: “Welcome, kinde School-fellowes to Elsanoure.”27 Q2 contains no direct parallel to this line; instead, the name of the castle is mentioned in a line that mirrors the question Hamlet posed to Horatio in Act 1, Scene 2: “But in the beaten way of friendship, what make you at Elsonoure?”28 In Q2, this question follows several lines of idle banter—their “beaten way” to the question Hamlet intends all along to ask—but in Q1, Hamlet’s pursuit of motive is immediate: he gives them the welcome to “Elsanoure,” then follows immediately with the question, “were you not sent for?”29 Q2 does contain a greeting voiced by Hamlet and which includes the name of Elsinore, but it is located some 60 lines later, after Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have given him the news of the arrival of the players (2.2.307). Rather than see a change in location of the greeting from the beginning of the exchange with his old schoolfellows to the end of the same exchange as a sign of the failing memory of the actorreporter, perhaps we might imagine here that the Q1 version of the scene works perfectly well in its own right and that Q2 shows signs of having been extrapolated from and expanded upon the scenario presented in Q1. It is crucial to recall at this moment that in Q1, the arrival of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern occurs after the “To be or not to be” speech, after the “nunnery” exchange with Ophelia, and after the “fishmonger” exchange with Corambis, all of which unfolds within one long, continuous scene. In

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Q1, Hamlet is very much on guard when his old schoolfellows arrive, so in terms of his character, it should be no surprise that he keeps pleasantries to a minimum in this section of the text.30 In Q2, for reasons to be examined shortly, Hamlet’s soliloquy and the ensuing exchange with Ophelia are shifted to what is conventionally Act 3, Scene 1, but the “fishmonger” exchange with Polonius is retained in Act 2, Scene 2. In Q2, then, before Rosencrantz and Guildenstern arrive, Hamlet has been engaged in banter and wordplay with Polonius, a mode of engagement in which he continues to speak when his old schoolfellows arrive, thereby necessitating addition of several lines involving byplay between Hamlet and his colleagues from Wittenberg. The change in location of the “To be or not to be” speech thus provides the context for other alterations to the text. It is along these lines that I want to consider the overall structure of the Q1 and Q2/F texts with a view to examining how each compares with the structure of the older tale on which they are based. Let us first consult the basic outline of the Belleforest version and compare it with basic outline of the Q1 version of Hamlet. In Belleforest, the trials of Amleth proceed as follows: 1. Amleth begins by “counterfeiting the mad man with such craft and subtill practises, that hee made shewe as if hee had utterly lost his wittes”;31 2. The King determines that he “could find no better nor more fit invention to intrap him, then to set some faire and beawtifull woman in a secret place, that with flattering speeches and all the craftiest meanes she could use, should purposely seek to allure his mind to have his pleasure of her”;32 3. This trap failing, Fengon decides to have Amleth “shut up alone in a chamber with his mother, wherein some other should secretly be hidden ... there to stand and heere their speeches”;33 4. Having killed Fengon’s spy, Amleth disposes of the body and returns to his mother, who protests innocence in the murder of Amleth’s father and resolves to “keepe secret both thy wisedome and hardy interprise,” and Amleth refers to the ghost of his father in the same exchange;34 5. When pressed concerning the whereabouts of the slain counsellor, Amleth describes his fate—“gone downe through the privie, where being choaked by the filthynesse of the place, the hogs meeting him had filled their bellyes”—without divulging his part in the spy’s demise;35 6. Amleth is sent away to England with two servants, discovers en

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route the letter through which Fengon asks that he be put to death, and replaces it with a letter in which the two servants are to be put to death, and willing the King of England “to give his daughter” in marriage to Amleth.36 Following this, the Belleforest tale unfolds in more detail the machinations by which Amleth convinces the English King of the sincerity of Fengon’s wishes, and details the manner in which he shows himself to be inspired by his melancholy to achieve the heights of philosophical insight,37 before at last describing his triumphant return to Denmark and the violent manner in which he exacts revenge for this father’s death.38 The order of events as they are outlined here is very well matched to the order of events related specifically to Hamlet in Q1: 1. We first find Hamlet trading words with the King, culminating in the “sallied flesh” speech, after which Hamlet is advised of the presence of the Ghost, who in turn tells him about the nature of his demise; 2. Having sworn to avenge his father’s death, Hamlet next appears on stage with the “To be or not to be” speech, and is confronted by Ophelia demanding that he admit “vowes of loue” had been made by him—the scene continues, as we have seen, with Corambis and then Rosencrantz and Guildenstern exchanging words with Hamlet; 3. Hamlet meets with the players and arranges for them to stage the Gonzago play, after which Corambis arranges with the King and Queen to spy on Hamlet in her chamber as soon as the “sports are done”; 4. The play is staged, the King rises, and then Hamlet is sent for to attend to his mother, but on the way he encounters the King in prayer and holds off his revenge; afterwards, Hamlet confronts his mother, sees his father’s ghost again, and kills Corambis, but the Queen agrees to “conceale, consent, and doe my best” in support of whatever stratagem Hamlet devises; 5. Hamlet reveals the whereabouts of Corambis’s body, and then he is ordered to travel to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, “ne’re to returne”; 6. Hamlet has returned to Denmark—the nature of his escape being described briefly by Horatio to the Queen, including the description of the letter trick—and encounters the gravediggers preparing for Ophelia’s burial, during which Hamlet scuffles with Laertes.

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Following this, the duel is arranged, and then the fatal final scene unfolds in fewer than 100 lines (the final scene in Q2 exceeds 200 lines). While there are differences in the minutiae, there are also clear analogies at every step of this outline, except for the initial encounter with the Ghost, the use of a play-within-the-play, and the final duel, as we noted in Chapter One: Hamlet’s melancholia is revealed early in both, during descriptions of the events in which he nevertheless conceals his true cares from the King; he is confronted with a temptress; he kills the spy in his mother’s chamber; his mother consents to support his plot; he conceals the body of the dead spy; he is sent to England; and he effects a brilliant escape by the same means of a letter swap, to return to enact his plan. I suggest that while the graveyard scene and Ophelia’s burial have no immediate analogues in Belleforest’s tale in terms of location, the descriptions of Amleth’s philosophical insights in Belleforest are very much oriented toward the plight of the dead, which parallels much of the content of Hamlet’s discussion with the gravedigger. Where the outline of Q1 Hamlet diverges from the Belleforest tale, it is primarily in the addition of new character relationships—the spy becomes the father of the temptress, who in turn is given a brother, and so on—in order to create dramatic symmetries that are absent in the Belleforest tale. These symmetries are strengthened in Q2, which, as Anthony Miller and Hidekatsu Nojima, among others, have argued, represents the proliferation of the trope of the mirror in the play.39 In “Hamlet: Mirrors of Revenge,” Miller uses a discussion of the symmetry between Act 2, Scene 2 and Act 3, Scene 4 as a framework for a detailed map of the doubling of revenger roles in the play: for example, Hamlet’s motivation parallels the revenge to which Laertes becomes committed as a result of the Prince’s mishap. Nojima’s “The Mirror of Hamlet” describes the play as “a labyrinth of mirrors” expressed as pivotal themes played out in relationships between characters: the King of Denmark-Hamlet relationship mirrors the King of Norway-Fortinbras relationship and the Polonius-Laertes relationship, not only as Father-Son links but also in the spur to revenge that is provided in each by the death of the elder party; these parallels thus connect Hamlet, Laertes, and Fortinbras as dramatic agents capable of shaping each other’s outcomes.40 In Q2, of course, the sequence of events is altered, with the “To be or not to be” speech and encounter with Ophelia moved to after Hamlet’s encounter with the players and his formulation of the Mousetrap plan. Accordingly, the symmetry that Miller identifies principally with Act 2, Scene 2 in Q2 is absent from Q1, since the two scenes differ radically between these versions as a result of the removal of these two elements from the Q1 scene. The symmetry for Miller hinges on the fact that in Act

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2, Scene 2, we witness the bedchamber plan being devised, followed by Hamlet’s formulation of the Mousetrap, either of which might have been successful had the other not been planned at the same time; then, in Act 3, Scene 4, Polonius is killed as a direct result of the two plans being put into practice one after the other, thus setting in motion a second revenge plot that will in turn culminate in Hamlet’s death. By adhering more closely to the sequence of events outlined in Belleforest, Q1 lacks the same degree of symmetry that is established by the alteration to the sequence in Q2. Importantly, Q1 lacks this symmetry precisely because it does adhere closely to Belleforest’s plot at least up to Hamlet’s return to England: this would surely only make sense if the sequence in Q1 was developed before Q2, rather than as a result of a failed memorial reconstruction.41 To return to the point of this exercise, Hamlet’s greeting to his old schoolfellows in Q1 is more likely to have been in the earlier version of the play, with Q2 altering the encounter between Hamlet and his colleagues in accordance with the dramatic symmetry developed by the removal of the “To be or not to be” and “nunnery” exchanges. It thus stands to reason that the name of Elsinore, albeit by another name which perhaps also meant “otherwise, nowhere” was present in the earlier version of the play. I have devoted these first two sections of this chapter to tracking the evidence for Elsinore being present from much earlier than the time at which the Q2 text was produced for a number of reasons: first, and perhaps most obviously, an earlier date for the introduction of the great Danish castle lends greater weight to claims that Kempe made a key contribution to the early version of the play; second, and perhaps more importantly, the argument for the earlier date was built around the idea that the name of Elsinore represented a topical reference, circa 1588, which enabled me in the previous section to demonstrate how a precise topical reading can be useful in dating at least one part of an otherwise quite dynamic textual process; third, and perhaps most important of all, by focusing on a specific term, this section has emphasised the value of detailed analysis of the text itself—not as a stable, single object of reading; instead, the text is a product of dynamic processes, and can bear witness to a series of writings and revisions if we view the movements and metamorphoses of the words as method rather than as deviation from a perceived standard. In short, a play set in Elsinore was particularly topical around 1588, and it is at this time that Kempe may have been made the focus of a play that updated the Amleth tale to suit this contemporary setting. Yet, as we have also seen, the designation of Elsinore as “otherwise, nowhere” could just as easily have been crafted to give the dramatists an escape clause if the Danish references should ever prove hazardous. This name works in

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such a fashion, to be sure, only to an ear attuned to an early modern pun. We note at this moment, as Coleridge did in his defense of Shakespeare’s use of puns, that the pun was an Elizabethan convention, so there would be every reason to expect that the Elizabethan audience would have been well versed in the use of puns of this kind.42 Yet Coleridge’s second and more compelling defense rested on a claim that Shakespeare’s puns were always suited to the character who delivered them.43 It is fair to say that not all characters in Shakespeare’s plays tell puns, but it is well accepted that Hamlet is one of the characters that does use puns, and he does it a lot. Robert Weimann has shown that Hamlet uses more puns than any other character in Shakespeare’s plays, “his nearly ninety puns ... obstructing again and again the representation of civil conversation.”44 We shall in what follows trace the topical significance of several of Hamlet’s puns, as well as those used by those characters who engage with him in wordplay, thereby helping us to gauge the evolution of the play in more detail. In so doing, we will of course also be strengthening the claim that Hamlet began life as a character who might be expected to pun more than pine, a role well suited to Kempe but also to the figure inspired by an Amleth who counterfeited “the mad man with such craft and subtill practises, that hee made shewe as if hee had utterly lost his wittes,” as Belleforest described him. With this in mind, we should remind ourselves that it is from Hamlet alone that the name of the castle is voiced as “otherwise, nowhere” in the play, which speaks directly to his sense of detachment from the Denmark he now despises, even as the reference to Elsinore brings the Amleth tale up to date for its earliest Elizabethan audiences. Hamlet can deploy his madness, more in craft, to transport the audience to Denmark circa 1588 but he also declares himself in this melancholic fashion to be an inhabitant of the non-place of “Elsenoure.”

Gilderstone & Rossencraft: A Rose by Any Other Name? The comparison of the order of events as depicted in the Belleforest tale—which was, in turn, the same as the order in which the trials and triumphs of Amleth were presented in the prior version by Saxo—with that of the Q1 text helps us to sense that this early Hamlet play might have been much closer to Belleforest than the Q2 text in terms of both historical time and derivation; in terms, that is, of the date of writing and adherence to the basic plot of the original. Yet we remind ourselves that Q1 was also written after Q2 and contains many parts of the latter text intact as well. We thus make a mistake if we assume that the order of events outlined in the Q1 is exactly as it would have been in a version written around 1588. I

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think it is safe to assume that where there are clear parallels between the events presented in both Belleforest and Q1, a version from 1588 would have contained the events in question. In other words, a 1588 version will have contained in embryo at least Hamlet’s byplay with the King, a plan to entrap him in conversation with Ophelia, the exchange in the Queen’s chamber, references to the ghost of old Hamlet in the same exchange, the spy’s death, and so on. What is not clear yet is whether any of the newer aspects of the Hamlet play—the initial encounter with the Ghost, the playwithin-the-play, and so on—would have been introduced in 1588 or if they would have been added during a later revival of the play. We might ask, for example, whether any part of the gravedigger scene—which would later provide the play with its popular lifeline through the Interregnum period in the form of a droll, as we have seen—was a later addition to the play. Or is it conceivable that a feature of the play that remained popular throughout the Interregnum period was also among the earliest changes made to Belleforest’s tale in adapting the storyline for the Elizabethan stage? Before we look at the addition of whole scenes, though, I want to consider the names that were given to the dramatis personae, examining how alteration of the names addresses the question of what the play does with its source materials. If we are to think of the play as the method by which the older Amleth tale is given a new life on stage and page, names play a key role in pinning this method down via a topical reading. Of the names given to figures in Belleforest’s tale, only Amleth and Geruth bear any direct resemblance to the names of their counterparts in Hamlet. Fengon becomes Claudius, Horwendil is recast as old Hamlet, and so on. Yet even the names of Amleth and Gerutha are altered: Amleth’s name is rendered as Hamlet, which speaks of course to Shakespeare’s own familial connections; Geruth is changed to Gertred in Q1, which is later amended in Q2 to Gertrad and in F to the now familiar Gertrude. In both F and Q1, the Queen’s lines are marked consistently throughout by her title, not her name: Qu in F and Queene in Q1. Curious, though, is the marking of the Queen’s lines in Q2, wherein for most of the play Quee. is used but for the bedchamber scene and her discussion with the King that follows hard upon it, her lines are marked with Ger.. How might we account for a discrepancy of this kind? A school of thought that is consistent with the work of John Dover Wilson would have once held that such discrepancies could be attributed to the work of an incompetent compositor employed by Roberts.45 Invariably, though, the incompetent compositor was usually only wheeled out to account for variations in spelling, missed words, and similarly sporadic inconsistencies. More importantly, assumptions that Roberts employed an incompetent compositor have been largely dispelled

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by decades of bibliographical studies since the 1950s, from which it has long been accepted that two compositors worked on the imprint, and that inconsistency dissolves into the regular distribution of variant spellings: thus, for example, the word “dear” is routinely given as “deare” on those pages compiled by the first compositor and as “deere” on pages compiled by a second.46 Might it be that Quee. is used on all pages compiled by one compositor and Ger. on all pages compiled by the other? Using the same bibliographical studies as our guide, we find that such an explanation is in fact groundless: Quee. appears on pages prepared by both compositors and, more to the point, so does Ger.. While one compositor prepared all of the pages on which the bedchamber scene is situated, during which Ger. is used consistently but for the first time in the text, the beginning of the next scene on the following page, on which the second compositor was set to work, would have presented an opportunity to revert to Quee., which had been used by that compositor in earlier portions of the text; instead, this second compositor also used Ger. here to designate the Queen’s lines.47 Instead of suspecting the compositors in this distribution of markers for the Queen’s dialogue, we must conclude that the original text from which they were working also included this shift from one form to the other and then back again. There are a range of theories about the manuscript from which any “good” Quarto was prepared: in 1910, Walter Wilson Greg had argued that good texts were set in type either from the company’s “prompt copies” or from an author’s “private copies—transcripts made available for literary circulation”;48 Alfred W. Pollard argued six years later that the author’s handwritten version was in fact the basis for both the company’s prompt copies and printers’ copy;49 Greg later accepted Pollard’s claim but adopted a term already used in the early modern period—“foul papers”— to designate an authorial draft which was not merely copied by a scribe but which was worked upon by various agents in the process of producing the range of different documents that survived, whether pirated, performed, or printed;50 nevertheless, in practice, Greg’s explanations ultimately came down to an orthodox taxonomy in which printed plays were deemed to be sourced either from “foul papers” or “prompt books,” as Menzer points out.51 Menzer also notes that a newer generation of scholars has come to accept a theory of more or less continuous copy, with a single draft text being revised on numerous occasions, the problem for Menzer being that regardless of whether one subscribes to a theory built on “foul papers” and “prompt books” or one built on a model of continuous copy, one maintains focus on complete manuscripts and “leaves out a vital stage in the process of a script from playwright to player (and ultimately to press): the division of the play into its various parts and its reassembly on stage through the

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medium of its cues.”52 For Menzer, even if the document that eventually went to the printer was one complete manuscript, it must nevertheless have been conceived as far more fragmentary and must indeed have been transcribed in fragmented form as a result of the demands of the stage, and revision may have been undertaken at any time, even on a single fragment. If we seek to understand why the marking of Queen’s lines appears as it does in Q2, this cue-based argument makes more sense than any theory built around completed manuscripts, continuous or otherwise. The shift from Quee. to Ger. and back again suggests that a section of the play was reworked—the writer of which used the name of the Queen rather than her title to designate these lines in the rewritten section—and inserted into the play, in all likelihood after the various cue scripts had been compiled into a single document. The shift in designation thus bears witness to a specific moment of textual revision in which the Q2, as we now know it, is the product of the inclusion of new material for both the bedchamber scene and the Queen’s subsequent discussion with the King, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern, scenes that are conventionally designated as Act 3, Scene 4 and Act 4, Scene 1. Of significance in this observation is that the Queen in Q2 is clearly not as supportive of Hamlet’s plans as she had been in either the Amleth tale or Q1, so we might seek to understand the change in the relationship between Gertrude and Hamlet in this later version of the play as part of its method. To do this, of course, we will need to gain a sense of when this alteration was made, a task to which we shall return, as we will have grounds to situate it as part of a suite of changes made at a key moment in the history of the play. Since Amleth and Geruth are the only names from the Belleforest tale with direct parallels in Hamlet, all other names can also be considered the result of a specific alteration, although we need not presume that all names were added at the same time. Since Belleforest’s tale contains very few proper names, especially for the many courtiers and peripheral characters that appear in passing throughout, the dramatist is of course charged with having to generate names for the sake of adding persons to the dramatis personae. Thus, Amleth’s unnamed temptress is given the name Ophelia and the unnamed spy is given the name Corambis in Q1 or Polonius in Q2, for example. We shall consider each of these names in more detail, but may take this moment to shift our focus to the more peripheral characters. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are characters who become pivotal to the deceptions planned by the more powerful figures, yet whose function is nothing more than to be pawns in their masters’ games. In Tom Stoppard’s brilliant 1966 absurdist play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, this feature of Hamlet is exposed by forcing the two pawns onto centre stage

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throughout and consigning the melancholic Prince to the background.53 The two figures have also been pushed up front and centre by scholars keen to find evidence of the playwright’s sources for the local colour of his Danish play and, indeed, to find evidence of the alternative identity of the playwright. On the matter of the play’s local colour, Gunnar Sjögren identified the elective succession process as a key to the play’s Danish colouring, and adds among several other features the observation that at Christian’s coronation in 1596, more attendants had the name of either Rosenkrantz or Gyldenstiern than any other name: “Every tenth nobleman of the 160-odd in the procession bore one of these names. No other two names were so much in evidence. Two Gyldenstierns were among the councillors who placed the crown on the King’s head—there should have been a Rosenkrantz too, but he had died shortly before.”54 James Voelkel points out that the source might have been much closer to home, based on documents pointing to a visit to England by the Danish noblemen Frederik Rosenkrantz and Knud Gyldenstierne in 1592.55 Voelkel has no interest in pursuing the implications of this observation for Hamlet scholarship, as his is a book devoted to the emergence of modern astronomy, the connection to these two Danes being that they were cousins of Tycho Brahe, the great Danish astronomer. For Charles Berney, though, the men who visited England are among a number of sources, which also include the portrait of Brahe surrounded by 16 Danish family names (see Figure 3.2) and a list of 24 guests at a dinner held in 1582 for Lord Willoughby d’Eresby, the names of Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern featuring in both.56 Berney is a member of the rather surreptitiously designated Shakespeare Fellowship, a group dedicated to proving that the whole of the Shakespeare canon was written by Edward de Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, and so he is drawn to the possibility that Willoughby’s list, which would have been known to his brother-inlaw Oxford, is the primary source for the names of these characters in a version of the play penned in 1583. Oxfordian scholarship of this kind is noteworthy because it involves an insistence that we attend to the minutiae of documentary history. Whereas bardolaters can overlook the historical record if it does not match with preconceptions of Shakespeare’s career, as we noted earlier in this book, Oxfordians scour the records with zest in search of material that can dispel the myth, as they see it, of Shakespeare’s authorship. Yet the problem for Oxfordian scholarship is a general drift toward overdetermination: the historical record will inevitably contain a mass of potential sources for something as generic as family names, each of which can be held up as “likely,” but this also means that each is every bit as likely or unlikely as all others. Berney has no trouble in dismissing

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claims by Leslie Hotson that Brahe’s portrait could have became known to Shakespeare through a mutual friend, Leonard Digges, since there is no support for this connection in the historical record.57 The mistake Berney makes is to imagine that Shakespeare could not have known about these two names if he did not have any direct, personal relationship with Danish nobility. Indeed, what Berney’s different sources of evidence tell us is that the names of Hamlet’s two schoolfellows appear frequently in a range of types of sources connected with the Danish court at the time. Even if we suppose further that Shakespeare lived in a cave, anybody who visited the Danish court in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth centuries stood a fair to middling chance of encountering a Rosenkrantz and a Guildenstern. Need I remind the reader of the whereabouts of Kempe in 1586?

Figure 3.2 Engraving of Tycho Brahe by Jacob de Gheyn II (1586). Reproduced with permission © Trustees of the British Museum.

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Allen Rosenkrans of New Jersey sought to develop a genealogy of his family around the end of the nineteenth century. His book The Rosenkrans Family of Europe and America may be the result of amateur genealogical investigation, but its brief European section nevertheless tells a story of barons, knights, states councils, lords, and other powerful men and women spanning a period of over five centuries.58 I am quite certain that Kempe’s visit to Elsinore in 1586 will have brought into his purview at least one of these figures. Importantly, whereas the name of Rosenkrantz is spelled in this form in the Willoughby list, Rosenkrans’s genealogy provides a host of examples in which the name was also spelled Rosenkrans (his family name) or Rosencrans (through the Dutch line, including the Captain of the Civil Guard around 1584 to 1588). I make this point because it is only in later editions of the play that the name was altered by editors to read as Rosencrantz, whereas in the Q2 it is Rosencraus—the early modern “n” was easily misread as a “u” if it was encountered by a compositor in an unfamiliar context.59 Yet in the Q1 text, the name appears as Rossencraft, suggesting that the name provided in the 1603 imprint may be a deliberate throwback to an earlier version of the character’s name. The high degree of correspondence between the form of the name as it appears in records of prominent members of the Rosencrantz family during the sixteenth century and the form in which the name is presented in Q2 suggests that the name was rendered as Rosencrans throughout the evolution of the play from 1588, but that one of the compositors upended the second “n” while preparing his section of the type for Q2, and the other compositor followed suit. For mine, the name of Rossencraft seems to read too much like a pun to be an error in composition in Q1: “rossen-craft” would translate literally in early modern parlance as “resin-skill,”60 meaning a skill in manipulating the residue that seeps from trees, which is very different from the meaning of “rosen-crants” (“wreath of roses,” the herald of that noble family since the fourteenth century). What “resin-skill” might signify in the way of any specific pun is of course difficult to gauge, although its juxtaposition in the play with “Gilderstone,” provides some sense of its meaning. Guildenstern is used in this form in the Folio, having been given as the homophonic Guyldensterne in Q2, both of which were viable spellings of this family name at the time—the F version is the same, for example, as the form in which this name is given in Willoughby’s 1582 dinner list. Yet in Q1, the name is Gilderstone. Whereas “guilden-stern” translated for the family in question as “golden-star”, the Q1 version clearly refers to a far more earthly substance, and “gilder” could mean either working with gold or a snare, the latter meaning befitting a description of the character’s role in his exchange with Hamlet better, perhaps, than the actual family name

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on which the character is loosely based.61 A craftsman who gilds stone is a figure whose presence mirrors the kind of duplicity suggested by the pun on Rossencraft (“resin-skill”), suggesting that the names function as a pair to signify craftsmen whose material is the baser kind (such as stones and secretions) rather than gold and roses, for example. Yet I also wonder if the name of Rossencraft is a none-too-subtle pun on the name and legacy of the Bishop of Ross, John Lesley: in March, 1587, Ross was reinstated to the bishopric following previous forfeiture of the title in 1568, arrest and imprisonment in the Tower of London, and banishment from England in 1573 as a consequence of his staunch support for Mary’s claims on the English throne.62 He was removed again in May, 1598. In particular, Ross was well known for producing a series of histories of Scotland, in which the claims of Mary were given additional prominence, least of all in three books grouped under the title, A defence of the honour of the right highe mightye and noble Princesse Marie Quene of Scotlande and dowager of France, with a declaration as well of her right, title & intereste to the succession of the crowne of Englande, as that the regimente of women ys conformable to the lawe of God and nature (1569).63 The reinstatement of Ross in 1587 and his removal again in 1598 would have been points of interest at both times for anybody with an eye on future relations between England and Scotland—Mary’s execution notwithstanding, the Crown’s decisions to relax punishments meted out to Stuart supporters like Ross could have been seen as one barometer of the extent to which previously blotted copy-books were being wiped clean in efforts to smooth relations across the border. To a budding playwright with an eye on history circa 1588, Ross’s craft in using history toward political ends could also have proved noteworthy, and his notoriety in England would be sufficient basis for a fairly obvious pun for a writer experimenting with the technique when giving a name to a character modeled on the duplicitous spies in the Amleth tale. Even if the name of Ross is coincidental and the pun is not as topical as I am suggesting here, in the names of both characters, the puns in Q1 are too obvious to consider as anything other than a deliberate branding of these key-if-peripheral figures. If the puns were originally Shakespeare’s, we can nevertheless see in them a desire to draw our attention away from Denmark rather than point us in that direction, through the insertion of these sly bons mots that seem to function in such obvious fashion as to compel the audience to hear them as puns, a feature of the 1603 text but not, ironically, in either the Q2 or F versions. Use of remarkably common Danish names like Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern need not be evidence of anything more than the addition of a Danish flavour to the play, and could

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have been included at any time in the play’s history up to 1604. The use of puns, however, detracts from that Danish flavour just enough to highlight a different layer of meaning. In what follows, I aim to show that one of the layers of meaning on which such puns routinely operate is topicality and that this feature of the puns might help us to identify some of the residual traces of the revisions through which the earlier Hamlet will have been altered.

The Fishmonger and the Sentinels This discussion of the names in the play has provided glimpses into why it is important for us to think of Q1 as having been developed in part before Q2 and, significantly, after Q2 but not as a failed attempt at a memorial reconstruction. Changes to the names of Belleforest’s characters can be seen as evidence of ongoing revision to the play, some of which are introduced during the play’s earliest performances, and others are added as a result of subsequent revision, with the Q1 potentially being a receptacle for all such alterations. An obvious name presents itself in this sense: the Belleforest spy is given the name of Corambis in Q1 and Polonius in Q2 and F, and by demonstrating the moment at which either of these names is most topical, we may gain a stronger sense of when each of the changes was made to the character. Before we do this, I want to set the scene, in a manner of speaking, by turning once more to the beginning of the play, since comparison between the three versions of the play’s opening lines has been a stumbling block for many theories about the provenance of the three versions. In Q2 and F, the sentinels are given the names Barnardo and Francisco, whereas Q1 lists them simply as “two Centinels,” and designates the lines of each with the numbers 1 and 2. In Q2 and F, the first line is designated as Barnardo’s, but in Q1 the question of which sentinel is which becomes harder to resolve immediately: Enter two Centinels. 1. Stand: who is that? 2. Tis I. 1. O you come most carefully vpon your watch, 2. And if you meete Marcellus and Horatio, The partners of my watch, bid them make haste. 1. I will: See who goes there. Enter Horatio and Marcellus.

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Chapter Three Hor. Friends to this ground. Mar. And leegemen to the Dane, O farewell honest souldier, who hath releeved you? 1. Barnardo hath my place, giue you good night. Mar. Holla, Barnardo.64 .

It is thus not until the twelfth line that one of these sentinels identifies the other by name. Since it is sentinel number 1 who identifies the other as Barnardo, we can track back to discover that the first line of the play is thus not voiced by the character designated herein as Barnardo, since this is the name of sentinel number 2. Furthermore, the lines delivered by the sentinels in Q1 bear the scantiest resemblance to those given to Barnardo and Francisco in Q2, there being only seven lines in their exchange in Q1 prior to the entry of Horatio and Marcellus compared with the seventeen that pass in Q2 before the same stage direction. For proponents of the memorial reconstruction explanation for Q1, the opening exchange presents a significant problem because it leads us to suspect that the actor whose part was Marcellus did not know what to call the sentinels when he wrote his reconstructed version, designating them as sentinels 1 and 2; this suggests that he could not remember the names of the other characters who appeared on stage with him in this scene, which is all the more remarkable because the name of one of these characters is provided in his second cue and his own second line (the last two lines in the section of dialogue reproduced above). We saw in Chapter One that Paul Werstine had mounted a convincing case for disputing the memorial reconstruction argument, without dismissing it altogether. One of the problems for proponents is how to account for discrepancies of this kind. Furthermore, as Werstine argues, Greg’s version of the theory meant that it was reasonable to expect that the actor-report’s memory of those lines not delivered by his roles would be significantly higher in the scenes in which the actor-reporter was on stage than in those in which he was not.65 The first scene alone upends Greg’s argument, since significant sections of lines spoken by Horatio or Barnardo while on stage with Marcellus in Q2 are either terribly distorted or missing altogether in Q1, although it is worth mentioning that the opening seven and seventeen lines of the two principal versions should be excluded from this concern, since they are spoken before Marcellus enters. In both texts, the phrase delivered before Marcellus first speaks is Horatio’s “Friends to this ground,” contained identically in both versions, as are Marcellus’s first words, and so on. We might want to explain the discrepancy between the opening seventeen lines of Q2 and the first seven lines of Q1 as simply a product of the actorreporter playing Marcellus being off stage at that moment, but the same

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explanation does nothing to help us in coming to terms with these other discrepancies littered throughout the first scene. One explanation that seems to have gone unconsidered is the prospect that the actor-reporter, rather than failing to recall with any precision the lines delivered by others while he was on stage in a performance of the Q2 or contiguous version of the play, might have never been on stage for such a performance. In 1599, as we know, Kempe left The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, on less than amicable terms. If the argument that I have been pursuing in this book—that Kempe was a key figure in the early development of Hamlet and the infamous actor-reporter responsible for the Q1 version—is to have any valence, then surely Kempe must have been involved in a production of a Q2-based Hamlet before his departure, which means that our revised chronology of the play must now include a Q2-based performance in 1599. I think that such arguments make a fundamental mistake of falling once more back into a rather monolithic set of assumptions about early modern dramaturgy: the play is written, actors study their parts, they perform the play, and then in this instance the disgruntled actor departs and uses his part as the basis for a pirated version of the play. Yet let us consider the personality of Kempe: can we imagine that the great clown of early modern theatre would have accepted such minor parts as Marcellus, Voltemand, and Lucianus and seen the production through to the stage? If Kempe is indeed the actor-reporter behind Q1, then it stands to reason that one of the catalysts precipitating his departure from the company was the decision by his colleagues to consign him to these peripheral roles for a 1599 production. We noted this possibility in Chapter One, but here we may go one step further to suggest that if he was given these parts, there are no circumstances under which he could have brought himself to see the thing through. It was likely not the only reason for his departure, but such a decision by his colleagues would certainly have represented a final straw. We should imagine, then, that Kempe stormed out after receipt of these parts and never returned. What this departure would have done to the performance, we will consider in more detail later, although it is safe here to assert that the departure would have created a problem for the company if, as is likely, the individual parts in this play populated by over thirty characters had already been distributed amongst all of the active playing personnel. While there remains some debate about the practice of doubling in early modern theatre, it is widely accepted now that many parts were, by necessity, doubled, meaning that one player performed several roles, with only the most prominent parts being reserved as the domain of the senior member of the company. Based on the tireless scholarship of Edmund

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Chambers, Andrew Gurr’s comprehensive outline of the personnel in Shakespeare’s company provides us with a complete playing roster of eleven players (men and boys) in 1599, prior to the departure of Kempe: the players listed for 1599 include Cuthbert Burbage, Richard Burbage, Henry Condell, Richard Cowley, John Heminges, Will Kempe, Augustine Phillips, Thomas Pope, William Shakespeare, John Sincler, and Will Sly.66 Robert Armin is included with the company in 1599, but this was as the direct replacement for Kempe after the latter’s departure. Christopher Beeston and John Duke are listed as present in 1598, but are no longer with the company for the production of Every Man Out of His Humour in 1599. Subsequent work undertaken by Scott McMillin, Ann Thompson, and Neil Taylor on calculating the minimum cast size required to populate Hamlet on stage indicates that the play can be staged in all three versions with a full complement of parts using only eleven players.67 These two bodies of scholarship appear well-suited to cross-referencing: the play of thirty or more parts can be staged with eleven players when some parts are doubled, and our knowledge of the size of company suggests there were exactly this many in their number in late 1599, immediately prior to the departure of the disenfranchised Kempe. After Kempe’s departure, Armin joined the company, and then around 1600, according to Gurr’s research, Nicholas Tooley was taken in as Richard Burbage’s boy. If we wanted to match the known playing personnel of the company with the minimum number of required players for the Q2 Hamlet, then, from the year 1598 onwards only one year provides the correct number of players: 1599. In 1598, there would have been two too many players to stage the play with maximum economy; in 1600, there would have been one too many; and thereafter while the company fluctuated in size, it would never again be populated with as few as eleven players. I will argue, therefore, that the matching of players to dramatis personae of the Q2 text, at the very least, was effectively locked in by a planned performance in 1599. The fact that the highest incidence of correspondences between Q2 and Q1, on which basis the theory of memorial reconstruction gains its best evidence, is spread across three parts adds weight to this idea that the performance on which the Q1 reconstruction is based was also one in which the optimal use of doubling had been employed. Eleven players in the company; eleven parts required for the optimal performance of Q2 Hamlet—the departure of one of these players would have been, as a result, a critical problem. While the play had been prepared and distributed in parts by the time of Kempe’s departure, I suggest that it was not performed, at least not with him in it. If we cast our eyes beyond the opening seven lines of the Q1, we find further evidence for this notion

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that the actor-reporter based his “reconstruction” not on a performance of Q2 but on having had the parts for the Marcellus-Lucianus-Voltemand actor to hand, and basing the remainder on what he could recall from a much earlier version of the play, or indeed on several earlier versions. The Marcellus lines and their cues match, as we have seen, to such an extent that it makes sense to presume the author of the Q1 text had the Marcellus part to hand; yet there is an additional factor that seems to determine the fidelity of the Q1 lines to the Q2 text. In addition to Marcellus’s lines, the presence or absence of the Ghost seems to be crucial to whether the two versions roughly cohere or diverge in these scenes involving Marcellus. Before Marcellus enters, the initial portion of the scene is wildly different between Q1 and Q2, as we have noted; during the next portion of text, in which Marcellus does the majority of the talking, there is a high degree of correlation between Q1 lines and Q2 lines delivered by other characters; as soon as Horatio and Barnardo take over the lion’s share of the lines, with two long items, the versions diverge markedly once more, with significant sections of Horatio’s speech missing from Q1, and Barnardo’s speech is absent altogether; then, as soon as the Ghost enters, the two versions begin to correlate strongly once more, even in sections of text where Horatio is delivering more lines than would be covered by Q2 cues for Marcellus. One explanation for this feature of the texts is twofold: the author of Q1 relied on the Marcellus part in drafting this first scene; and he also relied on his memory of an earlier performance of this first scene in which he had played the Ghost. To bring this discussion back to the names of the sentinels, I suggest that the first scene became locked in quite early in the production history of the play but all of the sentinels were initially unnamed, and these names had been added by the time of the planned 1599 production. This explains why the Q1 sentinels are unnamed, but they refer to Barnardo by name in their dialogue. The name occurs only in lines that would have been in the Marcellus part. The name of Francisco appears in the Q2 but not in any of the lines that would be delivered by Marcellus, so an actor-reporter would not necessarily know the name of the second sentinel unless he had been directly involved in the production. Based on the Marcellus part alone, the second sentinel has no name. If the actor-reporter had performed different roles in earlier performances, he need not have been required to memorise the names if they were added any earlier. I will suggest in a moment that a 1599 production does provide a perfectly topical reason for the addition of the Italianate names for the sentinels, but we do not require that the actorreporter has full knowledge of the sentinel parts if he had not performed as Marcellus (or any of the sentinels) in any earlier iteration of the play. Let

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us examine for a moment this suggestion that the actor-reporter may have played the Ghost in an earlier production: this might help to explain a high level of fidelity between Q1 and Q2 in this scene when the Ghost is on the stage; it might further explain the observation made by Werstine that there are numerous other sections in which the speech of the Ghost shows a high degree of correlation between Q1 and Q2.68 We need not expect that the Ghost’s lines would be identical between versions if we are now assuming that these lines are recorded from a memory of a much older performance. For one, this situation for the actor-reporter may simply echo a difficulty that Hamlet encounters for himself in trying to recall one of his favourite speeches: If it live in your memory, begin at this line – let me see, let me see – The rugged Pyrrhus like th’ Hyrcanian beast ... – ‘Tis not so. It begins with Pyrrhus. The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms, Black as his purpose, did the night resemble. (2.2.386-91)

Hamlet is an amateur dramatist, to be sure, whereas the author of Q1, I am claiming here, was an established performer. Nevertheless, discrepancies in memory can surely be countenanced in any actor’s repertoire. We must also remember that there may have been some alterations made to the text. Accordingly, where lines changed between versions, but the actor-reporter did not know of it due to having moved on before the performance, there will be discrepancies. A key example, as we have also already seen, is the additional lines delivered by Hamlet regarding the clown: they are present in Q1 but not in Q2, suggesting that they were removed for the Q2 text. I want to caution against pinning the actor-reporter down to the role of the Ghost, though, as it will be shown later in this chapter that correlations in the Ghost’s lines between versions may also be explained by virtue of the fact that all of these lines are delivered to Hamlet. Werstine points to the Ghost to show where cracks appear in the standard Marcellus-LucianusVoltemand explanation, but in so doing he also points us directly toward the most central of characters. Returning to the question of the names of the sentinels, then, I suggest that the only reason the name Barnardo appears in the Q1 text is because his name is contained in Marcellus’s cue and in his line. Similarly, I argue that the name of Marcellus appears in Q1 because this name is of course present everywhere in his own part. Why all this fuss regarding the names of the sentinels? In addition to helping us to answer the vexed question of the nature of Q1, the possibility that the names of the sentinels were not

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used in earlier versions of the play must compel us to ask questions about the timing and method of selecting their names for Q2, circa 1599. Theirs are not the only names absent from an earlier version of the play but added in or after 1599: Claudius, most significantly, appears nowhere in Q1 by this name: he is nominally “King” throughout. Claudius is never named in speech as such in Q2 either, but he is listed as such both in the dramatis personae and in the first stage direction for his entry to the stage as well as in the speech parts accorded to him. If the sentinels and, indeed, one of the major characters are unnamed until the Q2, perhaps it is pertinent to ask at this moment, why would Shakespeare’s company revive the Hamlet play in 1599 and add these names to previously unnamed dramatis personae in the process? For a possible answer, we shall consider by what may seem to be a slightly convoluted tangent the history behind arguably the most perplexing of all name changes in early modern theatre: the character of Corambis-Polonius. The figure of the spy who is killed in the mother’s bedchamber is as old as the Amleth tale itself, being an element in all of the known precursors, including the ancient Icelandic tale of Amloði.69 The innovation in Hamlet is to make the spy the father of the temptress figure, as we have noted, but it is also to give him a name; not once, but twice. Which came first: Corambis or Polonius? As we noted earlier, not even the most ardent supporters of direct memorial reconstruction would be able to argue that Corambis is simply a product of the actor-reporter’s forgetfulness. If the name Corambis is a secondary creation, then it must have been changed by the author of Q1 from Polonius for specific reasons in or slightly before 1603. Rather than search for such reasons, I outline here instead some explanations given by scholars in an opposing camp for suspecting that the name Corambis was definitely used first, with the name changed to Polonius only later, their arguments mounted in support of the authorial claims of Edward de Vere. One of the founders of the Oxfordian movement, J. Thomas Looney, established in 1920 that the character of Polonius had much in common with the historical figure of William Cecil, Lord Burghley.70 A year later, Lillian Winstanley proposed the same association during a more detailed study of topical connections between the characters in Hamlet and a host of prominent figures in late Elizabethan society.71 Unlike the Oxfordian Looney, whose work it seems Winstanley had not encountered, there is no attempt in this later book to use topical material to dispute Shakespeare’s authorship. Yet the association of Polonius with Burghley, which in the following two decades became widely accepted by eminent Shakespeare scholars such as Chambers and Dover Wilson, presented a problem for conventional wisdom in Shakespeare studies: if Hamlet was not picked up

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by Shakespeare until 1599, as most believe in accordance with a standard chronology of Shakespeare’s plays, Burghley’s death on 4 August, 1598, rendered any topical association at the very least anachronistic and at the worst downright tactless or even belligerent. Accordingly, Oxfordians use the Polonius-Burghley association as evidence that the play was devised much earlier than 1599, and the Burghley connection, furthermore, points to more Oxford associations. William Cecil was Oxford’s father-in-law, his daughter Anne having married Oxford in 1571, which would mean that the Burghley-Anne-Oxford triad could be linked to the Polonius-OpheliaHamlet triad in the play, except that the latter arrangement was not bound by marital vows. This issue aside, the association is made stronger by the public scandal in which Oxford disowned his wife in 1576, amid claims that the couple’s first child was not his own.72 Hamlet’s public disavowal of his affections for Ophelia seems to echo this scandal. Burghley is also known to have had a wayward son, Thomas Cecil, to whom he provided a list of precepts, much like Polonius’s advice to Laertes, and who travelled to France but acted so shamefully that his father was compelled to ask his friends to monitor his behaviour, as is also the case with Laertes.73 There is however a question of the topicality of such links. Events surrounding Thomas’s trip to Paris had unfolded in 1561 to 1562, and the scandal of Oxford and Anne erupted in 1576. Only if Hamlet had been written much earlier than 1599—indeed, much earlier than 1588, for that matter—could such events be considered topical in even the slightest degree. Therein we find the gist of the Oxfordian argument. We should note that the two key events on which the topical argument for the Oxfordian genesis of the play hinges took place a full fifteen years apart. Polonius’s advice to Laertes would be, at best, a distant memory at the time that the scandal of 1576 was most topical. Even if we entertain an Oxfordian origin, however, we must surely be staggered at the man’s line of reasoning for writing himself, his wife, and his father-in-law into the play: what motivation would he have for writing a play that recounts the problems of the family into which he has married, depicts the rejection and death of his wife—Anne died from unknown causes on 5 June, 1588—or, to be more precise, fails to present their marriage as ever having happened, and, most importantly I suspect, presents a well-known scene in which the central figure kills and so shabbily disposes of the body of his father-inlaw? If Oxford is the author, writing this play while he was still married to Anne would have been rash in the extreme—the two reconciled, after all. Yet if he wrote it after Anne’s death in 1588 and the play now rang more true to the tragic personal history it echoes, the killing of Polonius remains a problem, since no manner of satirical edge to the play might soften the

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potential for Burghley to read it as a direct threat on his own life. The death of the spy is one element of the play that can be traced to the deep history of the Amleth legend, so any version of Hamlet was bound to have contained this scene as a set piece. Because this scene was already so well known, I suggest that the key to the topicality of Polonius is the link to the Queen’s bedchamber. On 4 September, 1588, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester died. Elizabeth was of course known to have always been particularly fond of Dudley, and she kept his last letter to her in a sealed box next to her bed, where it was discovered after her death.74 More to the point, after news of his death had reached her, Elizabeth retreated to her chamber, where she locked herself away for several days, and it was not until Burghley ordered the doors to her chamber broken open that she returned to her duties.75 The Queen was described by one adviser at the time as “very melancholy” and it is difficult to imagine that the Queen’s state of mind could have been kept secret from any who had knowledge of matters at court.76 Undoubtedly, after the death of their patron, the players in Leicester’s company would have been looking toward London for some sign of where their future lay. In late 1588, then, following the death of the company’s patron, the Queen’s bedchamber became a focal point for the nation for several days, and Burghley put himself in the picture when he ordered that access to the bedchamber be forcibly restored. It would be no easy task to deliberately script a set of circumstances better suited to being topically covered by an updated version of the Amleth tale in late 1588. If the play had been conceived already, given the remarkable sequence of correspondences between the problems of elective succession depicted by Belleforest and the issues surrounding the Danish succession after the death of Frederick in 4 April, 1588, Leicester’s death would have no doubt added poignancy to any production later in the same year. Moreover, upon hearing word of Burghley’s actions, Leicester’s temporarily unsupported company would have found a rather tragicomic analogue to the mandatory bedchamber scene in their play. The connections to Oxford are not needed, then, for their topicality in 1588, and certainly not for any sense that he is the “true” author of the play. The Burghley connection became insistently topical in 1588, I suggest, for reasons that were of particular interest to the playing company that were already developing their update of the Amleth tale. The death of Burghley’s daughter in the same year would no doubt have been also insistently topical as they sought to flesh out the character of the Belleforest temptress. When the Burghley connection was made, the playwright decided to give the name of Corambis to this fated figure. As Eddi Jolly has pointed out, Burghley’s motto was “Cor unum via una” (“one heart, one way”)—

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to the early modern ear the name Corambis would have been registered as a deliberate corruption, meaning “two-hearted.”77 Jolly also points out the further link to Burghley, based on Hamlet’s joke—in all three versions of the play—in which he calls the counsellor a “fishmonger” (2.2.171): it is a matter of the historical record that Burghley had in 1563 and again in 1584 pushed to have Wednesdays declared a fish day, which became known as “Cecil’s fast,” but the statute was axed.78 Yet I would argue that Hamlet’s joke goes beyond this simple topical reference to a member of the Privy Council who sought to have fish alone sold and consumed on one day of the week. To this I would add that “fishmonger” is itself a form of pun on the name Corambis: to the early modern ear in the late sixteenth century, “cor” was not only Latin for “heart”; it was also a generic term for salted fish.79 This joke, in which a man named Corambis, a “peddler of cor,” is wittingly called a “fishmonger,” would have been particularly wry and of the moment. I also suggest that the author of this pun was inspired to draw his audience’s attention to yet another association that could be made with Burghley. For a potential source for the figure of Corambis, and perhaps for the entire tone of the initial Hamlet play, consider Thomas Preston’s Cambises King of Persia (1569). This play comingles historical figures with allegorical characters, chief among which is the Vice figure named Ambidexter, who tempts the humans in the dramatis personae to indulge in immoral actions that pave the way to their doom, most notably as it is described in the historical downfall of the King of Persia. In “Corambis,” we hear the combination of Burghley’s “cor” with the name of the doomed ancient King, but we might also detect the resonance of Preston’s doubledealing Vice figure Ambidexter meddling in affairs of greater men than himself. Irving Ribner details the impact of this play on later Elizabethan history plays, including Shakespeare’s Henry IV plays, on the basis that Cambises provided a model, as its longer title suggested, for presenting “lamentable tragedy mixed full of pleasant mirth.”80 In 1Henry IV, Falstaff refers directly to Preston’s play when he talks about passion being feigned in “King Cambyses’ vein” (2.4.369).81 Just as Sir John Oldcastle was used as the source for the comical Vice figure in the Henry IV plays—the name having to be changed to Falstaff—so, too, I suggest, Burghley was adapted under a different name to be a doomed Vice figure in an initial conception of the Hamlet play. If Corambis was based on Burghley but inspired by Ambidexter, then Belleforest’s unnamed spy would acquire both a name—and along with it a set of familial ties—and a dramatic function beyond that of the spycome-corpse of the original tale. In doing this, the playwright ensured that his putatively Danish tragedy would take on a significantly topical focus.

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Yet the associations with Burghley’s family and, indeed, with Oxford are far from straightforward. Notwithstanding any issues of chronology, there remain problems with the fact that Burghley had more than just these two children—Anne and Thomas—to a wife, Mildred, who was certainly alive at the time (Lady Burghley died on 5 April, 1589). If Laertes is Thomas, then which character is Burghley’s other son, Robert, whose considerable influence we have previously been considering in this book? Whereas Winstanley pointed to the Thomas-Laertes connection based on the trip to France and the famous advice given to each by their fathers, it should be noted that Burghley gave his advice to Thomas in private correspondences and the precepts for which he is more famous were printed in a collection dedicated to Robert, written in 1584 but not published until 1618. The advice he provided to Thomas in 1561 consisted primarily of statements about adherence to prayer, whereas the precepts that seem similar in nature to those in the advice given by the Corambis-Polonius figure to his son are in the 1584 document and, as Louis Wright observed in the introduction to a 1962 reprint of both documents, Burghley’s writings were part of a more general literary trend, “the evolution of a literary type which culminated in the eighteenth century in Lord Chesterfield’s letters to his son.”82 In other words, Burghley is hardly the first man to have given advice of this kind to his son, and it is quite possible that Burghley’s precepts to Robert and the advice given by Corambis-Polonius to Laertes are derived from the same tradition: Shakespeare’s debt to the ancient Greek orator Isocrates for his maxims in Ad Demonicum has long been held as a given.83 The evidence for an association between Corambis and Burghley is strong, but the links become strained if we look to extend them too far. Importantly, any links that were of relevance in 1588 may well have seemed less important when, a year after Burghley’s death, the play was revived and the character was changed to Polonius, changing the topical landscape of the play along with it, as we shall soon see.

Ophelia, for the Love of Nought If Laertes is a Cecil, it would seem to be as a composite of Thomas and Robert. By the same token, we might imagine that Ophelia need not have been Anne Cecil alone. The tempestuous relationship between Anne and Oxford had, after all, culminated in marriage, whereas part of the tragedy of Hamlet is clearly built around the consequences of Hamlet’s rejection of Ophelia, despite his earlier promises. The fact is that we might scan the histories of the nobility of the time to find closer parallels and unearth dozens of cases in which a noble refused to marry a lover. Robert Dudley

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himself had engaged in a lengthy affair with Lady Douglas Sheffield until 1578, from which she bore him a bastard son, the later Sir Robert Dudley, but he had written a letter to her earlier in the relationship explaining that they could never wed.84 There may even be a strong parallel with Sheffield in the play: Ophelia’s lines are redolent with flower symbolism; in 1575 a popular book of verse was published under the title of A Smale handfull of fragrant Flowers, dedicated by Nicholas Breton to “the honorable and vertuous Lady, the Lady Sheffeeld.”85 If Ophelia is linked to Sheffield on this basis, then Hamlet is obviously based on Leicester, not Oxford. As the patron of the company responsible for a 1588 Hamlet, Leicester certainly makes sense as a candidate for the company’s inspiration for immediate topical material. Yet we must wonder at what kind of tribute to their late patron is represented in the characterisation of Hamlet. Leicester and Burghley are known to have been rivals in many matters, and histories of Elizabeth’s government do tend to portray the two as bitter opponents in the Privy Council.86 In contrast, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the two enjoyed a “thirty years friendship,” which was at times strained by their professional opposition within the Privy Council, yet which survived until late in Leicester’s life.87 If Hamlet was written before 1587, then, it is unlikely that Leicester would have condoned any adaptation of the Amleth tale in which he was depicted as Amleth to Burghley’s spy in the famed bedchamber scene. Indeed, it is highly unlikely that he would have agreed to any depiction of an Ophelia that mirrored in any way his own doomed relationship with Lady Sheffield. In 1587, Leicester’s relationship with Burghley seems to have taken a final downturn, following their combined efforts in securing the execution of Mary. Elizabeth responded to the early execution with a stinging rebuke of the members of the Privy Council responsible, including Burghley,88 yet Leicester escaped her wrath, being permitted to retreat to the provinces without punishment.89 Burghley came at last to fear that Leicester planned to turn the Queen against him, with the result being that on all matters of substance during the last year of Leicester’s life, he and Burghley became bitterly opposed.90 After Leicester went to meet his maker in September, 1588, the company need no longer have feared his wrath for any portrayal of the animosity between the pair, nor for dredging up a failed relationship as a local source for the depiction of the temptress in the Amleth tale. If we imagine that Kempe’s visit to Elsinore and the troubled succession of the Danish crown in 1588 provided an initial impetus for the choice of a play to rival Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy, I suggest that Leicester’s death in the same year could provide the company with the license to draw on their former patron’s life for more immediate topical material to add flavour.

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Importantly, we should not think that any of the characterisations were purely one-dimensional portrayals of a known historical personage. Just as Elsinore might have simultaneously signified both the seat of the Danish crown circa 1588 and a suggestive “otherwise, nowhere,” so the characters can be seen both as topical caricature and as dramatis personae, the latter always following a logic that is internal to the play rather than dependent on immediate history. The task that confronted the dramatists in adapting the Amleth tale lay in fleshing out the rudiments of the tale for dramatic presentation: the spy needed to be killed; there must be a temptress; and so on. Leicester’s death provided cues for topical responses to both demands. We considered that Oxford is unlikely to have written a play that is openly hostile to his wife and her father, but we might consider that a play written by Leicester’s Men soon after their patron’s death could indeed be hostile to the man to whom he had latterly conveyed public malice. Thus, Anne Cecil’s death becomes fair game for dramatic representation. If Burghley is Corambis, it stood to reason that he must have a daughter who, by virtue of being a caricature of Burghley’s daughter, was marked for death from the beginning of the play. This fated daughter could also be aligned with the temptress figure from the Amleth tale. Ophelia can therefore be seen to have been based in some degree on the recently deceased Anne Cecil (the daughter of Burghley-Corambis) but also as Lady Sheffield (the rejected lover of Leicester-Hamlet), and the latter connection is earmarked by the flower symbolism in reference to Breton’s dedication. More than the fact of her death, it is the manner of Ophelia’s death that has become one of the play’s enduring images, and this may lead us to a local association that has little to do with Leicester, Burghley, or Oxford and the women in their lives but everything to do with Shakespeare. On 17 December, 1579, a woman named Katherine Hamlett drowned in the river Avon, but her burial was delayed for two months while an inquest into the nature of her death was held.91 While her death was eventually declared to have been accidental, there can be no doubt that a delay of such length indicates that the possibility of suicide was being seriously entertained by the Stratford men responsible for investigating the woman’s death. Given the scandal that would have accompanied such an inquest, Shakespeare must have had some knowledge of the incident, and the parallels between a drowning Ophelia, the nature of whose death is questioned by all and sundry, in a play that bears in its title the name of the drowned woman, cannot be ignored. The drowning of Katherine Hamlett is usually seen as something of a curious footnote in the history of the play—her death is in fact mentioned by Bullough in a footnote to the comment that this stock temptress figure is drowned purely to add dramatic effect.92 This is to be

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expected if the scholar considers the play to have been written in 1600 or thereabouts, from which time the death of a woman twenty years earlier seems to be something that Shakespeare must have dredged up from his old memories. But for a play written in 1588, especially if it is among the playwright’s first forays into the profession, the scandal of barely more than eight years hence speaks to us with far greater force. Ophelia’s death and the debates between the gravediggers and between Laertes and the “churlish priest” (5.1.229) about the manner of her burial are seen by some scholars as a theatrical representation of early modern debates between Catholics and Protestants, and between Church and State, concerning the treatment of suicides in law and in the eyes of God.93 Yet in all cases, where the legal treatment of suicide is considered in these discussions, the key question is the definition of suicide primarily for the purposes of making decisions about the management of a deceased estate. In the most often cited legal case, being the first of its kind to have been tried in England, the death by drowning of Sir James Hales in 1562 was the catalyst for a lawsuit by his widow Margaret against Cyriack Petit: the coroner having found that Hales was a suicide, his property was declared forfeit, and the crown awarded Petit the lease to the property at Graveney Marsh, after which Margaret Hales sued Petit for the rights to the property which had previously been hers by joint leasehold.94 Without going into details here, the studies citing Hales vs. Petit in connection with Hamlet invariably try to show that the legal argument between the gravediggers in Act 5, Scene 1 echoes the report of the case in Edmund Plowden’s Les comentaries ou les reportes (1571). While I tend to find that the parallels pointed out in these studies are tenuous at best, in any case, it is worth noting here that what passes for legal argument between the gravediggers is present in the Q2 and F Hamlet texts but not in Q1. In Q2 and F, the gravediggers discuss the right of the woman to a Christian burial on the basis of “Crowner’s ’quest law” (5.1.22), but this legal aspect of their discussion is absent from the quite minimal exchange between the two in Q1: Clowne I say no, she ought not be buried In Christian buriall. 2. Why sir? Clowne Mary because shee’s drownd. 2. But she did not drowne herself. Clowne No, that’s certaine, the water drown’d her. 2. Yea but it was against her will. Clowne No, I deny that, for looke you sir, I stand here, If the water come to me, I drowne not my selfe: But if I goe to the water, and am there drown’d,

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Ergo I am guiltie of my owne death: Y’are gone, goe y’are gone sir.95

The same exchange occupies twenty lines of page-width prose in Q2, twenty-two in F, and in both there are expanded versions of these lines, save for the last. The Clown’s taunting of his bested colleague—“Y’are gone, goe y’are gone sir”—is absent from Q2 and F because their version of the exchange portrays an air of decorum, albeit in the rudimentary form in which the uneducated gravediggers mimic the rhetorical flourishes of a lawyer: “It must be se offendendo”; “Nay, but hear you, goodman delver”; “Mark you that”; “But is this law?”; and so on (5.1.9-21). In the Q1 version of this exchange, the two interlocutors are engaged in a battle of wits rather than in any discussion of legal minutiae. For this pair, the question of Ophelia’s right to Christian burial is an opportunity to spar in jest, but immediately following the exchange, they reach agreement that the question of rights remains immaterial: “she hath christian buriall, Because she is a great woman.”96 For the Q1 gravediggers, the question of law is non-existent: Ophelia receives a Christian burial because she is not a commoner. On this score we can compare the fates of Katherine Hamlett and Anne Cecil, the former having drowned but being denied burial until an inquest could determine the nature of death, the latter having died from causes that were never made public but being buried without question in Westminster Abbey. To a member of Leicester’s Men who had come from Stratford and was therefore well positioned to bear witness to differences in the fates of these two women, Ophelia’s death and her burial become a focus for a point of comparison. For this reason, I am inclined to suspect that the character of Ophelia and her death were also elements of the 1588 version rather than later additions to the play and, as such, thus represent early indices of the nature of the changes being made to the Amleth tale for dramatic representation. As was the case with the name of Corambis, some invention was required, but for a figure that may have been based in part on at least three different women, the name could not be based on a personal motto, as it must have been in the case of Corambis. As with that name, though, Ophelia’s name reveals the use of an elaborate pun: she is O-phelia, which at the time would translate literally as “O-lover” thanks to the work of Phillip Sidney.97 In his Petrarchan sonnet sequence about his attempts to court Penelope Devereaux, Lady Rich, Sidney recasts himself as Astrophil and Rich as Stella, in which can be found two ancient forms of the word “star” (the Greek aster and the Latin stella). In Astro-phil, the second half of the name appears as both a none-too-subtle reference to the poet’s own name and the Greek phil (meaning “lover”).98

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Although generally believed to have been written in 1581, Sidney’s sonnet sequence was not published until 1591, five years after his death. When it did appear, in 1591, two Quartos appeared in short succession, both under the name of Astrophel and Stella and both printed for Thomas Newman, but using two different printers: John Charlewood and John Danter.99 In an epistle that survives in the Charlewood Quarto, Newman writes that he has “beene very carefull in the Printing of it, and whereas being spred abroade in written Coppies, it had gathered much corruption by ill Writers.”100 I make a point of reproducing Newman’s claim here because it speaks to a question of transmission beyond Sidney’s death. While the Newman Quartos are widely considered to have been pirated, nevertheless, they bear witness to the fact that a manuscript of “Astrophil and Stella” had obviously been in circulation—being “spread abroad,” as it were—in the years preceding its publication, albeit in a much corrupted form. This observation is important here because Ophelia is not Ophilia. In other words, I suggest that the name of Ophelia makes sense as O-phelia because Sidney’s Astrophil (star-lover) was already in circulation in this corrupted form as Astrophel well before publication of the 1591 Quartos. Ophelia thus makes sense as “O-lover” by virtue of the same logic that enabled a reader of Sidney’s Astrophel to read that name as “star-lover” even though the name was rendered in this form due to a corruption. If Ophelia is the lover of “O,” then, the obvious question is: who is “O”? One obvious answer would be that “O” is Oxford, which points topically to Anne Cecil. No surprises there, perhaps. Yet just as Elsenoure sounded the distancing of Hamlet’s Denmark from any real location, so the “O” could be indicative of nobody: quite literally, the “O” could signify nothing, zero. In a line that is absent from Q1 but could well have been added afterwards to strengthen a point not made clearly enough in the earliest form of the play, Ophelia rebuffs Hamlet thus: “You are naught, you are naught” (3.2.140): she insists that the “O” is him, but he already has rebuffed her, making her a lover of none. The Q1 does provide other cues that might point us away from Oxford as the sole point of focus for attempts to identify this O-lover’s lover. In the version with which most readers will be familiar, Ophelia’s last words include the lament clearly directed at her lost father: “His beard was as white as snow” (4.5.187). Previously, her madness had been marked at first by songs suggesting grief—“He is dead and gone” (4.5.30)—but turns quickly upon a rather more intimate target: “Before you tumbled me / You promised me to wed” (4.5.62-63). While these two songs have prompted debates over which is the primary source of her madness, the fact that she ends with the lament for her dead father seems to have had the effect that

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critical opinion sides mostly with Claudius, who in spite of the suggestive content of the “Saint Charity” song declares that her madness ultimately springs “All from her father’s death” (4.5.76). The Q1 text provides for no such claim: Ophelia sings first of her father “dead and gone,” then exits to gather flowers, and upon return sings the “Saint Charity” song before she departs for the last time.101 Here, the songs are not intermingled, her grief is only initially directed toward her father but then shifts fully and fatally toward the lover who has abandoned her. It is at this point, of course, that flowers are linked with the character in her final moments, pointing us to look toward Sheffield. If the flowers were too obtuse to point the audience toward Leicester’s affair, Shakespeare reinforces the connection in rather blunt fashion when Ophelia declares before launching into song, “bonny sweete Robin is all my ioy,”102 Robin was a common name given to men who bore the name Robert, the phrase “sweet Robin” being particularly widely used in affectionate terms. It was also common knowledge that in 1588, at least, one “sweet Robin” stood above all others: Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, who we know was given this nickname by Queen Elizabeth herself and was called as such in the company of others.103 Just as importantly, the phrase “bonny sweete Robin” references a popular folk tune of that name, which could be found in William Ballet’s Lute Book (circa 1580),104 and we must note that in Q1 alone, a stage direction for Ophelia’s entrance is qualified: “Enter Ofelia playing on a lute, and her haire down singing.”105 Even more importantly, perhaps, William Kempe used this very tune as the basis for his Rowland jigs and for Kempe’s Jig, the latter of which, according to Margaret Dean-Smith, was “a jest at the expense of the Earl of Leicester.”106 Not only does this point to Leicester, it leads us to see in Ophelia the figures of both Sheffield—the woman that Leicester would not marry—and, to some extent, Elizabeth, the woman who would not marry Leicester. If Elizabeth is referenced in even the most indirect fashion in Ophelia’s last words, it is evidence of a dangerous game of wits: “sweet Robin” may have been the well-known name by which the Queen referred to Leicester, but the addition of “bonny” makes it a far less romantic gesture since, as Frederick Sternfeld explains them, “Bonny Robin” songs typically dealt with “lovers, unfaithfulness, and extra-marital affairs,” which by their nature painted the singer as a woman of “fitness to sing” such a song.107 In the Q1, Ophelia plays on a lute when she enters for her final scene, which was, Katherine Wallace has demonstrated, regularly used in early modern drama as a symbol for “lust and promiscuity” when placed in the hands of a female character.108 The stage direction that Ophelia enters with her hair down points, furthermore, to an iconography of madness with which the

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play’s earliest audiences were familiar, as many scholars have observed.109 Invariably, Ophelia’s particular brand of insanity is interpreted by critics as love-madness but in so doing the same critics reflect the puritanical preferences of Shakespeare’s Restoration adaptors. According to such readings, Ophelia is innocent but despite the warnings of her brother and father falls in love with Hamlet, only to be rejected by him, an act which, coupled with the death of her father, strips Ophelia of her senses. Indeed, as Katherine Roberts has argued, Ophelia’s love-madness can be equated with what classical medicine called “wombsickness,” a condition in which the sexually mature young woman was said to require intercourse to stave off hysteria.110 As the spurned lover, by this account, Ophelia’s madness arises in point of fact because she has been nobody’s lover. Against this dominant interpretive strain there have been occasional attempts to argue that not only have the pair slept together; Ophelia may even be bearing Hamlet’s child. J. Max Patrick suggested in 1953 that the play confounds critics wanting to interpret the play in either direction by not providing enough evidence “to prove either Ophelia’s innocence or guilt.”111 I am of the opinion that the play does not provide enough evidence either way, to be sure, because the long established temptress figure from Amleth’s tale is fleshed out by a chain of associations that result in an excess of internal contradictions; the product of which is the enigma of Ophelia’s madness. Among the possible clues to Ophelia’s “innocence or guilt,” there is of course the Bonny Robin songs to which we have alluded. Other studies have identified a range of early modern meanings for the plants distributed by Ophelia, among which is the suggestion that Ophelia’s various plants represented “a shocking enumeration of well-known abortifacients and emmenagogues” to the play’s initial audiences, as Lucile Newman states the case in no uncertain terms.112 Yet the abundance of symbolic meanings given to plants makes a case built around the suspected abortive properties of columbines, fennel, rue, and so on, difficult to sustain.113 In the prospect that Ophelia represents both Anne Cecil and Lady Sheffield, though, there may yet be further evidence to support this idea that the playwright wanted to include at least a suggestion of pregnancy. In Shakespeare’s memory of the fate of Katherine Hamlett, “spinster,” of Tiddington, some suggestion of pregnancy could well be present as an explanation for the long inquest that delayed her burial.114 If we consider the Q1 Ophelia in isolation from Q2, her last two appearances on stage provide links between being rejected by Hamlet and her madness. The play suggests a scale of tragedies that befall the woman who begins stage life as a type derived from Belleforest but whose death triggers the final cataclysm: her death is prompted in turn by being rejected by her lover; by the loss of her father; and, perhaps last

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of all, by discovery that she is bearing a child, with neither the father nor the grandfather able to provide guarantee of the child’s care any longer. While the Q1 text works against any firm conclusions about the fated Ophelia, what we do glean from it is that her madness, in the final songs she sings, is directed unambiguously toward Hamlet, which makes the Q1 far more clearly a revision of the Amleth tale: Saxo leaves us in no doubt that Amleth ravishes the woman but Belleforest leaves us reliant on the contradictory stories told by the girl and by Amleth. Yet the Q1 Hamlet explores the consequences of such contradictions, initially having us just as reliant on the versions of events provided by Ophelia and Hamlet to various confidantes, but then examining the human cost of denial and disagreement in relation to sexual contact. The Q2 and F versions of the “nunnery” scene depict Hamlet unambiguously in denial: “I never gave you aught” (3.1.95). Yet Q1 uses the double negative to confuse matters: “I neuer gaue you nothing.”115 Such confusion in terms throws open for interpretation Hamlet’s directive, “Go to a nunnery goe, why should’st thou / Be a breeder of sinners? I am my selfe indifferent honest,” by which an audience may take him to be planting the seed of suspicion that Ophelia may already be “a breeder.” In this term “nunnery,” which Hamlet repeats no fewer than eight times in this one exchange in the Q1 text, we could also hear a subtle jest related to Ophelia’s name: the “O-lover” may be no lover of “O” but may be “lover of none,” such that Hamlet’s “poison in jest” barb at Ophelia is to advise her to go where a lover of “nun” should go. Hamlet’s indifferent honesty forces him, even under suspicion that he is being spied upon here—as is true in the Belleforest scenario mirrored in the nunnery scene—to confess that he never “loved” Ophelia in one sense of the word even though he may have indeed loved her in another sense and, in the process, have given her something of grave significance.

The Unkempt Q2/F Based on the arguments presented in the previous sections, many of the main elements of the Q1 text would have been highly topical in 1588, and if we are prepared to put aside the most obvious memorial reconstructions, we find that where the text of Q1 differs most from Q2 and F in relation to the depictions of key elements of the Amleth tale, it appears that topicality is being played off against the source tale. Accordingly, we must deduce that any straightforward topical readings or source-based readings will be foiled, but that both are necessary in full measure to understand what the earliest version of the play was doing in relation to both its source and its historical context. Yet if we put the memorial reconstructions to one side

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for this activity, we confront the rather thorny question of how the actorreporter could have retained so much material that we are now attributing to the deep past of the play in its original instantiation. We rely on the idea that the actor-reporter played one or more of the major parts in productions of these earlier versions—or both. The popular account of the evolution of Hamlet as a character attributes the genesis of the words to Shakespeare— or, as we have seen, to Kyd, Oxford or some other ur-author—and of the performance to Richard Burbage. While there is no doubt that Burbage would go on to make the character famous in later revivals of the play, any thought that he was responsible for the character cited in Nashe’s “whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls, of tragical speeches” before 1589 must be dismissed as untenable, as I argued in Chapter One. We become distracted by the images of Shakespeare the author and Burbage the actor in the standard account of Hamlet’s origins on page and stage. Shakespeare must himself be thought both an actor and a writer, and on both counts he would have been learning the trade in his earliest years with a company. What we perceive from this side of history as the norm for the companies is obscured by the existence of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men: that Shakespeare was undoubtedly the lead writer for the company in which he was a shareholder from 1594 onwards tells us nothing, in fact, about the status of writers before this time. As Andrew Gurr argued in The Shakespeare Company, 1594-1642, the shareholder system developed by Shakespeare, the Burbages, and their fellow players in 1594 was a radical step in the evolution of the Elizabethan theatre, culminating in 1599 with the establishment of a permanent free-standing residence and, along with it, “a management system that made its actors their own managers and financiers, creating the only effective democracy of its time in totalitarian England.”116 Roslyn Knutson has shown that we have no evidence of the shareholder system definitely being in place circa 1594,117 to be sure, but it is clear from later documentary evidence that a shareholder arrangement did eventually develop within the company and was certainly in place by the time they settled into The Globe in 1599.118 Prior to the establishment of this system, of course, the concept of the company writer is something of a fallacy. Under the more fluid arrangements that typified companies beforehand, then, we must think of a 1588 Hamlet as an object with a far more sketchy pedigree than conventional wisdom dictates, attribution no longer being simply a question of sole or collaborative authorship; it goes beyond authorship to encompass the spectrum of activities associated with a play in development and in performance. While I argue for Shakespearean involvement in the development of a 1588 Hamlet, then, I am simultaneously arguing for a key role for Kempe.

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Along these lines, I have been tracking some of the more accessible puns in the play, specifically where they point us in the direction of material that was topical in 1588. Yet the reader may well object on this matter: why should puns be considered evidence of Kempe’s involvement? In and of themselves, to be sure, puns prove nothing. Shakespeare’s widespread use of puns has been documented, as we noted, since before Coleridge, so it will be absurd to suggest that a pun in a Shakespeare play is evidence of the involvement of another hand. Indeed, I do not wish at all to suggest the puns we have identified could not have been written by Shakespeare; on the contrary, my aim here is to ask: why would Shakespeare, in updating the old Danish revenge narrative, give to the tale’s hero a punning tongue? The question becomes superfluous if we imagine that the use of puns does not come secondarily but is already present in the original source material on which the company is drawing in 1588. Belleforest’s Amleth conceals his true designs, we recall, by use of a wit that made him seem devoid of his wits. Recall, then, the description we have already seen by Wiles of how Kempe’s clowns differ from others at the time: where others “invite a simple feeling of superiority,” Kempe’s clowns appear ludicrous at first, before eventually making everyone else seem more ludicrous.119 What is perhaps more to the point, the central figures in Kempe’s jigs seem to be ludicrous at first due to an “assumption of melancholia” that characterises their detachment from the emotional drama unfolding around them and which they will inevitably disrupt as they regain control of their own state of mind in order to fully embrace the capacities of the Vice figure.120 The melancholic Amleth would surely have appealed to Kempe as a vehicle for sustained dramatic treatment of a figure of similar ilk. The character of Hamlet is thus equipped with a punning tongue both because the figure on which he is based possessed one—to enable him to conceal truth in jest—and because the actor for whom the part was written saw this role as typical of his preferred form of clown. It is at this point, though, that we might ask a seemingly banal question: does this picture of the punning Hamlet written for Kempe in 1588 mesh with the picture of a play to which whole handfuls of tragical speeches are attributed in 1589? The pun, it stands to reason, is more suited to Comedy than Tragedy, and perhaps least of all to History, let alone to Tragical History. Such reason presumes that Shakespeare ever strictly adhered to distinct modes for the various genres within which he wrote. In the play itself, there are hints that the question of form was never so clear cut: we have noted the use of the joke about crossover genres, present in all three versions. Similarly, both the Q2 and F versions provide a curious example of category erosion in one of the most famous of lines: Hamlet declares the “purpose of playing”

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is, as it were, to hold “the mirror up to Nature to show Virtue her feature, Scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure” (3.2.20-24). As Leo Salingar has observed, this mirror analogy also mirrors quite closely Cicero’s definition of Comedy as “the imitation of life, the mirror of custom, the image of truth.”121 The Q2/F texts thus take the Renaissance revival of Comedy and reframe it as a raison d’être of playing per se. This, to me, sounds less like English Seneca perchance and far more like the voice of the Clown figure for whom all the world’s a jig. If this “purpose of playing” speech had been in Q1, then perhaps we could by now with some degree of confidence have attributed the idea to Kempe, yet its presence only in the Q2/F versions must give us pause at this moment. As a way of regaining our bearings, we should note that this speech in the Q2/F texts is located immediately prior to Hamlet’s advice regarding the clowns. With reference to our earlier commentary on that section of the Q2/F texts, we now add that in Q1, there is no “purpose of playing” statement but there is an extended diatribe concerning a clown’s suite of jests. The reader might well ask: what difference do such differences make in terms of situating the play in 1588 or any other time? Let us at this point recall that the Q2/F versions significantly alter the order of events either side of the “To be or not to be” speech. I argued that the Q1 arrangement should be read as prior on the basis that it more closely aligns with the order of events in Belleforest. In Q1, then, the advice Hamlet gives to the players is far removed from the “nunnery” exchange, separated as they are by the subsequent and, as I argued, consequent exchanges with Hamlet’s fellow students and with Corambis, and by the latter’s plotting to spy on Hamlet in the bedchamber of his mother. If we read Q1 in terms of the typical progression of one of Kempe’s clowns, it becomes apparent that Hamlet-as-clown begins with the “ornaments and sutes of woe”122 but succeeds through a quick succession of verbal exchanges to expose those who seek to entrap him and then, with the arrival of the travelling players, identifies the mechanism by which to wrest the control of events from the King. While the death of the spy will present him with a new obstacle, as in Belleforest, at this moment in Q1, as Hamlet addresses the players, he speaks as a player among players. The longest of his three speeches at this point, and his last, is to a clown, and it is delivered as if by one who knows the business of clowning intimately. In the Q2/F versions, a small matter of the rearrangement of events forces us to reconsider altogether the advice Hamlet gives to the players. Now, we find Hamlet being elusive in his encounter with the two fellow students and in his dealings with Polonius and others, but the deferral of

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his encounter with Ophelia leaves him suspended in a state of lacking control. He might have initially concocted his plan with the arrival of the players, but his subsequent encounter with Ophelia shows him to be still capable of dropping his guard. In Q1, we might read his words to her as an elaborate wordplay, in the succession of encounters in which he is seeking to assert himself over others. In Q2/F, the previously quite rational Prince is suddenly reduced once more to ranting, which undermines any sense that he is gaining control. When he subsequently addresses the players in Q2/F, then, his words thus seem more desperate than their counterpart lines in Q1, and by baying at the players excessively, his own performance is shown to lack the control he would expect of his performers. Topping off this sense that the Hamlet of Q2/F adopts the mantle of the hypocrite, the diatribe against the clown is culled. In this version of the play, in other words, Hamlet ceases to exhibit those features that in Q1 are able to be associated with the characteristics of Kempe’s clown figure. To cement this sense of disassociation from Kempe, the Q2/F text takes the standard definition of Comedy as “mirror of custom” and recasts it as the purpose of all playing, rather than just of Comedy. My suggestion regarding the character of Hamlet in Q1 is therefore that the text, written in 1603, bears residual traces of the author’s memory of having played and indeed possibly part-written—at the very least to the extent that the clown’s extemporisations are recorded by the playwright— a Hamlet fashioned as a clown, as an updated Amleth, and as a caricature of the recently deceased patron of Leicester’s Men. Using the line count employed by Paul Bertram and Bernice W. Kliman in their reproduction of Q1 in The Three-text Hamlet, 1400 lines out of 2221 (amounting to 63.03 percent) are expended in getting to Hamlet’s observation, after the performance of The Murder of Gonzago, that the King does not like the Tragedy.123 The same point is reached in the Folio on line 2166 out of 3907 (or 55.4 percent).124 This discrepancy reveals that the Q1 text is far more front-heavy than the Q2/F versions of the play, focused as it is to a greater extent on working through events leading up to the bedchamber scene and then resolving matters with relative speed thereafter. There are in fact almost an additional thousand lines in the latter half of the F text than in the corresponding sections in Q1, with a very significant portion of this extra material consisting either of dialogue involving the King without Hamlet being present (no fewer than 400 lines), of Horatio’s and Hamlet’s accounts of the encounter with the pirates (some 120 lines), and of extra lines fleshing out the final scene, which is only 138 lines in Q1 but 408 lines in F. At least two-thirds (670 lines) of the material absent from Q1 in the latter part of the play can thus be connected to the events over which

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Hamlet has limited or no control: the King spends far more time on stage plotting Hamlet’s demise in the second half of Q2/F, and the detail of how this plotting is implemented is given far more coverage in the longer final scene. A Kempe-oriented Hamlet, this lord of misrule, is in Q1 to a large extent simply brought undone by the misrule he has wrought, whereas the Hamlet of Q2/F faces a far more conniving and masterful adversary, over whom he is rarely able to gain any semblance of control.125 The addition of the pirate tale in Q2/F also provides us with an insight into what may well be one of the revisions made to the play in a revival of around 1593 or 1594. In Bullough’s account of the sources for the play, Sidney’s Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia (1590) is identified as a viable early inspiration for Hamlet’s encounter with the pirates since in Sidney’s poem the account of an encounter with pirates also includes a number of features in common with the Amleth tale on which Shakespeare draws: the “letter-trick, the killing of a king’s nephew, the proposed murder on a seajourney,” for example.126 Bullough’s claim is that when Kyd wrote the urHamlet, he would not have known Sidney’s tale, but Shakespeare knew the poem well and decided by 1597 or later to add Sidney’s pirates when he updated this tale that had much in common with it. If we remove Kyd here, of course, we are left with Shakespeare not being familiar in 1588 with a poem that would not appear in print until 1590, which could hardly strike us as unusual. We have seen that Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella was certainly in circulation in various forms prior to his death, but the same is not true of his Arcadia: an older version definitely existed before 1588—it is in this year that Fulke Greville wrote to Francis Walsingham concerning his fear that a copy of “Sir Philip Sidney’s old Arcadia” was being readied for print without authority.127 In the scholarship of the Arcadia poems, no clear evidence has surfaced to suggest that the revisions on which Sidney was working right until the end of his life, and which remained unfinished, were ever widely circulated prior to their publication.128 Greville’s concern about the possibility of an imprint of the old Arcadia being published in 1588 were no doubt motivated by the knowledge that he would shortly be making Sidney’s unfinished revisions available for publication. This question of older and newer versions of Arcadia is pertinent here because the pirate tale is absent from the older version. If Shakespeare was indeed inspired by Sidney’s Arcadia to add the tale of the pirates, then, it could have been no earlier than 1590 in any case. Mary Floyd-Wilson has noted that pirates were present in both Saxo and Belleforest, especially in the figure of Horwendil, Amleth’s father, and piracy was of course rife in the shipping routes between England and Denmark,129 so the playwright had plenty of available inspiration on which to draw for the pirate episode

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in Hamlet. I suspect the admixture of the pirate tale with the letter-switch is best explained by the playwright drawing inspiration from Sidney, but certainly agree that the broader context remains relevant. The addition of the pirates marks a crucial point of difference between Q1 and Q2/F on the subject of Hamlet’s capacity to fulfill the functions of the clown according to Kempe. A letter-trick is in Belleforest as the next of Amleth’s feats of cunning following the murder of the spy in his mother’s bedchamber, so it is to be expected that Q1 would replicate this episode. When Horatio tells the nature of Hamlet’s escape to Gertred, in a scene which has no direct analogue in Q2 or F, his description is little more than a summary of the events detailed by Belleforest.130 It is easy enough to imagine the purely economical reasons why this section of Belleforest’s version would have been adapted in summary fashion: the staging of a sea adventure would have placed demands on the company in terms of props and devices that far outweighed the dramatic importance of the scene. In Belleforest, the letter-trick is described in just the one paragraph, on the way to a much longer account of Amleth’s successes at the English court. In the Q1of Hamlet, the English court is removed altogether except in the minimal presence of the Ambassador, so the letter-trick may be necessary only to the extent that it explains Hamlet’s ability to escape the traps laid for him by the King, to which end costly and time-consuming changes of scenery or elaborate staging effects must have seemed excessive.131 Hamlet’s trick is thus described briefly, and he is “set ashore,” in Horatio’s account of things, no more detail being deemed necessary.132 With no more than this information to go by, the audience of such a performance has every reason to suspect that Hamlet, just like Amleth, is increasingly in control, no matter the obstacles that are placed in his path by the King. It is not until the final lines of the penultimate scene of Q1, at Ophelia’s funeral, that Hamlet loses the control that he seemed to enjoy elsewhere in the text, leaping into the grave—a stage direction explicitly indicates this action in Q1even though there is no analogous direction anywhere in Q2 or F133 —and demanding to be buried alive. He also has a significant lapse when he complains here that he never gave Laertes cause to want to wrong him, forgetting altogether that Hamlet killed the father of Laertes and Ophelia.134 Here I think is where the text of Q1 demarcates its distinctiveness from Belleforest, having mirrored its source for the most part up to this point, and it is able to do so because it establishes the family ties of Corambis (the spy) to Ophelia (the temptress) and provides to each a son or brother. Q1 allows the upshot of such familial particulars only to be revealed in the last 160 lines, during which the misrule that Hamlet has set in motion comes back to envelop him absolutely.

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The introduction of the pirates after 1590 can be seen as a subtle turn away from the kind of clown figure typically developed by Kempe. While it is conventional in Hamlet criticism to read the pirate encounter as one example of Hamlet’s skill in turning ill fortune for good,135 there is in this conventional reading proof that the pirate encounter is completely foreign to Kempe’s version of clowning: fortune or chance have no place in the success of Kempe’s clowns. In every encounter, Belleforest’s hero also responds with skill to obstacles placed in his way by the designs of others, and the same is true of the typical Kempe clown and, until the end, of the Hamlet of Q1. In Q2/F, it is impossible to imagine Hamlet failing to arrive in England and being waylaid there if it were not for the intervention of the pirates. This chance encounter is what precipitates Hamlet’s return to Denmark, but this precipitating event must be read in the context of a raft of additional dialogues that slow down the remainder of the play—taking up 900 lines from the start of Act 4, Scene 7—during which the audience is shown at length the intricate contrivances set in motion by Claudius. If Polonius’s death in Q2/F is seen as an unexpected outcome of a plan that was designed to entrap Hamlet, it was, as it had been in Belleforest and Q1, nevertheless an outcome of a plan. The introduction of the pirates also amounts to the introduction of pure chance, operating beyond the control of the central figure. Where the word “fortune” is absent from Q1, indeed, it is used on no fewer than seventeen occasions in Q2, signifying a clear preoccupation with forces that are all but non-existent in the world of Q1. With the increasing emphasis on the King’s Machiavellian plots and this insertion of fortune into the world of the play, the Q2/F texts signal the removal of a Kempe-like control for Hamlet within the play and, perhaps, for Kempe himself in the world of the company beyond it.

No Sallets in the Lines A word on method: in the previous sections of this chapter, I have been arguing that in the Q1 we find ample evidence to support the claim that in 1588 or soon after, a Hamlet in which Will Kempe was a key figure was produced by the Earl of Leicester’s Men, but that to locate this evidence it is necessary to put to one side the material that can be linked directly to a Q2-based performance; that is, material based on the Marcellus-LucianusVoltemand cues. In all that remains, if the memorial reconstruction theory holds true, we have material written down (whether from memory or by extrapolation) by an actor-reporter sometime before publishing Q1 in 1603. By analysis of the cue correlation in the first few scenes, I mounted an argument for suspecting that the actor-reporter may not indeed have

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seen the production through to performance and instead left the company, with parts in hand, with no direct memory of the Q2-based performance on which to reconstruct the remainder of the play. The varying degrees of correspondence between Q1 and Q2/F in the rest of the text is then explained by Q2 or F containing material that was in revision from earlier versions and Q1 containing material that is also remembered from the same earlier versions. When I observe that a certain number of lines in Q1 correspond to those in Q2/F, it is important to note that I am not referring here to lines that are identical or near to identical; rather, I am referring to lines that are analogous to each other. In this respect, the work undertaken by the editors of The Three-text Hamlet is invaluable, because they provide for every line in Q1 a marginal note to indicate which line in F, if any, is analogous. Thus, for example, one of the King’s most famous lines in F—“Is there not Raine enough in the sweet Heauens / To wash it white as Snow?”136—has no near identical line in Q1, but Paul Bertram and Bernice W. Kliman acknowledge an analogue with it in Q1: “O that this wet that falles vpon my face / Would wash the crime cleere from my conscience!”137 When I provided the count of lines in the latter portions of Q1 and Q2/F for which there are no analogues, then, it can be noted that I do not simply refer to lines that are not close to identical; I refer instead to the fact that even in Bertram and Kliman’s generous calculations, there remain some 670 lines of dialogue involving the King in Q2/F for which there are not even the most tenuous of analogues in Q1. For this reason, it is safe to declare that if the actor-reporter had been recalling a part from a previous performance of the play, it is unlikely that this was the King; or it means the part of the King was greatly expanded for the latter portions of the play in Q2/F. A quick glance at the lines for which Bertram and Kliman identify analogous connections in the King’s part will show that even where an analogy exists, the norm appears to still be a discrepancy of the kind I examined in the previous paragraph. While the lines of Hamlet, Corambis-Polonius, and the Clown/gravedigger have a sufficiently high rate of mismatch to dismiss any suggestion that they are copied from parts scripts, nevertheless, comparison of their lines between versions show that many lines are near enough to identical to suggest more than that they are being remembered by an actor-reporter who saw another player perform them. To demonstrate the point, I will draw to the reader’s attention a 1997 study by Naomichi Yamada, in which comparisons were charted between the lengths of all sections of text in Q1 and Q2 in order to discern a pattern of omission in the Q1.138 Yamada is not concerned with comparing the lines delivered for each part; rather, all the material that is absent from Q1 is treated as having been cut from Q2 by the Q1 author

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according to a set of consistently executed “principles of excision”: “It cuts irrelevant actions, compresses actions boldly and carefully, omits repetitions, and prunes juxtapositions.”139 For Yamada, the story of the two versions is clear: Q2 was first, and Q1 represents an attempt to cut it down to size. Yet in looking for consistent patterns of omission, Yamada seems to miss some of the detail of variations within these patterns. He fails to explain, for example, why some sections of the Q1 text are absent from Q2; that is, he does not account for additions in addition to his study of omissions. If Q2 did come first, then, any material that Q1 contains but Q2 omits can only be explained by the principle of additions rather than that of excisions. As comprehensive as Yamada’s study proves to be, it also proves insufficiently flexible to cover such material, but the approach we have taken here—that Q1 is written both before and after Q2, given a series of revivals in performance and revisions in text—allows us to cover both contingencies. The real value of Yamada’s study is in his table of the lengths of each page of Q1 and the corresponding number of lines required in Q2 to cover the same material.140 The first page of Q1 consists of 19 lines—the small count is explained by the preliminary text that fills half of the first page of the Q1—with the corresponding section of text in Q2 covered in 28 lines; the second is 35 lines in Q1, which is covered in 38 lines in Q2, and so on. Yamada’s idea that omission is the norm appears to be well supported by the overall ratio, wherein Q2 is 1.72 times the length of Q1, and the table shows that of the 63 pages in Q1, only seven require less space in Q2 to cover the same amount of action. Still, seven pages out of 63 is seven pages, not one or two rare exceptions that prove Yamada’s rule. Most notable is the discrepancy on page 52 (the verso of H2 in the Q1 imprint, abbreviated as H2v) in which 35 lines in Q1 have only 8 corresponding lines in Q2, the reason being that this page contains Horatio’s account of the letter-trick to the Queen, a scene for which there is no direct analogue in Q2, as we noted. On the very next page, the 35 lines of Q1 are matched to 166 corresponding lines in Q2, because this next section contains the King’s discussion with Laertes regarding his revenge for the death of his father, a section that is indeed massively expanded in Q2, as we have also noted. I want to focus here not on the pages in which major discrepancies are evident; I want instead to consider pages in which Yamada’s counts bear witness to a fairly close match between versions. The first three pages are in fact quite close in count: 19 to 28; 35 to 38; and 36 to 40. It is not until the fourth page (B2v) that the count flies apart with Q1 covering in just 35 lines what Q2 covers in 64—I count as roughly aligned any pages that differ by ten or fewer lines in analogous content. The similarities in

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these pages can be easily explained by the fact that these first three pages are thick with Marcellus lines; in other words, the similarity is very likely to be due to the memorial reconstruction that Yamada seems to want to discount with his theory of straight excision. The next page with a fairly close match is seven (B4r) with 34 to 43, and we should note that this is the first page in Q1 on which Hamlet delivers the bulk of the lines. The same is true of the next three pages, so the next significant discrepancy appears on page 11 (C2r) with the 35 lines of Q1 being matched to 65 in Q2, coinciding with the departure of Hamlet and the exchange between Laertes and Ophelia. The pages swing more or less back into alignment for page 12 (C3v), which contains dialogue involving Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus, prior to the arrival of the Ghost, wherein the 35 lines of Q1 are matched to 45 lines in Q2. Curiously, the next two pages of Q1, containing the dialogue between the Ghost and Hamlet, differ again quite markedly (36 to 53, and 36 to 49), but the following two pages (D1r and D1v) snap almost neatly back into alignment (36 to 40, and 35 to 38) as Marcellus returns to the stage and speaks again. With the departure of Hamlet, Horatio, and the sentinels, the alignment flies apart once more, with the 35 lines of D2r in Q1 matched to 75 lines in Q2, as Corambis and Montano take to the stage. This is a pattern that repeats, in fact, for the next 20 pages of Q1: on seven occasions, a near alignment occurs either when Hamlet or a part associated with the memorial reconstruction argument is delivering the bulk of the lines, but the line counts fly apart again either when Hamlet is absent from the stage or when he is present in a scene that includes a high proportion of lines attributed to characters that are radically changed from Q1 to Q2: on page 22 (D3v), the Voltemand role delivers 21 of the 35 lines printed, and Q1 aligns with Q2 by a ratio of 35 to 44 for this page; the following page consists mainly of dialogue between Corambis and the King and Queen, and the ratio becomes 36 to 63; then pages 26 to 27 (E1v and E1r) tally closely together (36 to 45, and 36 to 28), coinciding with the “To be or not to be” speech and the “nunnery” exchange. We note of course that these sections are located in different parts of the play, as discussed earlier, and there is of course some discrepancy between the two in terms of the specific content of the lines in each, but for the purposes of this analysis, the relative similarity in size of the two sections of text shows that there remains a degree of coalescence between the two texts, where Hamlet is involved. This general pattern repeats on four more occasions up to page 41 (G1r), in which there is a near perfect alignment (33 to 34) between Q1 and Q2 in the dialogue involving Hamlet after the Mousetrap sequence, but the two fly apart massively again (32 to 104) on the following page,

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once the King enters the stage. Yamada’s page comparisons then bear out the observations we have already made about the degree of difference between the versions in the latter portion of the play. After page 41 (G1r), on only one other page is there an alignment of ten or fewer lines, and for the greater number of pages in this last third of Q1 the degree of misalignment increases to a difference of more than thirty lines, often up to as many as sixty or seventy lines more in Q2. Only on page 56 (H4v) do the two snap back into close alignment (36 to 32), coinciding with Hamlet’s exchange with the Clown in the graveyard. The point of these comparisons, then, is to show that in relation to the amount of space taken up by dialogue involving specific characters, the Q1 and Q2 texts snap into near perfect alignment when Marcellus and Voltemand deliver the bulk of their lines—which should add support to the memorial reconstruction argument, but counter to the conclusions at which Yamada arrives. They also snap into alignment for the majority of the sections in which Hamlet holds sway on stage. The main exceptions to the Hamlet rule are located where dialogue is added to exchanges with the King, leading to an increase in the size of the relevant section of text in Q2, even with Hamlet on stage. The Mousetrap scene, for example, contains numerous additional lines in Q2, also leading to a significant discrepancy between the relative size of the two versions even with Hamlet on stage throughout this scene, and even given that the lines by Lucianus in the play-within-the-play are sufficiently similar to confirm that it was likely to have been assigned to the Marcellus-Voltemand actor and then used in a memorial reconstruction of sections of Q1. I will add here that the pages on which the Ghost appears are also, oddly enough, routinely larger sections of text in Q2 than in Q1 by a factor of greater than ten lines according to Yamada’s calculations. This may be sufficient reason to conclude that the part of the Ghost was not previously played by the actor-reporter. How do we account, though, for the lines delivered by the Ghost in both Q1 and Q2, which Werstine uses as evidence for one of the flaws in the memorial reconstruction argument? This is where we can point out that the Ghost only ever speaks when in dialogue with Hamlet. I suggest, then, that the part of Hamlet is being remembered by the author of Q1 from a production that predated a Q2-based performance. The fact that Q1-Q2 discrepancies centre on the King for the most part suggests a couple of additional points worth making here. First, it suggests that the part underwent significant change between Q1 and Q2, changes to which the Q1author seems not to have been privy. It can also lend weight, albeit via somewhat circular reasoning, to the notion that the Ghost and the King were a likely combination for one actor to have doubled. In analyses

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of potential casting for performances based on all three principal versions, Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor show that the most efficient allocations for all three versions work with the Ghost-King as a doubled part.141 It is a notion that the play itself supports, as Hamlet makes direct comparisons between the two in Act 1, Scene 2—“Hyperion to a satyr” (140)—and in Act 3, Scene 4—“The counterfeit presentment of two brothers” (52)—and he even resorts to the term “uncle-father” (2.2.313). If the Ghost-King part was indeed doubled, then, even if only for a late Q2-based performance, it could not have been the basis for a memorial reconstruction. Observations that the Ghost’s lines in Act 1 in both Q1 and Q2 evince a high degree of similarity could not, then, be linked to a suggestion that the actor-reporter had played the Ghost in this scene. If, as I am suggesting, the author of the Q1 had previously had cause to know the scene well because of his part in the portrayal or development of the Hamlet character, then it is expected that the Ghost’s lines would be relatively well remembered, particularly as Hamlet is given two interjections in Q1 but which are missing in Q2—he says “Alas poore Ghost” early in the Ghost’s first significant set of lines and interrupts the final long speech with “O God!”142 Presuming that these interjections, absent from Q2, are a residue of an earlier performance, then the Hamlet actor would have had more of the Ghost’s lines in his own cue script than would be expected of a cue script for Q2, and would therefore be already better equipped to remember additional portions of the Ghost’s speech, a memory that would be reinforced in performance. Based on this reasoning, we should expect that the pages for Hamlet’s exchange with the Ghost should be roughly aligned on Yamada’s table, yet the fact remains that they sit just outside the range that I have been considering acceptable for the purposes of alignment: the recto of C4 is 36 in Q1 but 53 in Q2, and the verso page differs from Q2 by a ratio of 36 to 49. It is only on the next page that the two snap back into alignment (36 to 40), as we noted a moment ago, once Marcellus returns to the stage. While many of the lines that the Ghost speaks in Q1 have a direct analogue in Q2, then, there is still nevertheless enough discrepancy to indicate that the Ghost in Q1 is also being partially misremembered, or that a number of lines were added to the Ghost’s speech for Q2—claims for the second of these options are strengthened when we link the Ghost to the King as a doubled part and add that substantial amounts of text were clearly added to the King’s part in the Q2. If we wish to include theories about doubling as part of our frame for interpreting Yamada’s page comparisons, we should also be prepared to give an account for why the only page in the final third of the play that aligns closely is focused on Hamlet’s exchange with the Clown. Doubling complicates this observation because one of the common

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assumptions about the doubling of parts in Hamlet, echoed by Thompson and Taylor, is that the actor portraying Corambis-Polonius also doubled as the gravedigger, and records of performances using this double exist from 1730 onwards: this is a pairing that has history on its side.143 We have no record of any specific doubling system used by The Lord Chamberlain’s Men in a production of Hamlet, but we have observed that the graveyard scene formed the basis for one of the most popular drolls that enabled Hamlet to retain continuity with its Jacobean form during the Interregnum period. We should be prepared to pay close attention to any way in which the grave scene was incorporated into post-Interregnum performances as a sign of how the play as a fuller entity was perceived. If, for example, the Polonius role was doubled with the gravedigger later in the Stuart period, there is evidence, I should think, that the two were perceived together as comic roles that had previously been undertaken by a single performer. Since Hamlet’s exchange with the Clown is of roughly equal length in Q1 and Q2, we should surely expect that the same would hold true for the Corambis and Polonius parts, should we not? In dissecting the fine detail of Yamada’s table, however, we discover that when Corambis-Polonius is speaking with Laertes, Ophelia, or the King, there are large discrepancies between the two versions. It is important on this point that we make one further observation. We have already noted there are some discrepancies in the exchange between the two gravediggers on the subjects of burial and suicide, and based on Yamada’s table, we confirm that when Hamlet is absent from the scene, the misalignment between the two is very high: the 35 lines of H3v are matched to 79 lines in Q2, and H4r is misaligned by 34 lines to 64. Similarly, we should note that while Corambis-Polonius scenes show a high level of misalignment for the most part, the exchange on pages 30 and 32 (E3v and E4v) between Hamlet and Corambis is quite closely aligned with the same section in Q2 (36 to 33, and 35 to 41). When Hamlet is on stage, then, the two snap into alignment, at least to the extent that the amount of space devoted to Hamlet’s dialogue in each is roughly the same, but when he is off stage, both Polonius and the gravedigger have a lot more to say in Q2 than in Q1. Hamlet’s lines were obviously altered at some point between the Q1 and Q2, yet the same amount of space was nevertheless devoted to him, whereas Corambis-Polonius and the Clowngravedigger both have many lines that are identical between versions and a good many new lines added for the Q2. If we are to believe that the author of Q1 was the company’s leading clown, then surely we should expect to find that the parts most associated with a comic touch in the play would be at least as long in Q1, if not longer? As always, we must reject any line of reasoning that settles us back into a monolithic view of a single text. What

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may seem like an awkward contradiction can be resolved by this idea that the Q1 bears witness to a number of moments of production: not only does it contain residues of both a memorial reconstruction written after Q2 and recollected material from a version that predates Q2; we can imagine that it might also contains traces of more than one earlier version. Let us recapitulate: Kempe’s role in the creation of the Hamlet part in or around 1588 would lead to a predominantly Clown-oriented role, but we also suggested that the parts of Corambis and the gravedigger would have been topical at that same time; this need not imply that the two roles were as developed in 1588 as they are either in the Q1 or the Q2/F texts. We have considered the possibility that Q1 contains evidence of a Hamlet who bears the hallmarks of a Kempe-like Clown up until the graveyard scene, after which his complicity in the deaths of Corambis-Polonius and Ophelia—the latter being an addition to the Amleth storyline—rebounds to lead him to his own demise in the final scene. Yet both the Corambis and gravedigger parts in Q1 also bear the hallmarks of Kempe. We can account for this by returning to Burbage, who in a few short years after 1588 was to become the dominant figure in the company, as well as one of the dominant figures of the Elizabethan stage. Were the company to revive Hamlet in the years after Burbage came to prominence, it was inevitable that he would take on the role of Hamlet. If Kempe had played Hamlet in a 1588 or 1589 production, he would need to be found a new part. Among the parts that contribute most substantially to the storyline as it is inherited from the Amleth tale, as we have noted, the Corambis figure presents as a potential Vice-figure meddling in the affairs of others and leading to their downfall. The gravedigger might have only been necessary in 1588 to air common concerns over Ophelia’s burial, as per questions over the burials of Katherine Hamlett and Anne Cecil—and of course the graveyard scene allowed Shakespeare to relocate the main character’s ruminations on death from the England visited by Amleth to Hamlet’s Denmark—but in the Q1 he is also a very clearly marked Clown figure who bests Hamlet in verbal byplay.144 I suggest, then, that in a production that comes after the rise to prominence of Burbage, the role of Corambis would have undergone some change to provide Kempe with more comic fodder and, since the source story relies on him being killed off in the bedchamber scene, one further comic role was added to provide Kempe with an opportunity later in the play to upstage the great Burbage. In so doing, the Clown in Q1 signals Hamlet’s imminent fall to the audience. Q1 thus contains traces of Kempe’s Hamlet and Kempe’s Corambis and Clown-gravedigger, which need not be considered as a contradiction in the text. The problem is still present, though, of Q2’s enlargements for

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both parts. It does not stand to reason that the author of Q1 would provide shorter versions of two roles that he had played. Yet I have made a case for suspecting that Kempe had never seen the full Q2 production, having departed after acquiring the Marcellus-Lucianus-Voltemand part, so if the Q2 expansions had not been made to the Corambis-Polonius and Clowngravedigger parts until this production, Kempe would not have been privy to them prior to his departure.145 The question remains: why would these parts have been enlarged in 1599? I have already pointed out that among the additional material delivered by the Clown the question of Ophelia’s burial rites is transformed into a pseudo-legal argument, stripping away a great deal of the comic value from the exchange. The same, I suggest, can be said of the material added to Corambis’s lines for Polonius. Consider, for example, how Corambis first brings to the King’s notice his discovery of the cause of Hamlet’s madness in Q1: Certaine it is that hee is madde: mad let vs grant him then: Now to know the cause of this effect, Or else to say the cause of this defect, For this effect defectiue comes by cause.146

These lines are repeated in the Q2, but the latter also adds some fourteen further lines in which Polonius denies in ironic mode the prospect that his observations will contain any art: My Liege and Madam, to expostulate What maiestie should be, what dutie is, Why day is day, night, night, and time is time, Therefore breuitie is the soule of wit, And tediousnes the lymnes and outward flourishes, I will be briefe, your noble sonne is mad: Mad call I it, for to define true madnes, What ist but to be nothing els but mad, But let that goe. Quee. More matter with less art. Pol. Maddam, I swear I vse no art at all, That hee’s mad tis true, tis true, tis pitty, And pitty tis tis true, a foolish figure, But farewell it, for I will vse no art. Mad let vs graunt him then, and now remaines That we find out the cause of this effect.147

What passes for brevity, “the soul of wit” indeed, in Q1 is transformed in Q2 into the very thing that Polonius mocks: tediousness. Polonius is more the tedious old fool than is Corambis: Corambis is just as meddlesome as

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Polonius but more often to the point. By adding material to the part, Q2 diminishes Kempe’s contribution and shifts the figure from Clown to Fool, a figure more suited to Robert Armin’s talents. A potential error in Q1 might also be a residue of Corambis signalling a response to Nashe’s complaint about the English playwrights butchering Seneca in their tragedies, and a nod and a wink at the players’ intentions in updating the Amleth source text. We have noted the speech, present in all three versions, about the travelling players and their ability in performing in any combination of dramatic forms. Corambis in Q1 hails the arriving players thus: Cor. The best Actors in Christendome, Either for Comedy, Tragedy, Historie, Pastorall, Pastorall, Historicall, Historicall, Comicall, Comicall historicall, Pastorall, Tragedy historicall: Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plato too light:148

In both Q2 and F, Plato is corrected to Plautus, which matches the opinion of Meres, at least, in designating Seneca and Plautus as the greatest writers of tragedy and comedy, respectively. The overused commas in Corambis’s speech are also replaced in Polonius’s speech by more correct punctuation to create obvious couplings like “Tragicall-Historicall.”149 Yet despite its clumsiness—or, perhaps, just because of it—Corambis’s version is more to the point than is Polonius’s speech in the more familiar versions of the play: out of Corambis’s confusion, we might sense that the categories of drama are wholly interchangeable rather than simply being amenable to cross-category couplings. Furthermore, this speech in all of its versions is able to be read as a rebuff to complaints against English Senecan tragedy, which, we are told, cannot be “too heavy” indeed. Why Plato, though? For some critics, the Q1 actor-reporter is simply revealing his gross ignorance of theatre history with this failed recollection of the name of Plautus.150 For at least two reasons, we need not read “Plato” in error: around two hundred years before Plautus, the leading Greek comic playwright was Plato Comicus, and while none of his plays survive, he is recorded by contemporaries as being outstanding for humour that was based, for one, on parodies of ancient myths and legends;151 and if we do in fact read the name “Plato” as a reference to the philosopher of much greater repute, we might nevertheless recount that at the end of his Symposium, the comic writer Aristophanes and the tragedian Agathon are compelled by Socrates to agree that the master of one must also be master of the other, since all life is ultimately tragicomic.152 In reference to either Plato, Corambis may be providing a contextual frame for Hamlet, as a parody on the old legend

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of Amleth and as an attempt at a comic turn in a story that is designated by its French source text as a tragical history (a coupling of terms mirrored in Corambis’s “Tragedy historicall” in Q1).

Caesar circa 1593, 1599, etc. If Q1 bears witness to the changes made to the parts of Corambis and the gravedigger to accommodate the change in responsibilities for Kempe, we may in fact possess very few of the 1588 lines for these parts. While I have argued that the figure of Corambis would have been topical in 1588, his earliest lines—in so far as they may survive in traces of dialogue in the Q1—are not so easy to isolate. It may be more appropriate to shift focus at this point onto the lines that we do possess in order to locate evidence of a history of additions in order to demonstrate the viability of the argument for the evolution of the role over time. If all of the character’s lines were studied for topical markers and all could be shown to pertain only to one specific moment in history, then any argument for evolution is scuppered; on the other hand, an analysis of topical markers—including the change in the character’s name—may lead us to identify the history of changes made to the character according to a series of key historical points of reference. I will start by drawing the reader’s attention to a topical reference in what is likely to be considered by some to be the least likely place: the reference to Julius Caesar. In all three versions of the play, in the exchange between Hamlet and Corambis-Polonius prior to the performance of The Murder of Gonzago, reference is made to a performance of Julius Caesar. In Q1, the exchange reads thus: My lord, you played in the Vniuersitie. Cor. That I did my L: and I was counted a good actor. Ham. What did you enact there? Cor. My lord, I did act Julius Caesar, I was killed In the Capitoll, Brutus killed me. Ham. It was a brute part of him, To kill so capitall a calfe.153

Invariably, this exchange, which is reproduced almost verbatim in the Q2 and F versions, is seen by scholars as proof that Hamlet was written after Julius Caesar, since all three versions give us this very clear reference to the earlier play.154 Since we know that Shakespeare’s company performed Julius Caesar in September, 1599, this is by such reckoning posited as the earliest possible date for Hamlet.155 Closer inspection of the exchange itself can be used to complicate the

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matter. There is, as Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor claim, no reason to suspect that the exchange is presented for any reason other than to provide Hamlet with clear opportunity to play with Corambis-Polonius by making puns on the name Brutus and the word “Capitol,” and it need not be read as a topical reference to a particular play at all.156 I tend to think that the exchange does more than provide Hamlet with a brief parting shot at the character he will, in fact, kill—an inevitable development that would not have been lost on any audience members familiar with the Amleth tale and the fate of the spy therein. To extend the issue further, we need to pursue this question of the name of the play as presented in the exchange: Brutus is italicized, suggesting that it is a personal name, and so is Julius Caesar. Corambis does not say, “I did act in Julius Caesar;” he rather says “I did act Julius Caesar,” by which we may just as easily take him to be saying that he played the part of Julius Caesar without actually naming the play in which he did so. Rather than dismiss any possibility that a topical allusion is being made here, because we now see that the name of the play is not provided in the exchange, I suggest that the exchange does in fact demand topical reading by virtue of the geographical marker provided by Hamlet at the start: “the Vniuersitie.” Admittedly, Hamlet may not be referring to any specific University, but it does seem an odd reference to provide if the intention was to make the pun devoid of any topical allusion. Remember that the Q1 title page makes specific reference to the play having been diverse times played at Cambridge and Oxford Universities and, indeed, that a plaque at the Golden Cross in Oxford University claims that Hamlet was performed there in 1593. To this we shall add the observation that a University play by the name of Caesar and Pompey, or Caesar’s Revenge was very likely to have been performed at Oxford sometime between 1592 and 1596.157 Ernest Schanzer pointed out some similarities between Julius Caesar and the Oxford play in a 1954 item in Notes and Queries, and the parallels were further strengthened by Jacqueline Pearson in a 1981 note in Shakespeare Quarterly, but the argument does not seem to have gained much purchase with Shakespeare scholars except to be acknowledged as one of the possible minor sources for Shakespeare’s Caesar—Plutarch’s Lives continues to be regarded as the principal source.158 Pearson also maps significant resonances of Caesar’s Revenge within Richard II, the point being that the presence of such resonances, written around 1595, tells us that Shakespeare must have seen Caesar’s Revenge before that time. For Pearson, a record of an appearance by Lord Strange’s Men in Oxford on 6 October, 1593 provides opportunity for this moment of witnessing.159 Pearson does not make any connection to the claims that Hamlet was performed in Oxford in 1593, but I suggest that the Hamlet

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reference does add weight to Pearson’s argument, just as the concatenation of these various pieces of evidence provides a strong case for suspecting that the University play to which Hamlet and Corambis refer is Caesar’s Revenge, seen by Shakespeare and his companions at Oxford in late 1593. Conventional wisdom nevertheless dictates that such a claim falls down on the basis that Corambis’s Caesar was killed in “the Capitoll,” which has for centuries been generally considered as one of Shakespeare’s deliberate deviations from Plutarch’s account of the assassination: Plutarch’s Caesar is killed in the Theatre of Pompey, which had been temporarily designated as a senate meeting place during reconstruction of the Curia Hostilia.160 Since Shakespeare’s play sees Caesar killed in the Capitol rather than the Theatre, Corambis surely must be referring to the version of Julius Caesar which we are quite certain was penned by Shakespeare in 1599. Yet over a century ago, in 1907, Lizette Andrews Fisher pointed out that wisdom of this kind mistakenly attributed to Shakespeare an invention that was in fact much older: in The Life and Acts of the most Victorious Conqueror, Robert Bruce, King of Scotland, written in the thirteenth century by John Barbour, Archdeacon of Aberdeen; in Morte Arthure, a fourteenth-century text; and in Chaucer’s Monk’s Tale, there are explicit statements to the effect that Caesar was killed in the Capitol.161 Importantly, as Brents Stirling pointed out in 1962, a close reading of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar shows that the playwright is actually equivocal on the subject of the geography of Rome, as interchangeable references to place names lead us to conclude that “in Shakespeare the Senate House, the Capitol, and Pompey’s Theatre are all one—see, for example, II.iv.1 and 10-11; III.i.114-115.”162 We can add to Stirling’s argument by observing that Caesar’s Revenge contains exactly the same confusion over geography: in this play, the terms “Senate-house” (3.6), “Pompeius Court” (3.6), and “Capitol” (1.1, 1.3, and 3.1) are used with no clear differentiation throughout.163 Since the last term is used more often than the others, indeed, it may be reasonable to expect that anybody who saw Caesar’s Revenge performed might have thought it situated the locus of the action in the Capitol, but that this was in no way differentiated from the Senate House or Pompey’s Theatre. If Lord Strange’s Men had viewed a performance of Caesar’s Revenge at Oxford University in 1593, they could easily have slipped a reference to it into a performance of their own as a particularly local point of reference. Do we have any historical reason for the change to be made at this time to the character of Corambis, rather than to some other character, in order to accommodate this local allusion? It is worth noting that there is one other allusion to Julius Caesar in all three versions of the play: Hamlet refers to Caesar being “dead and turnd to clay” in the graveyard scene, immediately

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before the arrival of the funeral procession.164 In Q2, there is also a third reference, in Horatio’s speech about the “high and palmy state of Rome” (1.1.113), which is absent from both Q1 and F, about which I shall have more to add in a moment. The two references to Caesar in Q1 are telling because they are located in dialogue between Hamlet and the two figures that Kempe is likely to have adopted after ceding Hamlet to Burbage. 1593 proves also to be a propitious year for a revival of Hamlet if we recall the suggestions I have made about the centrality of the Burghley-as-Corambis association to the adaptation of the Amleth tale to the events and figures of particularly topical interest in 1588. After suffering from severe ill health in late 1592, Burghley began to withdraw from public service throughout 1593. In a letter from Burghley to his son, Robert Cecil, dated 21 May of the latter year, the Lord High Treasurer writes, “though I am in pain in body, yet I am both in pain and comfort in mind; in pain that I cannot come in person to her service, in comfort that I cannot do my duty, yet she accepteth my willing mind for a work.”165 Over the ensuing months, the correspondence in the Cecil Papers shows Robert Cecil assuming many of his father’s duties, with fewer incoming letters being addressed directly to Burghley himself. R.A. Roberts notes in his introduction to the Calendar of the Cecil Papers in Hatfield House, Volume 5: 1594-1595 that within these letters, of Burghley at this time, “now aged and infirm, there is but little appearance. The number of communications addressed to him are but few; those emanating directly from him fewer still.”166 Burghley remained Lord High Treasurer in name from 1593 through to his death on 4 August, 1598, but his duties were overtaken by Robert, who had been appointed Secretary of State in 1590. With Burghley for the most part withdrawing from public service during 1593, the company may well have felt at liberty to revive a play that was developed five years earlier around the caricature of the Lord High Treasurer. As I previously suggested, a 1593 performance at the University could also be considered a trial run by the company of the play that they planned to revive in London in 1594. Liberty always had its limitations, of course, in Tudor society. It is even tempting to see a 1593 revival of the play built in part around the figure of Corambis as a tentative expression of spite by the players, since one of Burghley’s last acts as head of the Privy Council was to order a closure of the London theatres on 23 June, 1592, in what amounted to an overreaction to a complaint about a “riot” in Southwark.167 Before the order could be lifted, the closure was extended due to plague six weeks later, but it is likely that the players would have remembered the weeks of lost revenue during peak season owing to Burghley’s excessive reaction. Burghley’s imminent demise—or what must have seemed as

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such—could have been seen by any playing company as an opportune moment to enact the kind of revenge that the abstracts and brief chronicles of their time knew only best how to inflict: character assassination. For the revival of the play, of course, with Burbage taking on the leading role of Hamlet, it fell to Kempe to portray the doomed but meddling Vice-figure, Corambis, with a gravedigger thrown in for good measure. This account is, of course, perhaps too shaped by a narrative of my own making at this point. To say that actors took revenge against Burghley is painting over the fine detail, irretrievably lost as it may be, with easily too broad a brush stroke. Doubtless there would have been any number of other factors in play at the time, but we can nevertheless be quite sure that the play was revived in 1594—given the evidence from Henslowe—with a likelihood that it had been performed at Oxford in 1593 beforehand, and so we find ourselves drawn inexorably toward questions of purpose; questions, that is, of method. Based on the investigation of specific sections of text, I am suggesting here that, at the very least, well-known changes in the life of the man most widely held to be the object of caricature in Corambis may provide us with a glimpse of the possibility that the play was altered at that moment and for the purpose of responding to such changes. As the studies provided in Chapter Two should serve to remind us here, players frequently revived, revised, and suppressed material at the drop of a hat on the basis of known changes in the lives of their social superiors. Such changes need not have always been evident at the level of national or international affairs, though the lives of the nobility did overlap with questions of wider import, and so we must always be prepared to look for method as a response to the fine detail of the lives of those who could shape the fortunes of the players, as much as in the life of the playwright alone, where such details are known. I hope to have shown here simply that a 1593 revival, with changes made on the basis that both Burghley’s social power and Kempe’s status within the company were beginning to wane, seems plausible, and can be linked to what can be considered residual textual traces in Q1. For the next step, I want to skip ahead to 1599, the time at which The Lord Chamberlain’s Men were dusting off Hamlet for yet another revival. By proposing links between a putative 1593 revival and Burghley’s decline, the changes in status experienced by Kempe, and references to a play about Julius Caesar, I also hope to have pinpointed some factors that come into play once again for a 1599 revival. Burghley had of course passed away before this time, having finally succumbed to his infirmities in August, 1598. This could be seen as reason enough for the decision to change Corambis to Polonius. Indeed, it is at this point that I want to return to an issue that I have

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opted to hold in abeyance now for several sections of this book, because we are now in a position to consider afresh the changes that were made to several characters in Q2, including the addition of a name. I pointed out previously that the names of Marcellus and Barnardo do appear in Q1, but this is due to a reconstruction based on the Marcellus part alone, and their names are missing elsewhere in Q1 from all lines that cannot be linked to any memorial reconstruction process. In the earlier performances of 1588 and 1593 to 1596, for example, these sentinels would have been unnamed. It is for this latest performance, then, that the names of Marcellus and the other sentinels are added, as are the names of Claudius and Polonius. All bar one of the names added for this latest version bear a striking point of similarity: they are all Latinate names. A play now populated by Barnardo, Claudius, Francisco, Marcellus, and Polonius, for example, might easily have been mistaken for a Roman play were it not for the fact that the title informs its audience that its eponymous hero is Prince of Denmark. The Latinate flavour must be considered deliberate, but to what purpose? The answer is once again to be found, I suggest, in a reference to Julius Caesar. In a passage present in Q2 but absent from both Q1 and F, as noted above, Horatio compares the ominous appearance of the Ghost with the portents foretelling the fall of Julius Caesar in “the most high and palmy state of Rome” (1.1.113). Because this passage is not accompanied by Marcellus lines, its absence from the reconstruction of this scene in Q1 is explained. Horatio’s speech in Q2 immediately precedes the second appearance of the Ghost. Barnardo’s speech immediately before the Ghost first appears bears a number of stylistic similarities to Horatio’s speech, but it is present in all three versions because it does accompany Marcellus lines and is therefore likely to have been included in the Q1 text by way of the reconstruction. We should imagine, though, that Barnardo’s speech was one of the later additions made for the Q2 text rather than part of the earlier versions. To establish this point more firmly, look at the two speeches alongside each other: Bar. Last night of all, When yond same starre thats weastward from the pole, Had made its course t’illume that part of heauen Where now it burns, Marcellus and my selfe The bell then beating one.168 Hora. A moth it is to trouble the mindes eye: In the most high and palmy state of Rome, A little ere the mightiest Iulius fell The graues stood tenantlesse, and the sheeted dead

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The particular similarity to which I wish to draw the reader’s attention is the use in each speech of what we might call cosmological phenomena, each beginning with the stars and heaven, and each positioned in the text as an immediate predication for the appearance of the Ghost. These are the first two instances in the play in which such phenomena are pointed out in such explicit terms. Why would these lines be of particular importance to a 1599 revision of the play, and what is the significance for this of the reference to Julius Caesar? In 1599, as we know, The Lord Chamberlain’s Men began to perform plays in their new purpose-built theatre, The Globe. Among the plays that scholars consider likely to have been the first performed in the new theatre, Julius Caesar possesses what may arguably be the strongest case, and its case is built on cosmology. In “12 June 1599: Opening Day at Shakespeare’s Globe,” Steve Sohmer weighs up the evidence for As You Like It and Henry V as candidates for the first play staged at The Globe but determines on the basis of numerous internal references that Julius Caesar provides us with the necessary clues to situate the new theatre’s opening day as 12 June, 1599: according to the prevailing English Julian calendar in use at the time, this was the Summer Solstice. The Julian calendar was, of course, handed down from antiquity as a reform initiated by Caesar, so there is added topicality in Julius Caesar because, as Sohmer points out, the play draws significant symbolic force from questions of time at this moment in history when the Julian calendar was itself under siege from the new Gregorian calendar—the adoption of the latter caused problems related to the shifting of dates for Easter and other important calendar events.170 In the choice of Julius Caesar as subject matter for the first play staged at The Globe, I think we can also see a gesture on the part of the company to a particular architectural vision that was to mark a break from the more pragmatic world of James Burbage and his Theatre. Kent T. Van den Berg explains Burbage’s design for The Theatre: he “was no architect but a carpenter-turned-actor who merely copied existing structures” and his achievement was merely a pragmatic one, uniting the

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function of the private indoor stage with the public open-air auditorium.171 For Van den Berg, this functional approach remained typical of theatre construction in the decades that followed, but he records the argument offered by Francis Yates that Elizabethan theatre design stemmed more creatively from a “bold and original adaptation of the ancient [Roman] theatre,” incorporating symbols of cosmic significance into the design to link the structure to a Renaissance world view.172 The more measured and perhaps more standard view lies somewhere between the two, and may as Van den Berg rightly suggests be best summed up in Alvin B. Kernan’s proposition that the Elizabethan playhouse was “obviously a model in plaster and wood of the conservative world view of the late Middle Ages ... a fixed cosmos of earth and heaven and hell.”173 Yet in each of these formulations, there is a desire for a consistently Elizabethan playhouse, whereas I am wont to suggest that in The Globe, The Lord Chamberlain’s Men envisaged a playhouse that would be anything but typical. What Van den Berg considers to be unlikely but Yates sees as typical of Elizabethan playhouses, I am inclined to see as accurate—if for nowhere else—at least for The Globe. What would set the new theatre apart from its rivals and indeed from its predecessor—with the wood of which it was constructed— was a grand vision captured least of all in the ostentatious name given to the new site (The Globe) and its motto: Totus mundus agit histrionem (the actor plays all the world). Whether or not The Globe achieved the kind of classical architectural unity that Yates sees as the goal of Elizabethan playhouse architecture, and Van den Berg’s analyses provide clear grounds for suspecting that it did not, what is important here is the perception expressed by the players that their new theatre did aspire toward a grander architectural and symbolic vision than was the norm. What I find to be particularly compelling in this respect is that three of the examples often cited by scholars in support of the theory that Elizabethan playhouses provided a model in situ for the cosmos are those plays that remain candidates for the first performance staged at The Globe: As You Like It (with its explicit reference to the new theatre’s motto in the “All the world’s a stage” speech); Henry V (with the famous “wooden O” lines delivered by the chorus); and of course Julius Caesar (with its many references to the spectacle contained by Pompey’s Theatre).174 Another play often cited as a model of this kind is Hamlet, but it is never mentioned as a candidate for the first play to have been staged at The Globe. Hamlet’s “What piece of work is a man” speech in Act 2, Scene 2, provides explicit references to structural features of the interior of The Globe: the “sterile promontory” is both “this goodly frame the earth” and the stage jutting out toward the audience; the “most excellent canopy

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the air” refers of course to the open air environment, although the “brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire” is a none-too-subtle reference to the enclosure itself and its ornamentation (2.2.264-68), as I noted earlier. Before he makes these claims, in fact, a more explicit Globe reference is produced in his brief encounter with the Ghost: “whiles memory holds a seat / In this distracted globe” (1.5.96-97). These details are absent from the Q1 version of both speeches, which are offered in that text in highly abridged form. While I do not wish to suggest that Hamlet should be considered as the first play to have been performed at The Globe, I do think that it should be seen as part of the short series of plays that around 1599 or early 1600 refer explicitly to the building itself in what might be nothing less than an extended exercise in bragging about the new venue.175 We may give to Julius Caesar a prime position in this sequence, though, because it establishes for this one theatre what Yates had attempted to argue to be true of all Elizabethan playhouses: a link in a kind of architectural genealogy that could be traced directly to the high and palmy State of Rome. Caesar had, historically, been responsible for initiating the project that would become one of the lasting monuments to the Roman Republic: the Theatre of Marcellus, which to this day still dominates the landscape in the historic district of Sant’Angelo. Caesar was assassinated while the project was only in its earliest stages, and so it was the work of Marcus Claudius Marcellus that was subsequently responsible for seeing the Theatre to its completion, although he too died before it was completed.176 It is after Marcellus that the structure was named Theatrum Marcelli by his uncle, the Emperor Augustus. While Pompey’s Theatre features in Julius Caesar as one of the sites of spectacle, then, the play complicates any clear sense that it was the site of Caesar’s death. It is the greater theatre, which Caesar had set on the pathway to construction, that I believe is also referenced in Hamlet. While the play begins by establishing the stage as the platform at Elsinore, the arrival of Horatio and Marcellus signals a shift to a view of the space as both more immediate and more cosmologically broad. In the same way that Julius Caesar had connected the moment of staging to the issues of calendars and cosmology, Barnardo’s pointing to a specific star and spot in the heavens works to situate both the speaker and his audience in a space that is in one direction cosmological—the stars in the heavens— but in the other direction pointing to the precise analogue for the audience at the Globe to the images of stars and heavens painted on the inside of the building. Importantly, it is not Marcellus who speaks the lines: Marcellus is therefore able to be named in these lines. With the mention of his name, in this context, the Theatrum Marcelli becomes a plausible allusion. Once

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the name is spoken, the speaker breaks off to behold the appearance of the Ghost. If the allusion is missed the first time, Horatio extends matters by once more drawing the audience’s attention to the stars, to the canopy and the stage, quite possibly to an image of Neptune but at least to images of the sea, and on this occasion to the fallen Caesar. Once again, the allusions foreshadow the arrival of the Ghost, and again it is the name of Marcellus that signals the end of the speech, as Horatio prompts the sentinel to “Stop it” before the Ghost may depart on the crowing of the cock (1.1.138). With the name of Marcellus, the other name that will soon become the object of attention is also invoked: Marcus Marcellus’s full name included the name Claudius. This is not such an uncommon name that it could only reference the builder of the Theatrum Marcelli, to be sure: Claudius is the name of numerous Roman dignitaries and at least one Emperor, this last Claudius being a great-great-grandnephew of Julius Caesar. This Claudius was in fact a historian of some note himself, since his writings—although lost to us—are credited as providing much of the source material for the later Roman histories.177 In the selection of names for characters that had in all likelihood been left unnamed in previous versions of the play, then, it seems that Shakespeare was being drawn toward Roman history, which would make perfectly good sense if he had only recently been delving into such material in preparation of Julius Caesar. If it is true, as I suggested in the first part of this section, that a 1593 revival was altered to align it with a performance of Caesar’s Revenge, then it could even be possible that in preparing Julius Caesar for their debut performance at The Globe some six years later, Shakespeare or members of his company were reminded of their earlier attempts to align the two plays and determined at that moment to revive the old Danish tragedy again in similar fashion. In addition to a new reference to Caesar and new references to the interior of The Globe being inserted into Hamlet, a sprinkling of Roman names were added. As Lisa Hopkins argues in The Cultural Uses of the Caesars on the English Renaissance Stage, a further spate of thematic correspondences between the two plays lend weight to this idea that the historical narrative of the Julio-Claudian dynasty provides a frame through which English audiences would have understood the trials of the Danish court in Hamlet, making it reasonable to expect that Hamlet was planned to be performed soon after Julius Caesar.178 We might also remember at this point that if The Globe’s opening performance was scheduled to coincide with the Summer Solstice on 12 June, 1599, as Sohmer argues, then it might have been made all the more dangerous a proposition for the players by the Bishops’ Ban, which was handed down on 1 June, 1599, and the resulting book burnings that took place on 4 June.179 The earliest reference we have to a performance of

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Julius Caesar is from September, 1599, recorded in German by Thomas Platter the Younger, although as Gabriel Egan has demonstrated, even this reference is notoriously unreliable: it may be that the traveller saw another play about Caesar at the Boar’s Head Inn.180 If Sohmer is right, that there was every intention to open the new theatre on the Summer Solstice, using a play that made topical mention of the controversy over uncertain dates under the Gregorian calendar, the timing of the Ban of 1599, coupled with the lack of external corroborating evidence for the theatre having actually opened on that date and with this play being staged, must give us reason to wonder if the grandiose plans of the company ultimately came to nothing in the middle of 1599. Whether the play was performed or not, as we have seen, it was not registered for publication nor was it published until it was being readied for inclusion in the Folio in 1623. If it had been planned for performance little more than a week after the full weight of the Bishops’ Ban became apparent, then it may be no surprise that the players decided to remove it from circulation.

Caesar Redivivus If the names of Marcellus and Claudius are derived from the ancient history of Imperial Rome, the names of Barnardo, Francisco, or Polonius would seem to be taken from material of more recent vintage. Indeed, the names of the first two sentinels we encounter are simply too abundant in viable sources—English documentary history being replete with men who bear the names of either Bernard (Barnard in variant spelling) or Francis— for scholars to have wanted to explore the names as being significant in any manner relative to their rather small roles in the play. Still, it is worth mentioning here that these two names stand apart from the Roman names by virtue of their more modern, Italianate form. Despite this, there may be a source for the names that is much closer to home for Shakespeare. Recall that in 1596 Shakespeare renewed his family’s claims on a coat-of-arms, quite possibly prompted by the death of his son Hamnet. One of the most famous stories relating to the acquisition of coats-of-arms in Elizabethan England pertained, as it happens, to a dispute between the distantly related Sir Francis Drake and Sir Barnard Drake, who in 1581 are said to have come to blows when Francis, eager to assert his right to circulate in polite company, laid claim to the arms of the Drakes of Ashe, a claim disputed of course by Barnard—their dispute was resolved only after intervention by the Queen.181 Sir Francis Drake died in January, 1596, which would make stories of his exploits and his scandals topical through renewed circulation in London. Certainly, we can confirm that the ballad of Sir Francis Drake,

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His honorable lifes commendation and his Tragicall deaths lamentation by Charles Fitz-Geffrey was popular enough to warrant two print runs in 1596.182 Of interest in this possibly tangential story is the observation that Sir Barnard Drake had, in 1553, married Gertrude Fortescue of Fillieth.183 Since there was a version of Hamlet staged at The Theatre in 1596, we might at least look closely at coincidences such as these with a sense of wonder: was the Gertred of Q1 altered to Gertrude on the strength of such an association, and were the names of Barnardo and Francisco added in 1596, in fact, on the basis of this suggestive anecdote about a quarrel over a coat-of-arms between two famous men , and were these names changed later, circa 1599, by the addition of a single vowel sound to construct the Italianate form in line with the Roman names being added at that time? My inclination here is to simply raise these questions and leave them open, because I want to draw a distinction between method and currency. It is one thing to show that certain names could have been on the lips of people in and around London at the time that they might have been added to a Shakespeare play (currency), but it remains another thing altogether to seek to demonstrate that the addition of said names to said play could have been a response to a specific set of circumstances (method). The series of coincidences outlined in the last paragraph fall only into the category of currency, and remain untouchable in terms of a question of the methods evident in the play. The closest we can get to the question of method is to observe the fact that Shakespeare had renewed his father’s claim on a coatof-arms, which would provide for him a sense of some kind of bond with the recently deceased Sir Francis Drake, who similarly sought to signal his rising stature with the acquisition of a coat-of-arms. We can go no further in that direction. A similar point must be made, I suggest, about the name that was adopted to replace Corambis. One argument used by Oxfordians states that the name of Polonius contains a pun that links it to Burghley, in the same way that Corambis had punned on his motto and other aspects of his life. It is argued that the pun in “Polonius” points to the nicknames by which Burghley is said to have been known: he was apparently known as either “Pondus” or “Polus.”184 Yet as Terry Ross demonstrates, evidence that Burghley was ever known as “Polus” is based on a misreading of the three instances in which “Polus” is used in Gabriel Harvey’s Gratulationes Valdinenses (1578) to refer, in fact, to Cardinal Pole.185 The evidence for Burghley being known as “Pondus” does have a modicum of historical support, given that Roger Manners is known to have used this name in a letter to the Earl of Rutland, dated 2 June, 1583, although as Ross points out further, the letter does not in fact name Burghley as the subject of this nickname. Even if we accept that Manners was referring indirectly to the

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Lord High Treasurer with this name, the name “Pondus” would signify simply as “weighty” or “powerful,” since this is what the word means in Latin, and in any case the association is harder to make stick on the basis of “Pondus” alone. The matter of the origins of Polonius should in fact be far more straightforward than this, giving us no need to look for obscure composite terms, since for at least seven decades prior to the end of the seventeenth century the common word used in English to refer to a Polish person was “Polonian.”186 Geoffrey Bullough notes in his account of possible sources for Hamlet that after 1598, two reasons for framing the character of Claudius’s adviser with reference to the Polish would be immediately apparent to anybody with an eye on current affairs: in 1597, a Polish ambassador had enraged Elizabeth with the tenor of his protests against English privateers in the Baltic, and her response was hailed by her contemporaries as a triumph of the crown over the “braving Polack”; and the 1598 translation of a Polish text, The Counsellor, provided English readers with a popular target for ridicule.187 Certainly, in Q2 and F, Polonius is called “Counsellor” (in Q2 it is “Counsayler”) by Hamlet, referring to the “foolish prating knave” he has killed.188 The presence of three references to “Polack” or the Poles in Q1 might seem to complicate matters, but in each case it is likely to be a product of memorial reconstruction: Horatio’s speech about the “sleaded pollax” is one line before Marcellus speaks so will have appeared in the cue,189 and the other two uses of the term are delivered by Voltemand in his substantive speech in Act 2, Scene 2, so the lines would have been in the Marcellus-Lucianus-Voltemand part.190 Q2 contains seven further references to Poland in speech parts that are absent from Q1, including four in the lengthy exchange between Hamlet and the Norwegian Captain, an exchange notable also for its absence from F.191 Just as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern had most likely been added solely for the purpose of adding a contemporary Danish flavour, the references to Poland can be seen as having been added after 1598 with a view to trading on current sentiment within London. The change from Corambis to Polonius, then, would seem a part of this process. In changing the character of the Vicefigure to the Fool, as I have suggested, the playwright was altering the part to suit Kempe’s replacement, Robert Armin, which suggests that many of the alterations to the Polonius character were indeed made no earlier than late 1599. Julius Caesar was, as Greenblatt points out, written “without a juicy part for a fool,” which supports the claim that Kempe was already marginalised by his fellow Chamberlain’s Men at the time it was being readied for the stage.192 Yet I suspect that the Corambis part was already due to undergo changes occasioned by the death of Burghley, signaled by

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a change in name, for which purpose the Polonian Counsellor would have seemed as good as any. For a stronger sense of the method evident in Q2, we need to return to the structural changes implemented therein and which take the text away from the Belleforest version of events. Reading debates about the origins of Polonius, whether as a caricature of a known historical personage or as a fictional creation of Shakespeare’s own making, I remain struck by the absence of Belleforest from the vast majority of the exchanges. As I noted earlier in this chapter, whatever form the character was eventually going to take, the Corambis-Polonius figure was in the first instance necessary by virtue of the fact that the figure he represents is present in Belleforest, and the drama is complicated by taking another of Belleforest’s characters and recasting the temptress figure as the daughter of the King’s spy. The role of the Corambis-Polonius character remains, for all intents and purposes, relatively unchanged throughout the subsequent development of the play, such that events in which his hand is felt progress in the same fashion in Q1 or Q2/F. The crucial change that I wish to reconsider is the movement of the “To be or not to be” speech and “nunnery” exchange from before Hamlet’s exchanges with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Corambis, and the Players (in Q1) to afterwards (in Q2). In Q1, of course, the placement of this section is aligned with Belleforest’s version and, as such, depicts Hamlet in the course of passing the first of a series of tests designed by the King to detect the nature of his melancholic disposition. He then moves on to further tests. When we see Hamlet enter, “poring vppon a booke,” as the King says,193 we are already predisposed—if we know Belleforest, as a good many members of the early modern audiences would have done—to understand his words as subterfuge. “To be or not to be” in Q1 is marked as Hamlet’s triumph over those who spy on him, indeed, just as Amleth had succeeded in confounding those who spied on him as he confronted the temptress. In Q2, by shifting this scene, the playwright pushes Hamlet along the path toward his demise, and gives the audience as much reason to suspect his madness as to doubt it. By the time he voices the words, “To be or not to be,” in Q2, Hamlet has already reiterated the loss of his mirth (2.2.262) and bemoaned his lot as a “rogue and peasant slave” (2.2.485), and when he enters soon after the beginning of what the Folio marks as Act 3, Scene 1, he is no longer pouring upon a book. In Q2, the earlier entry in which he is reading a book is retained—in the equivalent of Act 2, Scene 2—but he is cut off from speaking by Polonius, shifting their discussion immediately to the “Fishmonger” exchange (2.2.171). By relocating the scene, Q2 thus enables Polonius and Claudius to be painted as far more deliberate in their

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planning of the trap which in Q1 arrives by happenstance: Hamlet arrives while they are mid-discussion. The delay also generates greater potential for Hamlet’s words to be read as introspective and possibly even suicidal. This is of course a now standard interpretation of the “To be or not to be” speech. I need not reiterate the countless millions of words expended by critics in debating the “meaning” of the speech, save to point the reader to an excellent summary provided by Alex Newell in his 1965 refutation of all of these prior claims published in PMLA.194 Newell’s starting point is the observation that prior scholarship on this soliloquy invariably ignored its location in the drama, treating the speech as the self-contained locus for critical interpretation. By reconnecting it to the action that has preceded it, Newell argues that the soliloquy is not a contemplation of suicide; rather, it is Hamlet’s meditation on “the painful complexities of his experience of life and trying to determine the course of action that will be the most noble resolution.”195 In framing his reading, Newell criticises commentators who fail to ask why the Prince has slumped into suicidal depression, given that he had reached a renewed resolve on the night before to use the players to “catch the conscience of the King” (2.2.540). The question is a valid one, but its parameters are misshapen by a question, not of dramatic context, but of the textual context: not only are the earlier commentators wrong to ignore the dramatic context, I contend that Newell perpetuates a standard misreading of the text of the play: for reasons that I will now explain, the belief that a full night separates Hamlet’s “catch the conscience” and “To be or not to be” speeches is not well supported by the text in its 1604 form. The sense that a full night has passed is a consequence of the editorial decision made by the editors of the Folio to unnecessarily insert an Act division between the two. Q2 contains no such Act or Scene markers, so without clear temporal markers in the intervening dialogue, there is no reason for an audience to suspect that Hamlet’s exit at the end of Act 2, Scene 2 corresponds with the end of an Act, nor that the entry of the King and others in the next scene corresponds with the beginning of a new Act. The reader will no doubt require evidence—I expect that a sense of a full night passing has become so much a feature of our received understanding of this part of the play that the reader might be absolutely certain that the play contains the temporal markers necessary to establish duration. Yet the key markers come down to the following: in what is now conventionally delimited as Act 2, Scene 2, Hamlet’s request is that the players will stage The Murder of Gonzago “tomorrow night” (2.2.476); in what is now listed as Act 3, Scene 1, in the interval before Hamlet returns to stage, Claudius is told by Rosencrantz that the players “already have order / This night to play before him” (3.1.20-21). Since the play text as we now read it does

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separate these two markers by an Act division, it is understandable that the latter is taken to mean that the players have been ordered to perform on this night, the order having been given the previous day. The positioning of the temporal marker within the sentence is, however, ambiguous, so it could just as easily be taken to mean that the order was given to them this night, in which case the scene would of course be following hard upon the previous one, on the same night. A standard reading will of course hinge on one further objection: The Murder of Gonzago is in fact performed soon after the exchange between Hamlet and Ophelia, is it not? All that separates the two is the exchange in which Polonius plots to spy on Hamlet in his mother’s bedchamber and Hamlet offers his final advice to the players, so it will seem fair to assume that these sections of the play are contiguous in time. Without the Folio’s Act divisions, though, the same reasoning should equally also apply to the close proximity of Hamlet’s resolve to “catch the conscience of the King” and his return to the stage only sixty lines later. The dramatic context is a crucial factor here, although it is too easily overlooked because of the now standard Act division: Claudius had previously entreated Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to learn what they could of Hamlet’s true motives, and the discussion the pair have with Hamlet takes up the bulk of what is marked as Act 2, Scene 2. The King is clearly keen to put each plan into effect at the nearest available opportunity—indeed, as Hamlet is seen approaching, book in hand, Claudius and Gertrude exit with haste—from which we are also able to presume that he would wish to know of the success or failure of each plan expeditiously. When he enters the stage, then, in what is now marked by convention as the beginning of Act 3, his first words are given mid-sentence: “And can you by no drift of conference / Get from him why he puts on this confusion” (3.1.1-2). My reading is driven by the thought that this takes place immediately after Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have left Hamlet rather than by an ambiguous temporal marker and an imposed Act division. Furthermore, we can note that the end of what is now usually demarcated as Act 3, Scene 1 provides us with an ending that is very wellsuited in and of itself to being the end of an Act, should we wish to imagine the playwright thinking in terms of a five-Act structure: just as, at the end of Act 2, Scene 2, Hamlet delivers the propitious couplet—“The play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King” (2.2.53940)—the King is afforded the ominous final words at the end of the next scene— “It shall be so / Madness in great ones must not unwatched go” (3.1.186-87). While the ending of the earlier scene looks forward to events that will, in Hamlet’s mind, precipitate his revenge, the ending of the next provides a neat summary of the overarching impulse that will, in what

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follows, lead events to their inevitable pass: it is the King’s surveillance culture at the Danish court that has caused Hamlet to unfairly spurn Ophelia and that will put Polonius at the end of the Prince’s sword, both of which precipitate the events of the latter half of the play. It is the added dialogue involving the King that fleshes out the larger second half of the play in the Q2 and F versions. Incidentally, it is worth observing at this point that if the King was being doubled with the Ghost, and if Shakespeare himself was in the process of making the Ghost role remembered as the height of his own acting performance, then he could well have been expanding the role of the King for himself in a Q2-based performance. In any case, for the early modern audience, the end of what is now listed as Act 3, Scene 1 would be an ending of substance on which to hang a sense of closure, and the return of Hamlet and the players to the stage would be a clearer marker that the day of the play has arrived. With this in mind, although the Q2 leads us to question Hamlet’s consistency of approach, the dramatic context nevertheless provides its audience with no reason to suspect that there is a protracted thought process separating his newfound resolve from the “To be or not to be” speech. As Hamlet speaks, we must also consider the possibility that he is meant to have been aware of the presence of Ophelia, for certain, since she is still on stage, and of Claudius and Polonius, who are hidden but who admit moments earlier to the fact that they had “sent for” him, being no longer prepared to simply wait for him as they had initially planned to do (3.1.29). Accordingly, his speech is directed at those who would be spying upon him. This means it is not what we might think of as a soliloquy providing unmediated access to the innermost thoughts of a suicidal Prince, but then again we need to be careful not to assume that this is what a soliloquy routinely did in any case: James Hirsh provides evidence that the soliloquy, as a form, was not normally used in Elizabethan theatre to provide access to the character’s innermost thoughts, but was a specific form of speech act on stage, such that in Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy we have an example of feigned introspection only.196 Helen Cooper also provides an excellent account of the way in which, in the first half of the soliloquy, Hamlet performs a “one-man debate” on a specific question, “the quaestio, the issue for debate,” expressed initially in the binary proposition, “To be or not to be,” keeping to the structures of Renaissance logic.197 Unfortunately, Cooper winds up her analysis before discussing the part with which I am interested right now: after ruminating on being, death, Fortune, dreaming, and shuffling off this mortal coil, the melancholic Hamlet turns to the respect that “makes calamity of so long life” (3.1.68). The first half of the soliloquy is, as Cooper states, a “model

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of scholastic disputation,” which, because the topic is so grave, may seem to the spies as evidence that he is indeed gravely disturbed. Yet Hamlet is also able to hold true to the Amleth tale with which Elizabethan audiences are likely to have connected the play: by presenting his ruminations in the form of a debate, he shows himself to a keen observer to be also of sound mind and body, as Amleth had been.198 In the second half of the speech, however, the point literally turns to a matter of some topical interest: who, he asks, would bear the oppressor’s wrong, the poor man’s “contumely” (abuse),199 the law’s delay, the insolence of office, and such like, “When he himself might his quietus make / With a bare bodkin” (3.1.70-75)—no longer abstracted items in the chain of binary oppositions; these statements address specific forms of grievance against persons. Importantly, the same section in Q1 refers to “the scornes and flattery of the world” and lists the “widow” and “orphan” as specific figures who may be wronged—which refers within the drama, of course, to Hamlet and his mother—but Q2 is unclear on the persons wronged and focuses instead on the nature of the offences in question. Thus, it is possible to imagine that the speech works here to enable any of his spies to identify with the grievances, either as perpetrator or victim, but I suggest that it also enables the audience to do the same. The insolence of office and merit of the unworthy could easily refer directly to Claudius, but we might wonder why there is a reference, for example, to the law’s delay, when no part of the play until this point has made any issue of a delay in law? Indeed, the very opposite applied with Hamlet being denied the opportunity to contest the election because of the speed with which Claudius was able to secure the crown. While these grievances might seem sufficiently general as to apply to any audience member in quite a broad sense, I suggest that the speech provides us with a somewhat cryptic clue to the identity of an important Elizabethan figure, and one we have already been identifying at various times in this book at least in name: Julius Caesar. Before I explain how this name functions as a rather blunt topical reference, let us first consider how this clue points us toward the name of Caesar without mentioning it explicitly. In both Q1 and Q2/F, the relevant section concludes with the observation that the subject of the speech might make his “quietus” (that is, to render an account complete) with “a bare bodkin,” meaning a mere dagger. The word “bodkin” is crucial here, serving as it does to terminate this section of the speech. Among the sources from which the playwright might have been familiar with the term, two of the most famous examples are Chaucer’s Monk’s Tale and John Lydgate’s translation of The Fall of Princes, both of which describe Caesar as having been assassinated with bodkins.200 It is unclear whether Shakespeare and his company might

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expect the cryptic edge of such an allusion to find a receptive audience in the masses crowded into The Globe, circa 1599, or even at Newington Butts, circa 1594—since the presence of the word in Q1 may prompt us to expect that it was used sometime prior to the 1599 version—but it is a safe assumption that a more learned audience at Oxford, circa 1593, might be expected to know the allusion, especially if Hamlet was being performed for them soon after a production of Caesar’s Revenge had been undertaken by the Oxford men themselves, and since there had been other references to Caesar included in Hamlet at that time. The “bodkin” allusion could therefore be seen as having been retained in the later versions because it functioned as part of a chain of associations with the historical Caesar, to which more were added in 1599, in reference to the play with which The Globe was to be opened. As I indicated above, the name of Julius Caesar also had a more contemporary reference point—the Elizabethan man who bore the same name as the historical Roman figure was a man of no small importance himself: his father had been a physician to Elizabeth and he acquired numerous public responsibilities throughout his own life. Born in 1557, Caesar gained his Doctorate in Law from the University of Paris in 1581, was immediately made a commissioner responsible for piracy, was appointed as High Judge of the Court of the Admiralty in 1584, and then became Master of the Chancery in 1588, before being made Master of the Court of Requests in 1595.201 He was among those knighted by James on his way to London in 1603, and was later Chancellor and Under Treasurer of the Exchequer from 1606 to 1614, before being appointed Master of the Rolls in 1614. Rather than pin the association down to the coincidence in name—a matter, shall we say, of currency alone—there are other ways in which the material added to the Q2/F versions addresses the Elizabethan Caesar. We note that Caesar was at one stage responsible for enforcing English laws relating to piracy, a task he pursued vigorously for seven years, although sometimes in conflict with the Privy Council and the interventions of the Queen herself, whose treasury was often well served by profits obtained from English privateers.202 We also noted that the pirate section of Hamlet, if inspired by Sidney’s Arcadia, could represent one of the additions made to the play between 1590 and 1593. Given that Caesar was High Judge of the Court of the Admiralty until the middle of this period, we can begin to see how Caesar references and pirate references could function as topical and historical at this time. In the newest material in Hamlet’s soliloquy we find further evidence of renewed topicality circa 1599. The “poor man’s contumely” may seem out of place in the private concerns of the Prince, but to the ears of the Elizabethan in 1599, it would have resonated with a

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Figure 3.3. Sir Julius Caesar: Master of the Rolls. Obit. 1636. Engraving by an unknown artist. (London: Robert Wilkinson, 1810).

more perfect clarity the ridicule that Caesar brought upon his own Court of Requests after the 1598 publication of The Ancient State Authoritie, and Proceedings of the Court of Requests, in which he complained that judges sitting with the Common Pleas and Queen’s Bench had undermined his Court’s authority, such that Requests had come to be viewed as “a general and public disgrace among the vulgar sort.”203 The “Poor Man’s Court,” as Caesar’s Court came to be known in popular parlance, was not helped by his protestations, and observations about the “poor man’s contumely” and the law’s delay would in this context have pointed the audience straight to Caesar’s recent complaints. If Caesar is being lampooned here, it was certainly not the first time that he had been made the subject of such treatment in a theatrical context. In the play of 1 Edward IV, attributed by scholars to Thomas Heywood, a character is designated as the “Master of St. Katherine’s,” who is on stage only in the final scene precisely to function as what Richard Rowland has described as “the unwitting killjoy whose excessive deference brings the king’s ‘merry pastime’ with the tanner to a premature end.”204 Since 1582,

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the Master of St. Katherine’s, a large housing precinct for the poor and infirm, had been none other than Julius Caesar. Curiously, when Rowland delves into this connection in Thomas Heywood’s Theatre, 1599-1639: Locations, Translations, and Conflict, he describes the reference to Caesar as particularly relevant to a late Elizabethan audience upon the publication of the Quarto in 1599 but he says nothing of the earlier provenance of the play. In his own edition of the play, of course, Rowland explores a much earlier provenance on the basis that the Quarto’s title page indicates that it was lately acted by “the Earl of Derby his servants,” meaning in effect that it had been performed by Lord Strange’s Men, who had operated briefly under Derby’s name from September, 1593, to the creation of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men in 1594.205 Since this company had ceased to function under Derby’s name by 1594, Heywood’s play must have been on stage in late 1593. It is worth considering, then, that at around the time that Lord Strange’s Men performed a 1593 Hamlet in Oxford, they might have also performed Heywood’s 1 Edward IV, complete with the jibe about Caesar that was topical in the same year. In any case, with the publication of the Quarto of 1 Edward IV in 1599, members of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men would no doubt have been interested in this text that claimed them—under the name of their previous incarnation—as the responsible players, and therein they would certainly have seen the references to Caesar being rendered in print. Why this fuss about Julius Caesar, the Elizabethan lawyer? Caesar had of course brought public ridicule on himself with his protestations about the authority of the poor man’s Court in 1598, which in turn might easily have given additional appeal in 1599 to the play in which the assassination of “Julius Caesar” was to be staged before the public at the opening of the new theatre. The controversies over the replacement of the Julian calendar with the Gregorian one also made the staging of Julius Caesar particularly timely, as Steve Sohmer argues. If the investigations in Chapter Two are any guide to how to proceed, though, we must take care to be more precise with demonstrating connections if we want to be sure that the Elizabethan Caesar was a likely point of focus for the playwright and his company at this time. As I suggested in the previous section, then, we need to be more able to demonstrate that we are dealing with a purposeful method, and not simply with available currency. Caesar did have a personal connection to Burghley: Caesar Adelmare senior, Julius Caesar’s father, was a physician to Elizabeth’s court prior to his death in 1568. The care of young Caesar, then only ten years old, fell to his godparents, William Paulet, the Marquis of Winchester, Henry Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, and, as Lamar Hill notes, “the queen herself in the person of Lady Montague,” by which he means

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Magdalen Dacre, maid-of-honour to the young Queen Elizabeth.206 They failed to gain a place for him at Winchester School, and so young Caesar spent his teen years as a ward of Burghley himself, gaining his education in the household of the Lord High Treasurer.207 In later years, Burghley and Secretary of State, Sir Francis Walsingham, helped him to gain quick preferment. Caesar’s elevation to a succession of positions of authority is marked by a pattern in which he invariably “sought a place for which he was not seen to be fully qualified, he tried to turn out an incumbent, he employed the good offices of powerful patrons, and he willingly ventured a great deal of money.”208 Caesar is known to have been deeply religious and moralising but his ambitions and methods of advancement were also well known to his contemporaries as rather Machiavellian, so we might expect that his connection to Burghley throughout his life will have made him a viable target for any playing company who saw fit to use Burghley himself as a topical point of reference. More than this, however, Caesar’s adventurous approach with money later manifested in him a propensity for aggressively pursuing his personal share of any returns. The pages of Hill’s biography are filled with accounts of squabbles between Caesar and other prominent figures, usually over money, and even records Caesar’s own complaints about the visits he received from the Queen, since such visits demanded from him the outlay of a gift, which he felt were unlikely to ever be returned to him via direct financial reward.209 One squabble did bring Caesar into direct conflict in 1595 with the man who would, a year later, become patron of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, George Carey. The Lord Admiral, Charles Howard, had in 1589 decreed that as judge and Vice Admiral of the Thames Caesar would be granted a portion of all prizes, passports, confiscated goods, and profits under his admiralty, but these required the issuing of warrants and on some occasions the warrant would be improperly dated, allowing the collector of the Lord Admiral’s moneys, William Hardie, to legally refuse to pay Caesar his due share.210 Carey was Howard’s brother-in-law, and at that time was a privateer and the Vice Admiral of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, and during early 1595 Caesar had decided to bypass the Lord Admiral’s collector by asking Carey to remit a payment owing directly to the judge. Carey refused, and Howard was forced to intercede.211 Carey insisted that he should be required to deal only with the Lord Admiral, and Howard suggested to Caesar that he could collect money from Carey and distribute to Caesar his share accordingly. Unhappy about such potential delays, Caesar decided to appropriate the equivalent sum directly from the High Court of the Admiralty before the moneys collected there could be handed to the Lord Admiral. As Hill notes, “Howard never objected.”212

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The spat had exposed to Carey in the most direct fashion the impatience of Caesar when it came to money, whereas for his part their disagreement turned ultimately on a matter of rank and protocol, Caesar’s impatience being the catalyst for an act of impertinence. If the players had only known of Caesar’s reputation by indirect means before 1595, at any point after Carey’s dispute with him they could easily have gained direct knowledge of these matters from either the elder or younger Carey, giving them greater cause to want to lampoon the judge at some politic moment. Two plays planned for 1599—one being a new play bearing the name of the man they sought to ridicule, another being a revived play which had in times past been used to draw parallels with the historical Caesar—could be seen as one such politic moment, but I suggest that it was not the first. Sometime in late 1596 or early 1597, Shakespeare wrote a new play about a Venetian merchant named Antonio. We have already investigated the possibility that this play, the first of the company’s plays to be registered to James Roberts, was subject to an act of self-censorship by this method in 1598 as a result of the wishes of the powerful Essex, whose recent exploits had been written into the play. The Merchant of Venice is perhaps the first play written by Shakespeare for his company’s newest patron, and we should think that it was conceived as a play likely to please the man now immediately responsible for the players who would perform it. We have seen how the play could have pleased Essex—we may find some support in this for a further suggestion that after the demise of the elder Carey, the company were attempting to court the more powerful Essex to offer his patronage over the lesser Baron Hunsdon, who had initially been passed over for the position of Lord Chamberlain and who as a result, as we have seen, was likely compelled under duress to sign a petition against the players at Blackfriars. Yet the players could hardly afford to put their immediate patron offside altogether by aiming over his head. Instead, the play could be developed in such a way as to aim to please both men. The Merchant of Venice can be seen as just such a play, for I would argue that although the figure of Caesar is difficult to pinpoint in it directly, he can be shown to have been a target for much of what happens in the AntonioShylock storyline, which would no doubt have pleased Carey, following his earlier conflict with the judge. Portia’s legalese in resolving the dispute between Antonio and Shylock has long provided critics with the problem that as a purely legal argument it presents only a literal rather than a rational claim, thus undermining its legal validity, but her arguments do pose a question about the moral basis of Shylock’s case. Maxine MacKay has argued along such lines that Portia rehearses a dispute that was current in Elizabethan England between the

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relative authority of the courts of law and the courts of equity.213 Although MacKay does not cite the example of Caesar, there can be no doubt that his complaint of 1598 addresses the same question, and Caesar’s penchant for making moralistic arguments in court speaks to the tenor of the wider debate. Before his own complaint was published, then, it was already well known that his Court of Requests involved rulings that were as often as not based on matters of principle rather than law, and a feature of most pleas at Requests was an exaggerated language that addressed morality rather than jurisprudence: consider, for example, the claims made in the case of Elizabeth Stafforde versus Humfrey Stafforde that failure to rule in favour of the complainant would result in the permanent overthrowing of countless “worshipfulle bloodes and goode howses within this Realme.”214 The judge’s ruling in favour of such exaggerated pleas gave them credence at the Court. In Portia, we find a female voice that echoes both a common form of plea presented to the Court of Requests—a court at which female complainants were regularly heard—and the pseudo-legal rulings therein. Moreover, in the figure of Shylock, I suggest, we find a direct topical reference with which Caesar would have identified based on a situation in which he was embroiled at that time. Caesar’s stepfather, Michael Locke (or Lok, as he is given in some contemporary documents), was serving as Queen’s consul in Aleppo since 1593, in which capacity he could charge English merchants a tax, and when one George Dorrington refused to pay, he had his goods seized by Locke and sold. In the ensuing fracas, Locke pursued Dorrington to Venice and launched a lawsuit against him. His actions were personally motivated but had ramifications that were felt at the top of the Elizabethan hierarchy—the Queen’s sovereignty had in fact been challenged—and so Locke’s stepson, Caesar, was needed to act on his behalf as an intermediary with Elizabeth.215 By April, 1597, the matter had been brought before the Privy Council for consideration.216 A play written at the same time, about the pursuit of legal action by a man named Shy-lock in Venice, must surely seem to be too great a coincidence, given recent history between Carey and Caesar. The fuss over Caesar is thus necessary in search of what I have called the play’s method because it situates the play in relation to events that would have been perceived by the company in terms of the will of their masters. There is the potential to see such topical references as an empty theatrical gesture akin to gossip for the groundlings—a matter of currency, nothing more—until we identify far more detail in the historical record to link the company to these events by one degree of separation alone, by virtue of the involvement of their patron in these events. When we consider the changes made in Q2 to Hamlet’s famous soliloquy, it becomes clearer that the changes represent

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one aspect of the method through which the players are able to respond to such events. In the case of “poor man’s contumely,” for example, and related additions, the jibes point to Caesar in such a way that they may provide pleasure for the groundlings, to be sure, but they also provide a nod in the direction of their patron who had experienced just such a personal insult from the very same “poor man” in question. What had been offered indirectly in The Merchant of Venice is offered in more direct fashion in 1599. Caesar continued to be a focus of topical references in plays for many years. In Measure for Measure (1603), for example, we find Escalus, who compares himself with the historical Caesar by name in his first exchange with Pompey (2.1.238), passing judgements willy-nilly while Justice, his counterpart, is kept silent throughout the play but for the briefest exchange with Escalus at the end of the same scene: Escalus-Caesar silences justice. Antony and Cleopatra (1606) uses Octavius Caesar as a pivotal figure and he is named as Caesar on no fewer than 159 occasions—the name appears more often in this play, in fact, than in the play that bears Julius Caesar’s name. We find potential references to the Elizabethan Caesar in Octavius’s handling of the messenger’s news of the pirates in Act 1, Scene 4—Caesar having instituted new measures to clamp down on piracy during his time with the Admiralty—or in any number of jibes uttered about Caesar by the Egyptians in the play, or indeed in Caesar’s own reference to perjury and “law” when describing women’s weaknesses to Thidius (3.12.29-33), an association between Cleopatra and the women’s business that frequently concerned the Court of Requests.217 If Shakespeare might seem to have peaked in his mockery of Caesar with this play, a significant change in circumstances took place during the same year. On 3 July, 1606, the Elizabethan Caesar was appointed Chancellor and Under Treasurer of the Exchequer by James.218 With this appointment, Caesar became one of the most powerful figures in Britain, gaining direct authority over the finances of the realm. We might not be surprised to find, then, that in the years following this appointment, references to Caesar in Shakespeare’s plays abruptly ended. The name of Caesar appears in half of all Shakespeare’s plays, but is absent from those plays that scholars date to the period from 1606 to 1610: the company’s repertory in this period includes Pericles, Coriolanus, Winter’s Tale, King Lear, and The Tempest, none of which contain even a passing reference to the name of Caesar. That Merchant was revived for performances at Court in 1605 should not be overlooked: it was still in the active repertory of the King’s Men, almost a decade after having been written, up to a year before Caesar’s appointment to the Exchequer.219 Caesar remained a target for jibes, then,

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up until 1606, and then disappears from Shakespeare’s plays immediately after his elevation. Yet around 1610, Shakespeare’s Cymbeline was written with significant references to Caesar. I have argued elsewhere that in these references, Shakespeare turns away from mocking Caesar and makes him instead the pivot in alterations to the ancient history of Cunobelinus, and in such a way as to pay tribute to the living Caesar.220 The decision to aim to make amends with Caesar in this play would have been prompted by the death of two of Caesar’s adult children from his first marriage in 1608. In the death of his first born son, Julius, we witness a set of circumstances that may have gnawed at Shakespeare’s conscience in particular: he was a student in Padua and after being injured in a fencing contest, tried to take revenge on his opponent by shooting him with a pistol—the shot missed and he was run through; Caesar spent March and April of 1608 petitioning the Queen and her ambassador in Venice to have his son’s killer, Antonio Brochetta, tried for the murder. There are of course echoes of Merchant in number here, with its Venetian setting and its depiction of the pursuit of a man named Antonio, but I also detect resonances of Shakespeare’s loss of his own son and the subsequent representation of Hamlet’s death in a duel. In the miraculous return of Cymbeline’s children at the end of the play, we may see Shakespeare offering the fantastic scenario that the Elizabethan Caesar yearned for after 1608. Having been stolen as infants by Belarius, Cymbeline’s sons are renamed as Polydore and Cadwal. The second name may have been taken from an ancient king of a region of northern Wales known as Gwynedd (or Venedocia, as the Romans called it),221 which can be read as a reference to James’s son Henry being invested as Prince of Wales in an act that formally united the Scottish, English, and Welsh titles held by the heir to the English throne. The name Polydore seems to refer to one of Raphael Holinshed’s acknowledged sources for his Chronicles, the historian Polydore Virgil. Yet in the names that are invented for these two sons, I think we also see an echo of a gesture toward the Elizabethan Caesar’s deceased daughter and wife (both of whom were named Dorcas), resonating in one half of each name: Poly-dore and Cad-wal. Furthermore, in the final scene in which Posthumus—whose name translates as “afterdeath”—is spared from the gallows, Cymbeline’s sons are resurrected: he thought them to have been dead for twenty years, but now they return to him. It is a fantasy of resurrection that Caesar himself would have dearly hoped to experience, and it is in this, I suggest that the play’s final scene gives to Caesar overdue tribute by virtue of presenting to him the fantastic possibility of a return of the deceased. Shakespeare did not pen Cymbeline until 1610. Critical debates about the play’s depiction of British relations with Rome focus on the question

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of whether Cymbeline’s capitulation to Rome makes a negative or positive commentary on James’s relations with Rome and his reluctance to more vigorously police the Oath of Allegiance that he had instigated in 1606.222 The Oath had attracted vitriolic responses from both the Pope and Cardinal Bellarmine. James penned A Premonition to Christian Princes in response to the latter in 1609. It is difficult to reconcile Cymbeline’s submission to Rome with James’s steadfast opposition, but if we view Cymbeline as a figure that contains references to the Elizabethan Caesar, then we find in the play’s final moments in particular the shift in symbolism required to make sense of the play’s treatment of its historical materials. Cymbeline’s payment of his outstanding tribute to Caesar is not Britain’s submission to Rome, as such; it is painted instead as the payment of a tribute to Caesar, the long embattled Elizabethan judge. Caesar had in fact played a small but significant role in the controversy over James’s Premonition after the English Ambassador to Venice, Henry Wotton, presented a copy of the book to the Duke at the palace, who received the book smilingly but then had it immediately suppressed.223 Wotton resigned in a rage, but James accepted the political reality of the Duke’s reaction and asked Caesar to intercede with Lord Salisbury. The Venetian Ambassador to England was also a key to these negotiations. His name was Marc’Antonio Correr. Once again, Venice was a focus of Caesar’s attentions, and once again, the name of Antonio was at the forefront of his concerns. These circumstances were purely coincidental, to be sure, but it is worth again reminding ourselves that if Merchant had once been written to mock Caesar, coincidences of this kind might have served to twist the dagger. Instead of lampooning Caesar, on this occasion, Shakespeare and his company prepared a play that paid their “wonted tribute” to the man who now held the purse strings.

Give Us Pause: One Further Delay Burghley’s death may well represent the catalyst for this change from an indirect to a direct form of topical allusion in 1599. At the same time, of course, this meant that a change was needed to references to Burghley, who was no longer a viable target for the many jibes that had been written into Hamlet in earlier years through the figure of Corambis; the result was the transformation of Corambis into Polonius. The departure of Kempe in 1599 would have also precipitated some changes to the text, but thanks to the remarkable similarities between Q1 and Q2 in the Marcellus-LucianusVoltemand parts, we can be quite confident that the material in these parts was also potentially added circa 1599 before Kempe’s departure. The first of these roles was, as we have seen, likely to be significant: the name of

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Marcellus adorns the great Roman theatre on which the symbolic vision for The Globe had been based—the great theatre that Julius Caesar had initiated. If he had previously played the role of Corambis, Kempe would have known the reference. We might even suspect that “Marcellus” was a gesture of goodwill from the playwright to the player whose standing in the company was nevertheless being substantially downgraded: we want another player to take on the old fool and the gravedigger, and you’ll see we’ve changed them quite heavily so you would not want these roles now anyway, but we do offer you these parts that speak to the great theatrical heritage to which the company now attaches itself—when you are greeted on stage near the beginning of the play, your name will reference the great theatre of yesteryear. The name of Lucianus also contains a quite obvious classical allusion, since it undoubtedly refers to the Greek writer Lucian, whose name was synonymous for the Elizabethans with a light, scoffing style of wit, which they called “Lucianical.”224 Finally, Voltemand offers the possibility of a name that was topical in a much earlier version of the play and which was also altered for the 1599 production. A “volte” (or volta in Italian) was a dance of the period, so the name could translate literally as a command to dance—which would have been a topical reference to one of the exploits of the Earl of Leicester, who was reputed on one occasion to have gained a physical advantage over the Queen while engaged in dancing a volte.225 The dance became popular in the wake of reports of the incident and captured the imagination of artists who sought to portray the lively motions of the dancers at court—one very famous image, now at Penshurst Palace in Kent, even carries a claim that it portrays Elizabeth and Leicester’s volte (see Figure 3.4), although there is evidence to suggest that it is in fact a representation of the tastes of the French Valois court, circa 1580, by Marcus Gheeraerts.226 Suffice it to say that the incident was widely known, and would have remained topical for many years but would also certainly have been an exploit to recount after Leicester’s death, at which time the earliest version of Hamlet was staged. In the Q1, of course, the character’s name is changed to Voltemar, which removes the sense of “command” that sounded in Voltemand’s name. The Q1, curiously, names Voltemar explicitly in the stage direction for entry at the beginning of the final scene, even though the character does not speak. Given observations made at the end of Chapter One of this book, about the endings of the various versions, I am inclined to think that the direction is a throwback to the earlier production in which Kempe remained the focus of the final entertainments—he retains the name that he has been given for his meager cue script and then makes a point of using this name for an entry in the final scene.

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Figure 3.4. Queen Elizabeth Dancing with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Marcus Gheeraerts, circa 1580.

The name in Q1 is of course given as Voltemar rather than Voltemand. Commonly used as a prefix—indeed, it can be seen to be present as such in the name of Marcellus—but present here as a suffix, the partial form “mar” had since 1588 been picked up in the language to refer to a person who spoils, or “mars,” the thing to which the partial form was attached. In its controversial earliest use, the name Martin Marprelate was attached to a series of pamphlets that denounced the Protestant Church and attacked many prominent members of English society for their role in the decline of religious orthodoxy, which circulated throughout 1588 and 1589. Eminent wits like Robert Greene, John Lyly, and Thomas Nashe were employed by the church to write stinging responses to these pamphlets, resulting in the public exchange we know as the Marprelate Controversy. I note that the many commentators on this controversy have tended to focus on the “Marprelate” compound, while none I have encountered discuss “Mar-tin” as a similar compound. Given what we have already observed about the mirror manufacturing process, a marred “tin” might in point of fact be read as an unreflective surface, such that the “Mar-tin Mar-prelate” name bespeaks a polar opposition to “the mirror of the prelates”, thus cryptically invoking The Mirrour for Magistrates (1559) and similar tracts that set out to guide proper conduct in authority in the sixteenth century. The use of the “mar-” prefix did not decline with the cessation of the war of the pamphlets, as it

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passed into common use and continued to be used well into the twentieth century.227 Yet with the Marprelate Controversy coinciding with the period during which the first version of the Hamlet play was developed, use of the suffix would have been most topical in 1588 or 1589. My inclination is to read Voltemar and Marcellus as a deliberate pairing of names, because both use “mar” in the formation of the names of these doubled roles. Since the name of Marcellus is being acknowledged here as a 1599 addition, the name of Voltemar would make sense as an addition at that same time. All such minor points, when viewed collectively, lend support to the claim that a planned 1599 production with Kempe pushed to the periphery of the lead group would be untenable once he refused to participate. We might add to this a belief among scholars of Henry V that the play—with its “wooden O” chorus and other references to a Globe production—was among those planned for the initial sequence of performances at the new theatre.228 While disagreements have been aired over the ostensible size of the cast list required for Henry V, none suggest a doubling arrangement that could fit a company of just eleven players, as I suggested was likely for the company in late 1599.229 It is worth noting that most discussions focus on the expansive Folio version of the play, which demands some twenty actors or more even with efficient doubling strategies, but debates over the provenance of the shortened Q1 of 1600 complicate any firm conclusion about the likely size of the cast for a 1599 production, since it is not altogether clear how much of the Q1 or any other version of the play formed the basis of such a production. Gary Taylor’s notes for the Oxford edition of Henry V go so far as to claim that many of the textual omissions from the Q1 are attributable to “casting difficulties.”230 Without engaging in this debate, I want simply to claim that if Henry V or Hamlet were to be planned for a production in 1599, the former would in fact prove the easier of the two to adapt at short notice to a reduced cast following the sudden and unexpected departure of a member of the playing company: Henry V may contain far more roles than Hamlet overall but it also has more roles that are superfluous and therefore available for excision if needed. The fact that Henry V was printed, albeit in a possibly “bad” form, in 1600, speaks to the possibility that the play had indeed been staged in 1599, with a keen pirate seeking to exploit its popularity—we have seen that Gurr identifies Kempe as being well positioned to perform such an undertaking himself. With Kempe’s departure, then, I suspect that the players could have more readily adapted Henry V for a production to follow Julius Caesar as a play suitable for their new theatre. The changes made to Hamlet for the 1599 venture—such as the change in Polonius’s name, the extra Latinate names, and additional references to the contemporary Caesar, as well as a

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change in the order of key events—would be retained when the play was considered again after Armin was brought into the company. The Polonius part had been stripped of some of its more comical components already, in order to relax the sense that Burghley was now the target of the humour in the old fool’s performance, which was thus already suited to Armin’s foolbased playing. Additional legal language and less banter had been adopted for the gravedigger to give the figure a sharper edge in ridiculing the poor man’s law embodied publicly by the figure of Caesar: if a gravedigger can cite legal arguments at will, any man may well be a lawyer. A contrast is also presented in the difficulties in capturing emotional states on stage, as Hamlet and the players expound such skills: Hamlet’s “rogue and peasant slave” speech includes his views on a player’s capacity to elicit heightened emotions, “and all for nothing” (2.2.492), and in his advice to the players before the staging of The Murder of Gonzago, Hamlet lauds the ability of a player to “suit the action to the word, the word to the action” (3.2.17-18). This last may amount to a suggestion that the players represent a higher and perhaps truer vocation than lawyers, whose livelihoods are built on nought but mere words, words, words.

Tain’t Thy Minde If Kempe’s departure strikes the reader as insufficient cause for a play to have been postponed, particularly if he was due to play only peripheral parts, then we may look for grounds more relative than this, perhaps. The players could perchance have resorted to pressing an unattached boy into service to fill a gap, although I am not altogether convinced that The Lord Chamberlain’s Men would have done this. As Andrew Gurr explains in his account of the company’s management of their affairs, their shareholder system created a more tight-knit group than most others,231 and when we made the estimate of eleven players in the company in 1599, it was based on the lists of known members of the company, which included the lead players’ boy apprentices. To this we can add the work of David Kathman on the apprenticeship system in the later Elizabethan theatre companies.232 Gurr is not himself convinced by the idea that the apprenticeship system used by the playing companies was as rigid as those used in other walks of life,233 but coupling his work on the company’s personnel to Kathman’s extensive research into the apprenticeship systems in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, we add credence to these claims that the company had by 1599, at least, established a strong internal apprenticeship structure and were therefore unlikely to use untried performers at short notice—this may strike us as somewhat ironic, of course, given the arguments that we have

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considered about Shakespeare himself coming into the service of a playing company through filling a gap in personnel more than a decade earlier. By 1599, though, Chamberlain’s troupe was no longer given to pressing boys into service, preferring the more formal apprenticeships instead. It is also important to remember that the plays planned for the second half of 1599 were intended to show off the company’s new theatre in the best possible light, a situation that would make highly undesirable the use of any untried boy. Should we seek stronger reasons for the play to have been postponed, though, we can indeed confirm that Kempe’s departure coincided with events of far greater importance, which would also later come to weigh heavily on the fate of the company’s prized Danish tragedy. In Chapter Two, I noted that the timing of an important series of treaty negotiations between England and Denmark could have been a key factor precipitating an act of self-suppression in 1602. The importance of these negotiations can be established on the back of many years of disputes between the two nations regarding taxing of ships on both sides, but it is worth noting that this history of disputes reached a particularly high level of tension in 1599. As Edward Cheyney explains the matter, a series of seizures of ships from both sides in the first half of 1599 along with renewed involvement by the Danish in the negotiations between the Netherlands and Spain, created a particularly volatile relationship between the two nations.234 A letter from the Danish parliament to the English in late 1599 proposed negotiations to be conducted in Bremen, but as it happened, due to a frustrating series of further disagreements and mishaps, there was to be no such meeting until 1602. As the situation began to escalate in 1599, it is altogether possible that the players could have been made aware by their patron of renewed sensitivities in Anglo-Danish relations, in which case Hamlet might have been deemed untimely and withdrawn in any case. My hope is that in the last few sections of this book, I have presented enough material to support the idea that significant portions of the play would have been amenable to emendation in 1599, rather than later, even though the standard view tends to date the play as we know it to 1600 or 1601. The long history that we have been tracing—of a play developed first in 1588 or 1589, then revived in 1593, 1594, and 1596—leads to the suggestion that what is usually seen as evidence of the play being first written in 1600 or 1601 would need to be adapted here as evidence of ways in which the earlier play was altered in 1600 or 1601. Many of the changes I have identified are more likely, though, if the play was planned for the initial run of performances at The Globe, in 1599. What do we make, then, of topical evidence for the play being dated to around 1600 or 1601? Chief among the reasons given for

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reading the play as particularly topical in these years is its references to the demise of the Earl of Essex and to the potential Scottish succession. Lilian Winstanley’s Hamlet and the Scottish Succession, first published in 1921, develops a detailed argument for the second of these, based in part on the apparent parallels between the murder of old Hamlet and the execution of Mary, and subsequent events through which the son’s revenge is stymied, as we have noted. It is of course difficult to claim that the death of Mary in 1587 was “topical” in 1600, but it certainly would have remained fresh in the minds of both English and Scottish alike in 1588. The magnitude of the execution is surely such that we need not refer to topicality in this case and can imagine instead that it retained currency for many years. Yet as we briefly considered the parallels in Chapter Two, James was not an ideal analogue for Hamlet, so the Scottish succession might be seen not so much as a direct point of reference for Hamlet; it is perhaps instead an abiding social concern that hung over all revenge plays of the era, along with all plays dealing with the theme of just or unjust usurpation of the crown. As we have also seen, the exploits and demise of the Earl of Essex do provide a neat point of reference in historical terms, since his involvement with Shakespeare’s company and his trial and execution can be precisely dated to fit with the years commonly associated with Hamlet. Winstanley does include the Essex conspiracy among the more topical events that are linked in some way to the Scottish succession question by virtue of claims that Essex’s failure guaranteed that James would claim the crown: “The fate of Essex and the fate of James have been blent in one destiny.”235 For Winstanley, Hamlet is Essex as well as James because both are historically bound on the same course. Many studies take the same path as Winstanley in pursuit of a Hamlet-is-Essex claim while readily discarding the Scottish succession question. In 1950, for example, Edward Le Comte developed a series of arguments for and against the Hamlet-Essex connection, drawing together the range of critical positions that had been presented by various scholars since 1889, the point being to show that the Essex parallels could not be found everywhere in the play; rather, that relevant parallels existed only “in certain places,” as aids to interpretation.236 Most importantly, Le Comte sees the parallels as sufficient reason to date the play after Essex’s execution, as a “farewell to Essex.” The Hamlet-is-Essex arguments need not be viewed as contradicting anything that has been offered in this book. Instead, I suggest that the only adjustment we need to make to a prevailing Hamlet-is-Essex line of reasoning is to change the conventional thinking about the relationship between these parallels and the longer history of the play text. After all, as Le Comte argues, the parallels are not everywhere in the play. The “certain places” in which we can find clear parallels to Essex

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could indeed be no more than certain additions made to a well-established play in order to bring it up-to-date with Essex’s conspiracy and the Earl’s demise. Indeed, I would suggest that if Hamlet is Essex, then the parallel works in certain places because Hamlet had previously also been Leicester as well as Amleth before that. Certain elements of the Amleth story remain intact within the play throughout its decade or more of revival and revision before it re-emerges in 1601 as a response to the fallen Essex. Essex was certainly the subject of a direct reference in the chorus to Act Five of Henry V, as Le Comte notes, wherein a wish is made for “the general of our gracious empress” to be safely and swiftly returned from Ireland: Essex had of course been embarking on his failed last mission for Elizabeth in Ireland in 1599.237 The author of Leicester’s Commonwealth had also claimed in 1584 that Leicester poisoned Essex’s father to make his mother free to marry again, and Lettice Knollys married Leicester in 1578, two years after the death of the elder Devereux.238 Such reckoning holds that Shakespeare made changes to the Amleth tale in order to bring the story into line with the scandal surrounding Essex, but of the changes that are outlined in this account, only the poisoning represents a change to the Amleth tale, since this precursor had already included the murder of a father and the marriage of the murderer to the mother. To be more precise, the play even retains information that should be missing from Hamlet, if the play was to be altered to more closely fit the scandal of 1576 to 1578: the murderer should be changed from the uncle to the godfather, since this was Leicester’s earlier relationship to Essex;239 the marriage should have been made less hasty, to align with the two year timeframe over which the “real” scandal had unfolded; and of course the characters should have been stripped of all the accoutrements of the monarchy, since neither Leicester nor Essex were the King of England. Even as he cites parallels, though, Le Comte dismisses them on similar grounds and he points out that although the Leicester-is-Claudius parallel is strengthened by the scandalmongers claiming that that Leicester died from the poison with which he intended to kill his own wife, death by poison was in fact so widespread (in plays, in scandal sheets, and in reality) as to be unsustainable as the sole basis for a historical parallel.240 In the possible sources for the plot of The Murder of Gonzago, which is used by Hamlet because it so closely mirrors the occasion of his own father’s death, Bullough cites the known scandal of the murder—by poison poured into the ear—of the Duke of Urbino by Luigi Gonzaga in 1538.241 Le Comte’s stronger case is based solely on the ending of the play, wherein we find numerous references to Devereux’s name, his defense while on trial, his reported last words, and broadsides and elegies that

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were published soon after his death.242 I do not seek to refute any of the evidence provided by Le Comte and merely direct the reader to this article for the detail in its claims. I do wish to observe, however, that Le Comte’s observation about the “certain places” in which parallels between Hamlet and Essex are located comes down, in the end, to the end. In other words, each of the examples he provides of certain places in the play that parallel Essex and his demise are all situated in the final scenes of the play. It need only be concluded, then, that in the ending of Hamlet we find new material added, perhaps, in 1601, in reference to the fallen Essex, but that is as far as the parallel can be extended based on Le Comte’s arguments about the claims by Winstanley and others. Where many have seen Hamlet-Essex parallels as evidence that the play was written in 1601, then, I counter on the back of Le Comte’s work that the best evidence for these parallels exists only in the very last section of the play. This should give us reason to suspect that the ending to Hamlet is not a “tribute” to Essex. After his death, in a sense, Essex would best serve as a sage reminder to the people of England of the likely fate of any who dared to question the authority of either the Queen or, more precisely, her chief Privy Council members. Hamlet’s cause is just and, unlike Amleth, he dies in the attempt to avenge his father—he dies, that is, because he inadvertently alerts the King to his intentions, through his decision to stage The Murder of Gonzago and by declaring that the killer in this play is “nephew to the King” (3.2.237). Essex, likewise, dies as a result of an attempt made—so his prosecutors claimed—on the life of the Queen, and the staging of Richard II is viewed after the fact as one of the pieces of evidence from which Essex’s motives could be discerned, since the play’s leading character was then already popularly viewed as analogous with Elizabeth. The historical facts here are inconsequential, as it happens: as Pauline Hammer explains, the historical record shows that Essex might not have been planning a coup, as such, and might have sought merely to march on London to lobby for the Queen’s reconsideration of his status in England; the performance of Richard II was mentioned at his trial but may have played no part in the eventual success or failure of his plans; and so on.243 When we scrutinise a work of fiction to examine its use of topical material, a question of method should not also be contingent on a question of accuracy; rather we should be interested in evidence of what the author of that work—or, in this case, the company responsible for producing the work—is likely to have thought was relevant. What matters here, then, is that we know the players were required to defend themselves at the trial of Essex against allegations of having conspired with him against the Queen, and it must have been a particularly frightening prospect for all involved. After the players were

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cleared of any suspicion of involvement, nevertheless, the one message that they may have wanted to convey to any person in power thereafter would surely have been to regard the players as ineffective tools when considering a coup: if you use the players for political means, then you risk drawing explicit attention to your ulterior motives. The play-within-the-play is certainly part of Hamlet before any postEssex revision, if we accept at the very least that Kempe is a candidate for having developed a memorial reconstruction based in part on the Lucianus lines—in which case The Murder of Gonzago was certainly present in any planned 1599 production. The source identified by Bullough suggests that it could have been used at any time in the play’s longer production history. Yet we have also acknowledged the possibility that Hamlet’s speeches to the players and much of the latter half of the Q2 and F texts were certainly added relatively late in the history of the play up to 1602. What I would like the reader to consider now is that some of these additions constitute a sustained effort at building into the latter half of the play a refutation of the effort by Essex to use the players to promote his own political goals. If the references to Essex only become most obvious in the final scene, then the message that emerges to conspirators during the second half of the Q2 and F texts is that using the players in this manner is futile, and may well constitute a fatal error in a society marked by increased surveillance: the end of what is conventionally marked as Act 3, Scene 1, neatly wraps up the first section of the play, as I have argued, and the image on which this section closes is Claudius’s observation about not allowing madness to go unwatched. Each of the efforts to reveal Hamlet’s true motives in the first half of the play—and the not-yet-completed plan that results in Polonius’s death—are taken from Belleforest’s Amleth, in which they are explicitly described as spying. We need not, as a result, read the spying element as an addition to make topical claims about Elizabethan surveillance, but the role of Burghley in instituting a notorious spy network has certainly been noted in the scholarship of the topical relevance of the spying undertaken by Corambis-Polonius against his own offspring as well as Hamlet.244 If anything, Burghley’s involvement in setting up the spy network for which Sir Francis Walsingham is most associated dates back to the establishment of Walsingham as Elizabeth’s Principal Secretary in 1573—Walsingham died in 1590, so the topicality of these spying references would seem to be strained if they refer only to Burghley and Walsingham in 1601. For mine, the spying element is simply borrowed directly from the Amleth tale, and it added to the sense that Corambis was Burghley in the earlier versions of the play, but by 1601 or thereabouts, the spying element was a matter of general currency only, in the sense that Elizabethan society remained a

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heavily surveillance-based one. We have noted for example that informers were rife within the theatre and would have been experienced firsthand by the players in the 1601 trial, if not before. In the latter half of the play, I think we see a number of other additions that address the Essex situation in more direct fashion. Hamlet’s “purpose of playing” speech might for one be considered by an audience in 1601 as a manifesto statement about the role of the theatre. I noted earlier that this “purpose of playing” speech was added after Kempe’s departure, and it in fact echoes Cicero’s claims for the purpose of Comedy, more specifically. I want to add here an observation about the way in which the purpose of Comedy is rendered more general by Hamlet in this speech: holding the mirror up to nature is equated with showing both “Virtue her feature” and “Scorn her own image,” as well as “the very age and body of the time his form and pressure” (3.2.22-24). Note the gendered pronouns: Virtue and Scorn are feminine, while the very age and body of the time is masculine. Within Hamlet, of course, we can say that the Prince is referring with the first two qualities to either Gertrude or Ophelia, or both, and that the very age and body of the time must be Claudius. Yet if we are to read Hamlet’s words within the Elizabethan context to which a general commentary on the purpose of playing would seem to extend itself, then Elizabeth would normally be viewed as the “age and body of the time.” Since this phrase is attached to the masculine pronoun, however, an Elizabethan audience is bound to have taken notice and asked which specific male was intended in contrast to the female embodied in the figures of Virtue and Scorn. In no uncertain terms, the execution of Essex, favourite of Elizabeth herself, was the news that dominated London in 1601, making the dead Earl very much a focus of the time. Hamlet is in a moment of self-referential topicality thus indicating to the audience that the players at The Globe (rather than those at court in Elsinore) are showing to Essex, albeit after his death, the effects of the “pressure” he brought to bear on The Lord Chamberlain’s Men prior to his coup. In the same movement, the outcomes of Hamlet’s Mousetrap thus become indicated to the audience, since the fate of Essex would have been well known to all. By ordering the players to stage The Murder of Gonzago, Hamlet not only catches the conscience of the King; he reveals to Claudius what he knows about the murder of his father, thereby posing a very real threat to the King. In the latter half of the play, as we have seen, the bulk of the material that is absent from Q1 relates to the machinations of the King in response to this threat. Far more detail is added to Claudius’s description of the plan to have Hamlet killed in England—while the plan is itself taken directly from the Amleth tale, the extended description of the plan could

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be seen by an audience circa 1601 as a conflation of the Queen’s decision first to post Essex to Ireland and then to eventually agree to his execution in England. The King chooses not to put “the strong law” on Hamlet after the death of Polonius, since he remains loved by the “distracted multitude” (4.3.3-4), which speaks to the popularity Essex enjoyed even at the time of his departure for Ireland.245 Hamlet’s observations about the massive army of Fortinbras, facing “fortune, death, and danger,” but all for “an eggshell” (4.4.51-52) could have sounded like a rumination on the pointlessness of Essex’s final military campaign. The arrival of Laertes from France in Q1 is unaccompanied by the rabble who declare him “King,” but Q2 adds this very clear reference to a popular uprising in Act 4, Scene 5. Yet Claudius quickly turns Laertes against Hamlet, leading to a conflict that is intended to end in the death of the Prince. If any memory of the association between the Corambis-Polonius figure and Burghley remains for the audience, it is potentially rekindled in indirect fashion by virtue of having Laertes pursue Hamlet in this last portion of the play. The Laertes-Hamlet rivalry may be a reflection of the doggedness with which Burghley’s son pursued Essex, doing what he felt necessary despite the Queen’s initial inability to bring herself to consign her favourite to death. Finally, as we have seen, the expanded final scene includes numerous direct references to Essex. A further reference, not listed by Le Comte, may be the “stoups of wines” introduced in Q2 but absent from Q1 (5.2.244), since Essex had held the monopoly on sweet wines since it was transferred to him after the death of Leicester in 1588. Such changes are most topical, and indeed make most sense, following the death of Essex in 1601. The play can thus become, with the addition of this new material, at once a lament on the loss of “a delicate and tender Prince” (4.4.47) and a warning to any others who should fail to treat the players better than “according to their desert” (2.2.465). Importantly, as I have sought to convey throughout this book, what the play becomes in 1601 is on the back of more than ten years of prior productions, revivals, and revisions. Its method, and the occasion for so doing, constantly shifted throughout that period. Indeed, given the impact of Anglo-Danish relations from 1599 to 1602, there must have been a shift of some magnitude in the company’s thinking about this play. We have noted that tensions in AngloDanish relations escalated during 1599 and negotiations did not finally get underway until 1602, by which time the play had been registered with the Stationers’ Company—for the purpose of self-suppression, as I argued in Chapter Two. The death of Essex had of course been the event of greatest magnitude in London in 1601, so it is easy to see that a revival of Hamlet in that year would have involved some rewriting of the play. We have not

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yet explained why Hamlet would have been chosen for this purpose, given that tensions between the English and the Danes had not yet eased in this year. While tensions remained high, though, they had in fact reached quite farcical proportions by 1601. Cheyney’s account of the reasons for the delay in negotiations is a litany of mishaps and misadventures: Elizabeth agreed to a conference in December, 1599, but wanted the venue changed from Bremen to Emden; she later postponed the meeting from March to April, but the letter of postponement did not reach the Danes until after they had already been waiting in Emden for several weeks, and at the same a series of disputes erupted in England over the constitution of their party; further delays caused the English delegation to not arrive until May, by which time the Danes were finally preparing to depart; and any hope that negotiations might at least proceed once the two parties were in the same location were finally scuttled by the English refusal to hold negotiations on the Danish ship.246 By the middle of 1600, then, negotiations were left indefinitely on hold, and throughout 1600 and 1601 the situation further deteriorated, with angry exchanges passing between the two monarchs over sometimes trivial and unreasonable complaints on both sides.247 In 1601, then, the Danish could easily have been seen as a viable target for negative portrayal. When the decision was made to reactivate negotiations in 1602, it was made suddenly and with some urgency, and it was hoped that they be conducted with a high level of secrecy—I have claimed that the company may have learned of the new negotiations only because their patron was a member of the Privy Council, so the play that may well have seemed a timely or even overdue dig at the Danes in 1601 may suddenly have seemed necessary once more to place under wraps. It is at this point that we can bring the search for the “tain” of Hamlet to a conclusion. We could go beyond the current investigations to consider the relationship between Q2 and the Folio text, but I think that by positing the addition of Q2 material in 1601, we arrive at a point at which the bulk of existing Hamlet scholarship picks up the thread. There are some debates about which of the two supposedly more authoritative texts (Q2 or F) was written first, and if we were to weigh into such debates based on claims I have made here, we would be quite sure that Q2 was prepared for print based on the material added in 1601—F was almost certainly prepared for print at a later time since some of the material that might be considered topical 1601 additions—such as Hamlet’s “how all occasions” soliloquy— is present in Q2 but not in F. What was eventually put into the Folio might have indeed been written earlier, perhaps in the 1599 production that was never performed, but because it did not make its way into print until 1623, and shows far too much evidence of editorial involvement—for example,

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the Act, Scene divisions—I have been reluctant to treat it as an artifact of 1599, 1600, or 1601 except where it contains material that is also in Q2. I leave more detailed consideration of the relationship between Q2 and F to those engaged in these existing debates.248 Where I have commented on material from Q2 being also present in F, it is to reinforce the point that the changes made from 1599 onwards were, for the most part, taken as keys to a significant redesign of the play, and this is understandable in terms of the longer history of the play if we accept that a redesign of this kind could be principally linked to Kempe’s departure from the company. The timeframe that has been assumed by generations of scholars to be the only conceivable starting point for Shakespeare’s Hamlet, circa 1599 to 1601, has been revealed in our search for the tain of Hamlet to be a point in time—or, to be more precise, a series of points of time, given ongoing revivals and revisions—in which the play takes its present form. The play with which we are now most familiar had evolved over many years, dating back to at least a full decade before the origin point normally given to it.

CONCLUSION

From the outset, one of the goals of the twentieth-century version of cultural history was to reach back into the histories of the great to recover the histories of more common people or of those forgotten in the annals of the elite. A focus on a history of attitudes or mentalités was able to free the historian from the constraints of histories of people, places, or events, with the inevitable focus on names and dates that such histories reproduced in the schoolroom. A push to view history with a much broader lens means of course also that the specific will often be eschewed in preference for the general. Cultural histories by Shakespeare scholars in recent decades have extended this tradition of recovery by drawing upon a broad historical landscape to situate Shakespeare’s plays and his theatre within a world populated by people who had a range of differing attitudes toward these plays and this theatre. Our goal in this book has not been to write a history of attitudes in this sense of a fully fledged cultural history; rather, we have sought to apply the lessons learned from cultural historians about how to avert our gaze from the glare of the histories of the great, to look for what is to be found hiding in the penumbra of such histories. The received and standard histories of Shakespeare and Hamlet represent two, albeit deeply intertwined, histories of the great, and we began with the observation that any attempt to reconsider the latter would require that we contend in kind with the reflective gaze of criticism through which any sense of the play’s history has tended for over four hundred years to be elided. The received history of Hamlet as having been penned by Shakespeare at the height of his powers around 1600 was as much history as most critics have ever required in meeting a criterion of universal greatness for both Bard and play, which in turn justifies the reflective gaze of the critic. Even the most rigid presentist approaches to Shakespeare have never given an adequate explanation, to my way of thinking, of why Hamlet or any early modern play should be considered worthy of our attention if we can never recover any genuine sense of its historical distance from us. The search for the tain of Hamlet has been motivated at its core by the desire to restore to a play written more than four hundred years ago this sense of historical distance together with the presentists’ pragmatic sense of the use value of a text within a given moment of time (which is to my way of thinking the most valuable methodological imperative of presentism in its more nuanced forms).

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Accordingly, I draw from cultural history the methods of investigation and analysis that enable us to look beyond “the Bard” and “the book of Hamlet” but also seek to drift back toward a certain degree of specificity to understand the forces at work throughout the world of those involved in the production of the play at precise moments in time. We do not enrich our understanding of Elizabethan textual culture if, for example, we ignore the rich creative potential of players and playwrights by insisting that only the solitary genius is able to break the shackles of medievalism and usher in the beginnings of modernity: for this reason, I invoke cultural history’s movement beyond solitary genius. By the same token, though, we offer nothing to the study of a particular text if we maintain that its value rests solely in what it can tell us about a world-view suffusing an entire culture over the stretch of what may be called an “age.” If the reader takes just one thing from this book, I hope that it will be this: in trying to move beyond textual interpretation toward textually-evidenced cultural history, we learn more from comparing the known dates of the production or publication of a Danish tragedy with records of Anglo-Danish diplomatic negotiations than we do, for example, from comparing a play we have conventionally dated to 1600 (but certainly not any later than 1603) with the arguments of a philosophical treatise from 1641 or the description of a man’s reaction to seeing a ghost, recorded in an obscure deposition dated 26 June, 1668. In the first of these examples, I refer of course to the Cartesian Meditations through which the plays of Shakespeare are sometimes read as precursors to modern psychology;1 in the second, I use one example from the work of Stephen Greenblatt, whose New Historicism typically looks to an obscure historical fragment as a pathway into unlocking some hitherto unexplored facet of a canonical Shakespearean play—in “The Touch of the Real,” he illustrates the power of his method to adapt what Clifford Geertz called “thick description” by citing a deposition from 1668 as a cue to alert the reader to the “odd blend of anticipation and astonishment that marks the Ghost’s appearance in Hamlet.”2 There can be no doubt that there is some value in tracing the connections between a play and the attitudes of its day, especially as such attitudes can be found in various texts of the day, but we should be cautious about the reach of time that could be counted as being roughly contemporaneous or sufficiently “of the day” to serve as the focus through which we seek to reread the text. If the attitudes of the day can in fact be shown to be historically located on the same day or at least the same month or year, shall we say, the scope of historical accuracy is substantially enhanced. Furthermore, it helps to be clear about precisely whose attitudes we are bringing into sharp relief. The reactions by a tailor from Derby may indeed tell us something about the

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blend of anticipation and astonishment with which the Ghost’s appearance in Hamlet is marked, but I contend that the attitudes of the company’s own patron to Denmark is more valid still as a frame for how (or even whether) a Danish tragedy will be produced or consigned to print. It does matter a great deal, in other words, that the company’s own patron played host to Louis Verreyken during his sensitive negotiations regarding Antwerp at around the same time that a dispute over a play about the siege of Antwerp from the company’s repertory was scheduled to be heard at the Court of Assistants. The reader might object that by bringing the attitudes of the company’s patron into play, we recapitulate a sense of history in which the nobility rather than the common people shape events, yet I counter with a reminder that in the history of Shakespeare’s plays, the “great” figure on which this history has been constructed in the past is “the Bard” and the role of the patron has been heavily diminished if not forgotten altogether. A cultural history must therefore extend to any figure whose involvement in the play was bound to be influential. We do not have a record of Carey being directly involved in his company’s activities at this level of detail, to be sure, but when the historical record throws up a coincidence of this magnitude we must be prepared to consider a direct relationship between these two events, which amounts also to a relationship between patron and printer. Just because there is no evidence of this agreement in the historical record, it does not mean that we cannot deduce the existence of one— indeed, where self-censorship is at stake, we must also assume that it was potentially injudicious for either party to retain a written record of any such agreement. The demand for specificity must extend, in any textually-evidenced form of cultural history, to the texts we examine. Our goal here, after all, has been to restore to Hamlet a sense of its historical distance, which has included a consideration of the uses to which the play had been directed by those involved in its earliest productions. In order to test a proposition that Q1—far from being an inferior pirated version unworthy of consideration alongside the more authoritative Q2 and F versions—contains evidence of a history of theatrical revival and textual revision as well as of a memorial reconstruction after the fact, it is necessary to return to a much-maligned text with intense and myopic attention to detail. It is one thing to show that an ur-Hamlet attributed to Kyd is an unnecessary embellishment on the historical record, since the historical record provides ample evidence of a Hamlet play that can be connected with Shakespeare’s playing career over the course of more than a decade; it is yet another order of onus probandi altogether that we take on when we look to the Quarto texts for a residual trace of that longer history. Ultimately, even if the reader is not convinced

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of the potential precipitating factors I have identified—historical causality being, as we noted in Chapter Two, often a matter of educated guesswork in any case—the analyses of sections of text in Q1 and Q2 that I offer here should provide a compelling case for further studies of this kind. There is, after all, substantial overlap between Q1 and Q2 for Marcellus-LucianusVoltemand lines—this much is beyond dispute—which does in turn lend strong support to something like a memorial reconstruction argument to the extent, that is, that it explains why these 87 lines are repeated nigh on verbatim. It remains for scholars to develop substantially more detailed arguments out of the remaining several thousand lines. A further question of what Hamlet does with its sources is complicated, of course, if we cease to think of the play as a single object or book. Yet this complication is, in turn, liberating for comparative textual analysis, enabling us to show that Q1 adheres more directly to the order and description of events in the Amleth source tale, suggesting that Q2 sits at least one peg further along than Q1 on the series of textual transmissions from the source. Against the prospect that we are embracing a fatal contradiction on this point, I have sought to show that in a history of revivals and revisions, the memory of an actor-reporter circa 1603 could include residues of earlier productions if he had been involved in them, as is likely in the case of any member of the company. The timing of Kempe’s involvement and departure from the company led me to propose him as a prime candidate. Given that Kempe is cited by other scholars as a candidate for several other pirated texts, this is hardly a leap of faith—our reasoning rests on solid scholarly ground. Other textual mysteries or anomalies emerge as we tend to the Quartos in such detail: what are we to make of the section of the Q2 text in which Gertrude’s speech marker shifts from Quee. to Ger. and back again, since it is clear that this is not an example of a change made by a compositor? I suggested here that this could be explained by a change being made to the text while it was being prepared in fragmentary form, as in the preparation of a cue script, or more probably in the removal and insertion of new material to a prompt copy, for example, during—and this last part is the key here—the process of updating the bedchamber scene for a revival that writes out a Kempe-based Corambis and replaces it with a more topicallyoriented Polonius. What indeed are we to make of the fact that Q1 uses Corambis instead of Polonius, unnamed sentinels, and the very nonDanish Rossencraft and Gilderstone? If the content of Q1 was developed before Q2, we should attribute to this earlier text any such additions to the Amleth tale, including the introduction of the father-daughter relationship between Corambis and Ophelia, and the gravedigger scene. Comparison between the gravedigger scenes in Q1 and Q2 also demands that we

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account account in some fashion for the added legalese in the Q2 version. What are we also to make of the fact that in Q2 and F, the first half of the play leading up to Claudius fleeing the scene of the Mousetrap is only around half as long again as the same stretch of action in Q1 but the remainder of the Q2/F versions is more than twice that of the remainder of the Q1 from this point of the play? Hamlet barely gains any extra lines in the latter portion of the play, but Claudius is given hundreds of extra lines, leading us to think that the revival of the play for a Q2-based performance must have entailed a shift in focus for the second half of the play, and I claimed here that this, too, could be considered as a contingency at least partly in response to the departure of Kempe, but also as part of a series of changes that increased the play’s “Roman” feel (including the addition of Roman names, such as that of Claudius himself and the Latinate sentinels). Two reasons for such changes were the company’s decision to seek to lampoon the Elizabethan Julius Caesar and the goal of creating a classical link between The Globe and the Theatrum Marcelli of Ancient Rome. If the purpose of playing was indeed, as it were, to hold a mirror up to nature—a point that was true at least of Comedy until Hamlet extended the claim to include all theatrical forms—then it is arguably more prone to a reflective gaze than any other form of expression, so we need not think that this exercise is an attempt at a definitive interpretation, a journey into the heart of what the play means. Instead, we attend here to questions of method in order to get to the other side of the mirror. Without seeking to recover an original intention behind the play, I have nevertheless insisted that a textually-evidenced cultural history enables us to glimpse in rather detailed fashion what it might have meant and to whom under differing historical circumstances. This form of cultural history involves attending to the historical record but also to the detail of the text and with a sense of the differing functions and forms to which different kinds of texts can be targeted—this is especially important when we wish to unpack a history that takes us out of the comfortable environs of a single act of authorial production and immerses us instead in a world in which “authorship” and “production” were not yet fully formed sets of processes. In the morass of such details, we find the imperfections in the surface of the mirror that the players are holding up to nature, so to speak, allowing us to see the tain of the play. The play with which we have become most familiar evolved over a succession of revivals and revisions, and a glimpse of the tain of Hamlet has required that we search for evidence of these revivals and revisions of the play in the historical record and in the texts themselves. As a result, a rather complex picture emerges of the local history of a play that has come to be viewed as timeless, but it is a picture from which we can then extract

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plausible explanations for every aspect of the lost, so-called “ur-Hamlet,” of the registration of the play’s title, of the publication of the Quartos, and of the place in all of this of Shakespeare, his fellow players, their patrons, the theatres in which they performed, and many other historical figures besides; history—as with all life, I suggest—never comfortably coalescing around a single person, place, or time.

NOTES

Introduction 1

References to line numbers and Act-Scene divisions are to the Arden 3 Hamlet, edited by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor (London: Arden, 2006). Their edition adheres for the most part to the text of the Second Quarto (Q2), with the exception that the Arden 3 uses some modernised spelling, punctuation, and such like. 2 Paul Bertram and Bernice W. Kliman, The Three-Text Hamlet: Parallel Texts of the First and Second Quartos and First Folio (New York: AMS Press, 1991): 60. Most quotations in which specific wording and punctuation are given from any of the different versions of the play will be taken from this excellent reproduction, retaining where possible the relevant formatting of the different versions, and cited by page number. 3 Oxford English Dictionary, “tain, v.” 4 P. Zecchin, “The History of Venetian Mirror,” Verre 6.2 (2000): 38-46; esp. 40. 5 Sabine Melchior-Bonnet, The Mirror: A History, Trans. Katherine H. Jewett (New York and London: Routledge, 2001): 30-33. 6 Rayna Kalas, “The Technology of Reflection: Renaissance Mirrors of Steel and Glass,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 32.3 (2002): 519-42. 7 OED, “foil,” n.4.b. 8 Martin Scofield, The Ghosts of Hamlet: The Play and Modern Writers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980): 3. 9 The appeal to authorial intention was initially invalidated within the New Criticism by William K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley in “The Intentional Fallacy,” Sewanee Review 54 (1946): 468-88. 10 The question of Claudius’s reaction to The Murder of Gonzago and the preceding dumb show was the subject of many debates in the first half of the twentieth century, as Eileen Cohen neatly summarises in “Hamlet and The Murder of Gonzago: Two Perspectives,” Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 61.3 (1983): 543-556, esp. 544. 11 Margreta de Grazia, Hamlet without Hamlet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 12 De Grazia, 1. 13 De Grazia, 7-13. 14 De Grazia, x. 15 De Grazia, 8. 16 De Grazia, 10. 17 See, for example, Phillip J. Finkelpearl, “Scoloker, Anthony,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 49: 317. 18 De Grazia, 10.

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See Charles Whitney, Early Responses to Renaissance Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007): 144. 20 Quoted in Whitney, 146. 21 Thomas Nashe, “Preface to Greene’s Menaphon,” The Works of Thomas Nashe. Vol III, ed. Ronald B. McKerrow. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958): 315. 22 See Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor, “Introduction,” Hamlet Arden 3 edition (London: Arden, 2006): 1-145, esp. 45. Since The Spanish Tragedy makes no mention of the Spanish Armada, which would have been impossible to ignore after 1588, E.K. Chambers established that the play must have been written no later than 1587—The Elizabethan Stage. Vol. 3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923): 396. 23 Thompson and Taylor, 44. 24 Thompson and Taylor, 57-58. The editors in fact cite nine allusions to the play in total as well as indicating that others may be referenced in The ShakespeareAllusion Book (1909). 25 De Grazia, 8. 26 Arthur C. Kirsch, “A Caroline Commentary on the Drama,” Modern Philology 66.3 (1969): 256-61, esp. 257-58. 27 J.O. Halliwell, ed. The Droll of the Bouncing Knight, or the Robbers Robbed; to Which is Added The Droll of the Grave-Makers, Both Constructed Out of Shakespeare’s Plays About A.D. 1647, and Acted at Bartholomew and Other Fairs (London, 1860). 28 Peter Holland, “Shakespeare Abbreviated,” The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Popular Culture, ed. Robert Shaughnessy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007): 26-45, esp. 34. 29 Samuel Pepys recorded his favourable impressions of the 1661 staging of Hamlet, “done with scenes very well,” and returned to see the play twice more in the same year, and as Stanley Wells notes, the use of stage scenery and other devices would become a hallmark of Davenant’s subsequent adaptations. Stanley Wells, Shakespeare: For All Time (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003): 18789. 30 Thompson and Taylor, 101-2. 31 Cynthia Northcutt Malone, “Framing in Hamlet,” College Literature 18.1 (1991): 50-63, esp. 52. 32 See, for example, Harold R. Walley, “The Dates of Hamlet and Marston’s The Malcontent,” The Review of English Studies 36 (1933): 397-409; J.M.Nosworthy, “The Structural Experiment in Hamlet,” The Review of English Studies 88 (1946): 282-88; and Roslyn L. Knutson, “Falconer to the Little Eyases: A New Date and Commercial Agenda for the ‘Little Eyases’ Passage in Hamlet,” Shakespeare Quarterly 46.1 (1995): 1-31. 33 See, for example, Robert Cohen, “Shakespeare’s Sixteen-Year-Old Hamlet,” Educational Theatre Journal 25.2 (1973): 179-88. 34 De Grazia, 159-61. 35 Jean I. Marsden, “Improving Shakespeare: From the Restoration to Garrick,” The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage, eds. Stanley Wells and Sarah Stanton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002): 21-36, esp. 21-22. 36 Allardyce Nicoll, Restoration Drama, 1660-1700 (London, 1928): 314-15.

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Thompson and Taylor, 98-99. De Grazia, 10-12. 39 Thompson and Taylor, 13-16. 40 Thompson and Taylor, 16-17. 41 William Christie, Samuel Taylor Coleridge: A Literary Life (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009): 175. 42 William Empson, “Updating Revenge Tragedy,” Essays on Shakespeare, ed. David B. Pirie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986): 79-92; esp. 81. 43 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, S.T.Coleridge’s “Treatise on Method,” ed. Alice Snyder (London: Constable, 1934): 32n3. Coleridge’s claim is of course incorrect, as “Psychology” had been recognised in English as the science or philosophy of the human mind since at least Steven Blankaart’s Physical Dictionary, published in numerous editions a century before Coleridge made his claim (London, 1684), although it is fair to point out that Blankaart’s Physical Dictionary was a translation of his Lexicon medicum. Yet by the middle of the eighteenth century, the term had certainly gained credence in English and appears regularly in treatises on the philosophy of mind in the latter decades. 44 De Grazia, 12-14. 45 Thompson and Taylor, 29. 46 J. Dover Wilson, What Happens in Hamlet, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951). 47 Dover Wilson, esp. 4-7. 48 Terence Hawkes, “Telmah,” Shakespeare and the Question of Theory, eds. Patricia Parker and Geoffrey Hartman (New York and London: Routledge, 1993): 310-32. 49 Dover Wilson, 13. 50 Hawkes, 319. 51 Dover Wilson, ix-xv. 52 W.W.Greg, The Editorial Problem in Shakespeare: A Survey of the Foundations of the Text (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1942): 65. Undoubtedly, by Greg’s criteria, the apostrophe in the Ghost’s advice to Hamlet would be nothing more than printer error. 53 Hawkes, “Telmah,” 313-16. 54 Hawkes, “Telmah,” 317. 55 Hawkes, “Telmah,” 312. 56 Terence Hawkes, Meaning by Shakespeare (New York and London: Routledge, 1992): 3. See also Hawkes, That Shakespeherian Rag (London: Methuen, 1986). 57 Hugh Grady and Terence Hawkes, eds. Presentist Shakespeares (London and New York: Routledge, 2006). 58 Gary Taylor’s Reinventing Shakespeare: A Cultural History from the Restoration to the Present (London: The Hogarth Press, 1989) maps the history of Shakespeare criticism in just these terms, with each era being marked by the desire of the dominant critics to reinvent Shakespeare as a knowledge commodity according to the tastes of the academy in their era, but at the same time hooking themselves into the canon of Shakespeare critics. 59 Hawkes, “Telmah,” 322-24. 38

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Herbert Berry disputes the long standing convention of treating the construction of The Theatre as the origin of the purpose-built playhouses around London in his account of the history of The Red Lion, “The First Public Playhouses, Especially the Red Lion,” Shakespeare Quarterly 40.2 (1989): 133-48. 61 Andrew Gurr certainly makes no mention of Newington Butts in his extensive account of the large amphitheatre-style theatres, in Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), but William Ingram argues for it to be included in histories of the large London theatres, in The Business of Playing: The Beginnings of the Adult Professional Theater in Elizabethan London (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1992), esp. 150-81. 62 Douglas Bruster, Drama and the Market in the Age of Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992): 2-11. 63 See Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Basic Books, 1984); and Roger Chartier, Cultural History: Between Practices and Representations (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989). 64 For an excellent account of the long history of “cultural history” prior to its resurgence in the 1980s, see Peter Burke, What is Cultural History? (Cambridge: Polity, 2008): 6-20. 65 Douglas A. Brooks , From Playhouse to Printing House: Drama and Authorship in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Barbara M. Benedict, Curiosity: A Cultural History of Early Modern Inquiry (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001); Gail Kern Paster, Katherine Rowe, and Mary Floyd Wilson, eds., Reading the Early Modern Passions: Essays in the Cultural History of Emotion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). 66 Bergeron, David M. Textual Patronage in English Drama, 1570-1640 (London: Ashgate, 2006); Paul Whitfield White and Suzanne R. Westfall, eds., Shakespeare and Theatrical Patronage in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 67 Paul Whitfield White, “Shakespeare, the Cobhams, and the Dynamics of Theatrical Patronage,” Shakespeare and Theatrical Patronage in Early Modern England, Paul Whitfield White and Suzanne R. Westfall, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002): 64-89. 68 Roger Chartier, “Text, Symbols, and Frenchness,” The Journal of Modern History 57.4 (1985): 682-95. 69 Chartier, “Text,” 686. 70 Darnton, xvii. 71 Arthur Marwick, The Nature of History (Chicago: Lyceum Books, 1989): 20102. 72 Peter Stallybrass and Roger Chartier, “Reading and Authorship: The Circulation of Shakespeare, 1560-1619,” A Concise Companion to Shakespeare and the Text, ed. Andrew Murphy (Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010): 35-56; esp. 48-53. 73 Tiffany Stern, Making Shakespeare: The Pressures of Stage and Page (London: Routledge, 2004): 42. 74 Stern, Making, 45.

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75 Ling’s practices are also given extended treatment in Kirk Melnikoff, “Nicholas Ling’s Republican Hamlet (1603),” Shakespeare’s Stationers: Studies in Cultural Biography, ed. Marta Straznicky (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013): 95-111.

Chapter One 1

T.S.Eliot, “Hamlet and his Problems” (1919), Selected Essays, 1917-1932 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1950): 121-26. 2 Eliot, 122-23. 3 The OED definition lists Joseph Warton’s Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope (1756-82) as the earliest reference to the word in the sense of being “given to independent exercise of the mind or imagination; capable of original ideas or actions; inventive, creative” (“original,” 6b). 4 Geoffrey Bullough, “Preface,” Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, Vol.1 (London and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977): ix-xiii, esp. ix. 1 Julie Maxwell, “Counter-Reformation Versions of Saxo: A New Source for ‘Hamlet’?” Renaissance Quarterly 57.2 (2004): 518-60, esp. 518n3. 2 Geoffrey Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, Vol.7 (London and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977): 94. 1 Palle Lauring, A History of the Kingdom of Denmark (Copenhagen: Host and Sons, 1960): 75. 2 William F. Hansen, Saxo Grammaticus and the Life of Hamlet (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983): 25-37. 3 Richard Cleasby and Gudbrand Vigfusson, An Icelandic-English Dictionary (Oxford, 1874): 19. 4 See, among others, Arthur P. Stabler, “King Hamlet’s Ghost in Belleforest?” Proceedings of the Modern Language Association 77.1 (1962): 18-20; “Elective Monarchy in the Sources of Hamlet,” Studies in Philology 62 (1965): 654-61; “Melancholy, Ambition, and Revenge in Belleforest’s Hamlet,” Proceedings of the Modern Language Association 81.3 (1966): 207-13; “More on the Search for Yorick’s Skull: or, The Goths Refuted,” Shakespeare Studies 7 (1974): 203-08. 5 Maxwell, 519-23. 6 The question of whether or not Hamlet has enjoyed the pleasure of Ophelia’s body is heavily debated, but for Stabler it is clear enough that Shakespeare’s hero mirrors Belleforest’s in being manifestly free from sin. See, for example, Stabler, “Melancholy,” 212-13. 7 Andrew Gurr, The Shakespeare Company, 1594-1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004): 2-10. 8 Peter Ackroyd, Shakespeare: The Biography (London: Vintage, 2006): 176. 9 Greg, Editorial, 49. 10 Stabler, “King,” 18-19. 11 The first definition for “umbra” in the OED is “The shade of a deceased person; a phantom or ghost” (1), with Ben Jonson’s Cynthia’s Revels (1599) listed as an early source.

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Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (New York and London: W.W.Norton & Company, 2004): 304. 13 Greenblatt, Will, 305. 14 Bertram and Kliman, 7. 15 For excellent accounts of the emergent publishing industry and its relationship to the theatre, see Douglas A. Brooks , From Playhouse to Printing House: Drama and Authorship in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); and Grace Ioppolo, Dramatists and their Manuscripts in the Age of Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton and Heywood: Authorship, Authority and the Playhouse (London and New York: Routledge, 2006). 16 S.H. Steinberg, Five Hundred Years of Printing (London: The British Library & Oak Knoll Press, 1996): 59-62. 17 Lyman Ray Patterson, Copyright in Historical Perspective (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1968): 29. 18 For an comprehensive account of the development of the printing houses and the myriad activities and interests of the early modern stationer, see Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998): 58-186. 19 Helen Smith, “The Publishing Trade in Shakespeare’s Time,” A Concise Companion to Shakespeare and the Text, ed. Andrew Murphy (Oxford: WileyBlackwell, 2010): 17-34; esp. 33. 20 Patterson, 84-85. 21 Peter W.M. Blayney, “The Publication of Playbooks,” A New History of Early English Drama, ed. John D. Cox and David Scott Kastan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997): 383-422. 22 Alan B. Farmer and Zachary Lesser, “The Popularity of Playbooks Revisited,” Shakespeare Quarterly 56.1 (2005): 1-32. 23 Peter W.M. Blayney, “The Alleged Popularity of Playbooks,” Shakespeare Quarterly 56.1 (2005): 33-50. 24 See Zachary Lesser’s compelling account of the extent to which “print must be logically prior to performance, since our historical evidence for the details of the performance of a given exists almost entirely in the printed playbook itself.” Lesser does not valorise print at the expense of performance; his observations are, like mine, directed toward the question of how we know performance history in the case of any play. See Lesser, Renaissance Drama and the Politics of Publication: Readings in the English Book Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004): 19. 25 Evelyn Tribble, “Why Shakespeare Wrote Shakespeare—And Why it Matters,” English in Aotearoa 78 (2012): 7-14; esp. 10-11. 26 Thompson and Taylor, 93. 27 Bertram and Kliman, 176. 28 See, for example, Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, with John Jowett and William Montgomery, William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987): 138. 29 George Ian Duthie, The “Bad” Quarto of Hamlet: A Critical Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1941): 85.

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Knutson, “Falconer,” 2. Thompson and Taylor, 85n2. 32 Greg first applied his theory to The Merry Wives of Windsor, but the theory was soon taken up in debates over the authorship of Hamlet; cf. Thompson and Taylor, 85. 33 Paul Werstine, “Narratives about Printed Shakespeare Texts: ‘Foul Papers’ and ‘Bad’ Quartos,” Shakespeare Quarterly 41.1 (1990): 65-86, esp. 66. 34 Duthie, 132-43. 35 Doubling, which will be explained in more detail later, refers to the practice of a single actor playing several parts throughout a single performance. 36 Paul Menzer, The Hamlets: Cues, Qs, and Remembered Texts (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2008): 33-34. 37 Paul Werstine, “A Century of ‘Bad’ Shakespeare Quartos,” Shakespeare Quarterly 50.3 (1999): 310-33. 38 Werstine, “Century,” 319-20. 39 Werstine, “Century,” 330. 40 Laurie E. Maguire, Shakespearean Suspect Texts: The “Bad” Quartos and Their Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 41 Maguire, 256. 42 Bertram and Kliman, 14-15. 43 Bertram and Kliman, 54-55. 44 Bertram and Kliman, 54-55. 45 Bertram and Kliman, 54. 46 Bertram and Kliman, 54. 47 See, for example, William Davis, “Now, Gods, Stand up for Bastards: The ‘Good Quarto’ Hamlet,” Textual Cultures: Texts, Contexts, Interpretation 1.2 (2006): 60-89; and Zachary Lesser and Peter Stallybrass, “The First Literary Hamlet and the Commonplacing of Professional Plays,” Shakespeare Quarterly 59.4 (2008): 371-420. 48 Steven Urkowitz, “Back to Basics: Thinking About the Hamlet First Quarto,” The “Hamlet” First Published (Q1, 1603): Origins, Form, Intertextualities, ed. Thomas Clayton (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992): 257-91. 49 Janette Dillon, “Is There a Performance in this Text?” Shakespeare Quarterly 45.1 (1994): 74–86; Dorothea Kehler, “The First Quarto of Hamlet: Reforming Widow Gertred,” Shakespeare Quarterly 46.4 (1995): 398-413. 50 Lukas Erne, Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003): 225-37. 51 Bertram and Kliman, 86. 52 Erne, 33. 53 David Scott Kastan, Shakespeare and the Book (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001): esp. 20-23. 54 Kastan, 33. 55 Edmund K. Chambers, William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems, Vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1930): 193-94. 56 See, for example, the introduction to the Arden 2 Taming of the Shrew, edited by Brian Morris (London: Arden, 1981): esp. 18-50. 31

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57 Edward Arber, ed. A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, 1554-1640 A.D. Vol. 3 (New York: Peter Smith, 1950): 105. 58 Arber, 125. 59 Ackroyd, 176. 60 Maxwell, 520. 61 Bertram and Kliman, 106-07. 62 Greenblatt, Will, 289. 63 Greenblatt, Will, 290-95. 64 Sigmund Freud asserted a connection between the death of Hamnet and the origins of Shakespeare’s play in The Interpretation of Dreams, and many other psychological readings have ensued, though all of them focus on 1600 or 1601 as the date of Shakespeare’s authorship. See Peter Bray, “Men, Loss and Spiritual Emergency: Shakespeare, the Death of Hamnet and the Making of Hamlet,” Journal of Men, Masculinities and Spirituality 2.2 (2008): 95-115. 65 Nicholas Rowe, “Some Account of the Life, &c. of Mr. William Shakespeare,” The Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare: With Explanatory Notes, ed. Samuel Aynscough (London: John Stockdale, 1807). 66 Greenblatt, Will, 289-90. 67 According to Paul Dean, the earlier Henry VI trilogy already contained the formal components of the English History play, which were then developed in the later Histories, but it remains worth noting that the earlier plays were of course designated as Tragedies when consigned to print. Paul Dean, “Shakespeare’s Henry VI Trilogy and Elizabethan “Romance” Histories: The Origins of a Genre,” Shakespeare Quarterly 33.1 (1982): 34-48. 68 Eric Sams, “Hamnet or Hamlet, That is the Question,” Hamlet Studies 17 (1995): 94-98. See also Greenblatt, Will, 311, although Greenblatt refers only to the “loose orthography of the time” without the insistent detail that Sams brings to this issue. 69 De Grazia, 86-88. 70 Greenblatt, Will, 76-81. 71 Wells, 33. For a detailed account of Shakespeare’s purchase of New Place, see Robert Bearman, Shakespeare in the Stratford Records (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Alan Sutton Publishing Ltd., 1994): 15-21. Further purchases of property in Stratford are also detailed by Bearman, 37-43. 72 Wells, 34. 73 R.A.Foakes, ed. Henslowe’s Diary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002): 21. 74 Gurr, Playgoing, 14-25. 75 In a work that rivals Gurr’s history of the Shakespearean playing companies, but which contains much the same material of substance and which differs primarily in its chronological presentation, David Grote’s The Best Actors in the World: Shakespeare and his Acting Company (Westport, Connecticut and London: Greenwood Press, 2002), briefly records the Newington Butts appearances but makes no mention of the curious presence of Hamlet among the plays that, he notes only generally, “eventually surfaced in Shakespeare’s company”: 21. 76 Nashe, 315.

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Albert E. Jack, “Thomas Kyd and the Ur-Hamlet,” PMLA 20.4 (1905): 729-48, esp. 748. For an indication of the initial responses to Jack’s article, see O.L.Hatcher, “The Ur-Hamlet Problem,” Modern Language Notes 21.6 (1906): 177-80. 78 Jack, 732-33. 79 Robert T. Lenaghan, Caxton’s Aesop (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1968). 80 See, for example, William Haller, Foxe’s First Book of Martyrs and the Elect Nation (London: Jonathan Cape, 1963). 81 Jack, 736. 82 Katherine Duncan-Jones, Ungentle Shakespeare: Scenes from His Life (London: The Arden Shakespeare, 2001): 48-50. 83 Greenblatt, Will, 161. 84 Greenblatt, Will, 162. A more protracted discussion of the possible connections between Shakespeare and The Queen’s Men, including observations about linkages between early Shakespeare plays and the known repertory of The Queen’s Men, can be found in Scott McMillin and Sally-Beth MacLean, The Queen’s Men and Their Plays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998): 160-66. 85 Wells, 50. 86 Greenblatt, Will, 162. 87 Stephen Greenblatt, Hamlet in Purgatory (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2001). 88 Duncan-Jones, 30-38. 89 Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (New York: Riverhead Books, 1998): 383-431, esp. 383. 90 Peter Alexander, Shakespeare’s Life and Art (London: James Nisbet, 1944): 154. Alexander revives the idea, again in little more than a page of brief commentary, in A Shakespeare Primer (London: James Nisbet, 1951): viii-ix. 91 Leah Marcus examines in detail the textual evidence for Shakespearean revisions of Hamlet in Unediting the Renaissance: Shakespeare, Marlowe, Milton (London: Routledge, 1996): 132-76. 92 Robert E. Burkhart, “Finding Shakespeare’s ‘Lost Years’,” Shakespeare Quarterly 29.1 (1978): 77-79. 93 McMillin and MacLean, 161. 94 McMillin and MacLean, 163. 95 McMillin and MacLean, 164-65. 96 Burkhart, 79. 97 Terence G. Schoone-Jongen, Shakespeare’s Companies: William Shakespeare’s Early Career and the Acting Companies, 1577-1594 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2008): 173. 98 McMillin and MacLean, 18-21. 99 Samuel Schoenbaum, William Shakespeare: A Compact Documentary Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977): 116. 100 Frederick S. Boas, The Works of Thomas Kyd (Oxford: Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1901): xlv-liii. 101 Boas, Works, xlvi-xlvii. 102 Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearean Stage, 1574-1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973): 24.

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Schoone-Jongen, 180. E.K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage. Vol. 2, 91. 105 Schoone-Jongen, 176. 106 Gurr, Stage, 22. 107 William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Arden 2, ed. Harold Jenkins (London: Arden, 1982): 84n4. 108 Empson, 79-92. 109 Laurie Johnson, “Unthinking Hamlet: Stage, Page, and Critical Thought,” Teaching Shakespeare Beyond the Centre: Australasian Perspectives, ed. Kate Flaherty, Penny Gay, and Liam Semler (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013): 63-74. 110 Gurr, Company, 242. 111 Tiffany Stern, Documents of Performance in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009): 236-45. 112 David Bradley, From Text to Performance in the Elizabethan Stage: Preparing the Play for the Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992): 126. 113 Margreta de Grazia and Peter Stallybrass, “The Materiality of the Shakespearean Text,” Shakespeare Quarterly 44.3 (1993): 255-83. 114 De Grazia and Stallybrass, 279. 115 While Gurr routinely presents The Lord Chamberlain’s Men as a shareholder arrangement from its formation, Roslyn Knutson has pointed out that the evidence for such an arrangement being in place in 1594 is non-existent. Nevertheless, Knutson does note that the warrant for payment that was accepted on behalf of their company by Shakespeare, Burbage, and Kempe in March, 1595, refers to performances at Court in December, 1594. Whether the company adopted a formal shareholder arrangement in 1594 or later is immaterial to the observation we wish to make here: that Shakespeare would be named alongside Burbage and Kempe on the Accounts of the Chamber in early 1595 is proof that he was by this time a trusted and senior member of the company. Knutson, “What’s So Special About 1594?” Shakespeare Quarterly 61.4 (2010): 449-67; esp. 466-67. 116 Scott McMillin, “Reading the Elizabethan Acting Companies,” Early Theatre 4 (2001): 111-15. 117 Bullough, Vol. 7, 18. 118 Bullough, Vol. 7, 18n1. 119 Gunnar Sjögren, “Hamlet and the Coronation of Christian IV,” Shakespeare Quarterly 16.2 (1965): 155-60; esp. 156. 120 Gurr, Company, 69. 121 The reader may be interested in James Nielsen’s claim that Kempe may not have left the company in 1599, which he bases on a reference in A Pil to Purge Melancholie to “one pleasant conceit or other of Monsier de Kempe next Monday at The Globe,” suggesting that Kempe did indeed perform at The Globe, which can have only happened if he remained with The Lord Chamberlain’s Men through the earliest run of performances at the new theatre in late 1599. Counter to this claim, we can observe that a pamphlet written after the construction of The Globe—while Kempe was initially still a shareholder in the new site—could easily have included an expectation that Kempe would perform at the venue. Since it foreshadows his 104

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appearance, rather than laying claim to having witnessed the same, it need not be taken as evidence that Kempe actually did perform there. See “William Kempe at The Globe,” Shakespeare Quarterly 44.4 (1993): 466-68. 122 Brian Vickers, Shakespeare, Co-Author: A Historical Study of Five Collaborative Plays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). 123 Gurr, Company, 290-301. 124 Roslyn Lander Knutson, The Repertory of Shakespeare’s Company, 1594-1613 (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 1991): 179-209. 125 Vickers, 148-243. 126 Thomas Merriam, “Heterogeneous Authorship in Early Shakespeare and the Problem of Henry V,” Literary and Linguistic Computing 13.1 (1998): 15-28. 127 William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Arden, ed. Clifford Leech (London: Arden, 1969): xxx-xxxi. 128 Morris, 12-49. 129 Jenkins, 97-98. 130 Philip Edwards, ed. The Spanish Tragedy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1977): xlvi-xlix. 131 Irving Ribner, The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare (Worcester and London: The Trinity Press, 1964). 132 John A. Wagner, ed. Voices of Shakespeare’s England: Contemporary Accounts of Elizabethan Daily Life (Santa Barbara: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2010): 43-46. 133 Simon Palfrey and Tiffany Stern, Shakespeare in Parts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007): 41. 134 Brinsley Nicholson argued well over a century ago that Hamlet’s speech to the player was an attack on Kempe. See Nicholson, “Kemp and the Play of Hamlet— Yorick and Tarlton—A Short Chapter in Dramatic History,” New Shakespeare Society Transactions 8 (1880-82): 57-66. 135 Bertram and Kliman, 133-34. 136 Robert Henke, “Orality and Literacy in the Commedia dell’Arte and the Shakespearean Clown,” Oral Tradition 11.2 (1996): 222-48; esp. 233. 137 Jenkins, 289n; Robert Weimann, “Playing with a Difference: Revisiting ‘Pen’ and ‘Voice’ in Shakespeare’s Theater,” Shakespeare Quarterly 50.4 (1999): 41532; esp. 418-19. 138 Weimann, “Playing,” 419. See also Weimann’s Author’s Pen and Actor’s Voice: Playing and Writing in Shakespeare’s Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000): 23-24. 139 William Shakespeare, King Henry V, New Cambridge Shakespeare, ed. Andrew Gurr (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005): 228; Grote, 121-22. 140 David Wiles, Shakespeare’s Clown: Actor and Text in the Elizabethan Playhouse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987): 117. 141 Wiles, 70-72. 142 Wiles, 57-58. 143 Scott McMillin, The Elizabethan Stage and “The Book of Sir Thomas More” (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987): 61-63.

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144 See, for example, Chambers, Vol. 2, 307; and Scott McMillin, “The Plots of ‘The Dead Man’s Fortune’ and ‘2 Seven Deadly Sins’: Inferences for Theatre Historians,” Studies in Bibliography 26 (1973): 235-43. 145 David Kathman, “Reconsidering The Seven Deadly Sins,” Early Theatre 7.1 (2004): 13-44. 146 David Kathman, “Grocers, Goldsmiths, and Drapers: Freemen and Apprentices in the Elizabethan Theater,” Shakespeare Quarterly 55.1 (2004): 1-49. 147 Wiles, 31. 148 Glynne Wickham, Herbert Berry, and William Ingram, eds. English Professional Theatre, 1530-1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000): 182. 149 OED, “revive,” v.10. 150 Knutson, Repertory, 91-92. 151 Wiles, 144-46. 152 Wiles, 116-35. 153 Wiles, 75. 154 Bertram and Kliman, 224-25. 155 Wiles, 70. 156 David Bevington, Murder Most Foul: Hamlet Through the Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011): 3-4; 113-18. 157 Bevington, 35-36. 158 Duncan Salkeld, Madness and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994): 28-29. 159 Bertram and Kliman, 114. 160 Eric Csapo, “Plautine Elements in the Running Slave Entrance Monologues,” The Classical Quarterly 39.1 (1989): 148-63. 161 Bertram and Kliman, 116. 162 Wiles, 52-53. 163 Wiles, 104. 164 Gurr, Henry, 228. 165 Wiles, 37-38. 166 Wiles, 31-32. 167 Wiles, 32. 168 Wiles, 38-41. 169 Foakes, 196. 170 Wiles, 41. 171 Wiles, 41. 172 Anthony B. Dawson and Paul Yachnin, The Culture of Playgoing in Shakespeare’s England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001): 199. 173 Wiles, 136-63. 174 Jeffrey Masten, Textual Intercourse: Collaboration, Authorship, and Sexualities in Renaissance Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997): 115. Incidentally, Armin’s play is seen by Stephen Orgel as a parody of Hamlet, giving further support to the idea that Armin remained, within the company, a writer granted special status alongside their leading playwright, Shakespeare. See Orgel, Imagining Shakespeare: A History of Texts and Visions (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003): 30.

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175

Nora Johnson, The Actor as Playwright in Early Modern Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003): 17. 176 Muriel Clara Bradbrook, Themes and Conventions of Elizabethan Tragedy, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994): 26. 177 Gurr, Company, 75. 178 Gurr, Company, 74-75. 179 Michael J. Hirrel, “Duration of Performances and Length of Plays: How Shall We Beguile the Lazy Time?” Shakespeare Quarterly 61.2 (2010): 159-82. 180 Bertram and Kliman, 270. 181 Bertram and Kliman, 268.

Chapter Two 1

Ioppolo, 51-52. See Gurr, Company, 282; Knutson, Repertory , 179-209. 3 See W. Osborne Brigstocke, The Works of Shakespeare: All’s Well that Ends Well (BiblioBazaar LLC, 2008): ix. 4 James P. Bednarz, Shakespeare and the Poets’ War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001): 105-32; 175-200. 5 Knutson, Repertory, 185-86; 201-03. 6 Eddi Jolly, “Dating Shakespeare’s Hamlet,” The Oxfordian 2 (1999): 11-23; esp. 11. The reader will note that I did not use Jolly’s essay in the previous chapter— Jolly cites only briefly the same evidence that I explored in more detail and from the same sources to which I refer. In Jolly’s case, though admittedly not explicitly in this essay, the very same evidence has in a number of essays been used to argue that Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, was the “true” author of this and other Shakespeare plays. See for example, Eddi Jolly, “The Writing of Hamlet,” Great Oxford: Essays on the Life and Word of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, ed. Richard Malim (Tunbridge Wells: Parapress, 2004): 180-95. 7 Kehler, 404-13. 8 Lukas Erne, “Shakespeare and the Publication of his Plays,” Shakespeare Quarterly 53.1 (2002): 1-20. 9 Erne, “Publication,” 19. 10 Leeds Barroll provides comprehensive details of the impact of plague on the financial operations of the playhouses in Politics, Plague, and Shakespeare’s Theater (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1991). 11 Smith, 27. 12 Arber, Vol. 2, 43-44. 13 Robert Detobel, “Authorial Rights in Shakespeare’s Time,” The Oxfordian 4 (2001): 5-23; esp. 19. 14 Cyndia Susan Clegg, “‘’Twill Much Enrich the Company of Stationers’: Thomas Middleton and the London Book Trade, 1580-1627,” Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture: A Companion to the Selected Works, ed. Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007): 247-59; esp. 249-50. 15 Arber, Vol. 2, 648. 2

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16 See, for example, the Arden 2 edition of The Taming of the Shrew, 12-50; Knutson, “1594,” 458. 17 Arber, Vol. 2, 646. 18 Arber, Vol. 3, 204. 19 Gurr, Company, 283. 20 Arber, Vol. 3, 161. 21 Arber, Vol. 4, 107. 22 Arber, Vol. 3, 37. 23 Arber, Vol. 3, 378. 24 Arber, Vol. 2, 644. 25 Arber, Vol. 3, 89. 26 Arber, Vol. 3, 93. 27 Knutson, Repertory, 202. 28 Arber, Vol. 3, 68. See also Arthur Brooke, Brooke’s “Romeus and Juliet,” being the original of Shakespeare’s “The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet,” ed. J. J. Munro (London: Chatto and Windus, 1908). 29 See Arber, Vol. 2, 607, 622, 649. 30 Arber, Vol. 3, 105. 31 Arber, Vol. 3, 151. 32 Both The Yorkshire Tragedy and The Revenger’s Tragedy are anthologised in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, edited by Macdonald P. Jackson, John Jowett, Valerie Wayne, and Adrian Weiss (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007). 33 See Gurr, Company, 125; Ioppolo, 52. 34 Erne, “Publication,” 7. 35 Arber, Vol. 3, 122. 36 Arber, Vol. 3, 175. 37 Arber, Vol. 3, 161. 38 W.W. Greg, ed. A Larum for London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1913): v. 39 Arber, Vol. 3, 226. 40 Arber, Vol. 3, 48. 41 Arber, Vol. 5, 181. 42 Arber, Vol. 3, 125. 43 Arber, Vol. 5, 197. 44 Arber, Vol. 3, 148. 45 Arber, Vol. 5, 197. 46 See, for recent examples, Arthur F. Kinney, “Authoring Arden of Faversham,” Shakespeare, Computers, and the Mystery of Authorship, ed. Hugh Craig and Arthur F. Kinney (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009): 78-99; and MacDonald P. Jackson and S.P. Cerasano, “Parallels and Poetry: Shakespeare, Kyd, and Arden of Faversham,” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 23 (2010): 17-33. 47 Alfred W. Pollard, “Authors, Players, and Pirates in Shakespeare’s Day,” Shakespeare’s Fight with the Pirates and the Problems of the Transmission of his Text (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1920): 26-52; esp. 52. 48 Blayney, “Publication,” 383.

292 49

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Arber, Vol. 2, 652. Arber, Vol. 3, 122. 51 Arber, Vol. 3, 212. 52 W.W.Greg and E.Boswell, ed. Records of the Court of the Stationers’ Company, 1576 to 1602—from Register B (London: The Bibliographical Society, 1930). 53 Phoebe Sheavyn, The Literary Profession in the Elizabethan Age (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1967): 54-61. 54 Janet Clare, Art Made Tongue-Tied by Authority: Elizabethan and Jacobean Dramatic Censorship (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999): 38-39. 55 Walter W. Greg, Some Aspects and Problems of London Publishing Between 1550 and 1650 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956): 115. 56 Arber, Vol. 3, 252. 57 Arber, Vol. 3, 216; Derek Wilson, Sweet Robin: A Biography of Robert Dudley Earl of Leicester 1533–1588 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1981): 282-84. 58 Arber, Vol. 3, 219. 59 Arber, Vol. 3, 188. 60 Arber, Vol. 3, 190; W. Carew Hazlitt, ed. Jack of Dover’s Quest of Inquirie (London, 1866). 61 Frederick Gard Fleay, A Chronicle History of the Life and Work of William Shakespeare, Player, Poet, and Playmaker (London: John C. Nimmo, 1886): 291. 62 See Fleay, 78-79. 63 Fleay, 27, 46. 64 Charles Jasper Sisson, Thomas Lodge and Other Elizabethans (London: Frank Cass and Company, 1933): 107-09. 65 Arber, Vol. 3, 37. See also Michael J. Hirrel, “The Roberts Memoranda: A Solution,” The Review of English Studies 61.252 (2010): 711-28; esp. 712. 66 Arber, Vol. 3, 37. 67 Henry Norman Hudson, “Introduction,” As You Like It (The New Hudson Shakespeare), ed. Henry Norman Hudson (Ginn and Company, 1906): vii-xxxvii; esp. xviii. 68 Hirrel, “Roberts,” 716-18. 69 Hirrel, “Roberts,” 715-16. 70 Hirrel, “Roberts,” 716. 71 Hirrel, “Roberts,” 716. See also the account of some typical “outsider” petitions provided in Patterson, 67-70. 72 Hirrel, “Roberts,” 713n2. 73 Muriel St. Clare Byrne, “Elizabethan Handwriting for Beginners,” The Review of English Studies 1.2 (1925): 198-209; esp. 201. 74 Ronald B. McKerrow, “The Capital Letters in Elizabethan Handwriting,” The Review of English Studies 3.9 (1927): 28-36; David Graddol, English: History, Diversity, and Change (London and New York: Routledge, 1996): 64-67. 75 Byrne, 204-05. 76 Arber, Vol. 2, 247. 77 Arber, Vol. 2, 830. 78 OED, “stay,” n3.1b. 79 Arber, Vol. 3, 169. 50

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Arber, Vol. 2, 621. Arber, Vol. 3, 146. 82 See William Shakespeare, Henry V, The Oxford Shakespeare, ed. Gary Taylor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982): 24-26. While Taylor agrees that the level of “corruption” in the Q1 of Henry V bespeaks a chequered transmission history, he nevertheless prefers some of the textual variants present in the Quarto, as evidence of aspects of the play that were more likely to have been topical at the time of its first performances. Here, we will be adopting a similar approach to some of the Q1-Q2 variations in Hamlet in Chapter Three. 83 Arber, Vol. 2, 648. 84 Seymour M. Pitcher, The Case for Shakespeare’s Authorship of “The Famous Victories.” (New York: State University of New York, 1961). 85 Arber, Vol. 5, 193, 201. 86 Arber, Vol. 3, 188; Greg and Boswell, 97. 87 Alan Warwick Palmer and Veronica Palmer, Who’s Who in Shakespeare’s England (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999): 215. 88 Palmer and Palmer, 233. 89 Palmer and Palmer, 238. 90 As John Feather points out, until the addition of various ordinances from 1607 to 1637, publication of a title, even without prior registration of that title, rendered the rights of the copy to that individual, so long as he was a member of the Company of Stationers in good standing. Feather, “From Rights in Copies to Copyright: The Recognition of Authors’ Rights in English Law and Practice in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” The Construction of Authorship: Textual Appropriation in Law and Literature, ed. Martha Woodmansee and Peter Jazsi (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1999): 191-210; esp. 197. 91 Miriam Gilbert, Shakespeare in Performance: Love’s Labour’s Lost (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996): 5. 92 William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Arden, ed. Brian Gibbons (London: Arden, 1980): 1. 93 Arber, Vol. 3, 175. 94 Jean-Christophe Mayer has recently examined the decline in interest of chronicle history, which a rise in the dramatic presentation of historical materials might have precipitated—or with which it at least coincided. See Mayer, “The Decline of the Chronicle and Shakespeare’s History Plays,” Shakespeare Survey 63 (2010): 1223. 95 Clare, 48. 96 Gurr, Company, 7; Whitney, 73-75. 97 OED, “history,” 1. 98 Arber, Vol. 3, 122. 99 William R. Jones, “The Bishops’ Ban of 1599 and the Ideology of English Satire,” Literature Compass 7.5 (2010): 332-46. 100 Arber, Vol. 3, 677. 101 See, in particular, Evelyn May Albright, “Shakespeare’s Richard II and the Essex Conspiracy,” PMLA 42.3 (1927): 686-720; Chambers, Shakespeare, Vol. 1, 81

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320-21; Lily B. Campbell, Shakespeare’s Histories: Mirrors of Elizabethan Policy (San Marino, California: Huntingdon Library, 1968): 168-212. 102 Albright, 691-92. 103 Albright, 692. 104 Paul E.J. Hammer, “Shakespeare’s Richard II, the Play of 7 February 1601, and the Essex Rising,” Shakespeare Quarterly 59.1 (2008): 1-35; esp. 26-27. 105 William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Arden, reprint, ed. John Russell Brown (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1959): xxvii. 106 Albright, 687; Chris Fitter, “Historicising Shakespeare’s Richard II: Current Events, Dating, and the Sabotage of Essex,” Early Modern Literary Studies 11.2 (2005) 1.1-47; esp. 44-45. 107 Fitter, 44. 108 Ro. Cecyll and Arthur Dimock, “The Conspiracy of Dr. Lopez,” The English Historical Review 9.35 (1894): 440-72. 109 Greenblatt, Will, 273-81. 110 Paul E. J. Hammer, The Polarization of Elizabethan Politics: The Political Career of Robert Devereaux, 2nd Earl of Essex, 1585-1597 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999): 121-22; 264-68. 111 E. Denison Ross, Sir Anthony Sherley and His Persian Adventure (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge Curzon, 1933): 12-13. 112 Ross, 14. 113 Pavel Drábek, “Shakespeare’s Influence on Mucedorus,” Shakespeare and His Collaborators over the Centuries, ed. Pavel Drábek, Klára Kolinská, and Matthew Nicholls (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008): 45-53. 114 Gurr, Company, 291. 115 Hammer, Polarization, 301. 116 Ross, 18-19. 117 Alexander Dyce, ed. Kemps Nine Daies Wonder (London: The Camden Society, 1840): xiii-xvii. 118 Arber, Vol. 3, 239; Frank E. Halliday, A Shakespeare Companion, 1564-1964 (Baltimore: Penguin, 1964): 533. 119 McMillin, 112. 120 Palmer and Palmer, 37. 121 Gurr, Company, xiii. See also Roslyn Knutson, Playing Companies and Commerce in Shakespeare’s Time (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); esp. 8-11, for cogent arguments against the sense that the two companies had created a complete duopoly. Knutson focuses on the variety and vitality of the theatres and other touring companies, making any sense of a duopoly invisible in the eyes of the average theatre-goer. I agree with Knutson’s assessment, but I also maintain Gurr’s language here because my focus is on the patron, to whom I believe something like a duopoly had been created in 1594 and was worth preserving. In what follows, however, I aim to complicate Gurr’s characterisation of Henry Carey’s son, George, as being indifferent to the troupe he inherited from his father. 122 Gurr, Company, 4-9. 123 Gurr, Company, 250.

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Gurr, Company, 252. Gurr, Company, 290. 126 See Appendix A “Court Calendar,” of Chambers, Elizabethan, Vol.4, 108-15. 127 Melissa D. Aaron, Global Economics: A History of the Theater Business, the Chamberlain’s / King’s Men, and their Plays, 1599-1642 (Cranbury, New Jersey: Associated University Presses, 2005): 79-80. 128 Grote, 110. 129 Grote, 87; 121-22. 130 Arber, Vol. 3, 214. 131 Arber, Vol. 3, 266. 132 Arber, Vol. 3, 239. 133 Gurr, Company, 253. 134 On early modern views on players, their “common” status, and the economics of their profession, see Gerald Eades Bentley, The Professions of Dramatist and Player in Shakespeare’s Time, 1590-1642 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1986); and Ingram. 135 Chambers, Elizabethan, Vol.4, 113. 136 Heather Anne Hirschfeld, Joint Enterprises: Collaborative Drama and the Institutionalization of English Renaissance Theatre (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2004): 25-26. 137 Bednarz, 105-32; 175-200. 138 Bednarz, 225-63. 139 Roger Stritmatter notes that the epistle to the eventual publication of Troilus (Q2) diminishes the connection to topical material by insisting on the link to the “famous history” of the fated lovers—the more famous the history, the less likely it is to be infused with newly topical material. This insistence on a “famous” source is of course an example of the stationer covering his tracks, aware that the play has a dangerous topical component, and Stritmatter explores several contemporary issues, including more detailed examination of the analogy with the war of the theatres. See “The Tortured Signifier: Satire, Censorship, and the Textual History of Troilus and Cressida,” Critical Survey 21.2 (2009): 60-82. 140 Eric S. Mallin, “Emulous Factions and the Collapse of Chivalry: Troilus and Cressida,” Representations 29 (1990): 145-79; esp. 149. 141 Mallin, 149-50. 142 For more detailed treatment of Achilles and the presentation of contagion in the play, see Darryl Chalk, “Contagious Emulation: Antitheatricality and Theatre as Plague in Troilus and Cressida,” “This Earthly Stage”: World and Stage in Late Medieval and Early Modern England, ed. Brett D. Hirsch and Christopher Wortham (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010): 75-102. 143 J.B.Black, The Reign of Elizabeth, 1558-1603 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1945): 401. 144 John Bruce, Correspondence of King James VI of Scotland—With Robert Cecil and Others in England During the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (London: Camden Society, 1861). 145 Pauline Croft, King James (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003): 52. 146 Hammer, “Shakespeare’s,” 8-9. 125

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Mallin, 145-150. Robert B. Sharpe, The Real War of the Theaters (Boston and London: Heath, 1935): 200-04. 149 Croft, 49. 150 See Robert Naunton, ed. Memoirs of Robert Cary; and Fragmenta Regalia (Edinburgh: James Ballantyne, 1808); and Croft, 49. 151 Ruth Hudson, “Greene’s James IV and Contemporary Allusions to Scotland,” PMLA 47.3 (1932): 652-67; esp. 654-55. 152 Croft, 25. 153 See Alan Stewart, The Cradle King: A Life of James IV and I (London: Chatto and Windus, 2003): 139-40; Robert Bucholz and Newton Key, Early Modern England, 1485-1714: A Narrative History (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004): 208; and Croft, 24. 154 Sarah M. Dunnigan, “Discovering Desire in the Amatoria of James VI,” Royal Subjects: Essays on the Writing of James VI and I, ed. Daniel Fischlin and Mark Fortier (Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 2002): 149-81; esp. 175n16. 155 Curtis Perry, The Making of Jacobean Culture: James I and the Renegotiation of Elizabethan Literary Practice (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1997): 24, 235n25. 156 Morna R. Fleming, “The Amatoria of James VI: Loving by the Reulis,” Royal Subjects: Essays on the Writing of James VI and I, ed. Daniel Fischlin and Mark Fortier (Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 2002): 124-48; esp. 130. 157 Fleming, 137. 158 Fleming, 131. 159 Michael Lynch, “The Reassertion of Princely Power in Scotland: The Reigns of Mary, Queen of Scots and King James VI,” Princes and Princely Culture, 14501650, ed. Martin Gosman, Alasdair A. MacDonald, and Arie Johan Vanderjagt (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2003): 199-238. 160 For an account of the negative portrayal of love in Troilus and Cressida, see Heather James, Shakespeare’s Troy: Drama, Politics, and the Translation of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000): 85-118. 161 David Riggs, Ben Jonson: A Life (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1989): 105-15. 162 Bruce, 48-9. 163 Bruce, 55. 164 J.E. Neale, “Peter Wentworth,” The English Historical Review 39.153 (1924): 36-54. 165 R.A. Roberts, ed. “Cecil Papers: July 1602, 26-31”, Calendar of the Cecil Papers in Hatfield House, Volume 12: 1602-1603 (1910): 252-276. URL: . 166 Carey, 84. 167 R.A. Roberts, ed. “Cecil Papers: July 1602, 11-20”, Calendar of the Cecil Papers in Hatfield House, Volume 12: 1602-1603 (1910): 221-239. URL: . 168 R.A. Roberts, ed. “Cecil Papers: July 1602, 1-10”, Calendar of the Cecil Papers in Hatfield House, Volume 12: 1602-1603 (1910): 208-221. URL: 148

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OED, “suppress,” v.1c. 170 The incident has many most likely apocryphal versions in schoolboy lore, the best known accounts being in Richard Hakluyt’s The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation—in some editions, since the sections covering Bowes vary from one edition to another—and Samuel Pepys’s Diary (vol.3, 1662). See, for example, Robert M. Croskey, “Hakluyt’s Accounts of Sir Jerome Bowes’ Embassy to Ivan IV,” The Slavonic and East European Review 61.4 (1983): 546-64; Palmer and Palmer, 19-20. 171 Dudley himself records that the correspondents “myslyked” the perpetuity desired by the suit, but does not record the basis for their displeasure, and he seems to have been contented that the order should be enacted to the letter as the Queen had requested. Chambers, Elizabethan, Vol.4, 276. 172 Chambers, Elizabethan, Vol.4, 87-88. 173 Gurr, Stage, 22-23. 174 Accounts of Dudley’s Machiavellian manipulations at court began less than three decades after his death, with William Camden’s history of Elizabeth’s reign, Annales Rerum Gestarum Angliae et Hiberniae Regnate Elizabetha (begun in 1597, published in 1615) explicitly opposing Dudley to Essex. More measured analysis of Leicester’s life, such as Simon Adams’s Leicester and the Court: Essays on Elizabethan Politics (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), still involves recording numerous bitter personal feuds outside the court: see, for example, 53-55; 303-04; 339-40. 175 Robert Lemon, ed. “Queen Elizabeth—Volume 206: Undated 1587”, Calendar of State Papers Domestic: Elizabeth, 1581-90 (1865): 448-50. URL: 176 See, for example, Joseph Bain, ed. “Border Papers volume 2: June 1597,” Calendar of Border Papers: Volume 2: 1595-1603 (1896): 332-55. URL: ; R.A. Roberts, ed. “Cecil Papers: June 1598, 21-30”, Calendar of the Cecil Papers in Hatfield House, Volume 8: 1598 (1899): 222-245. URL: ; and Bowes is further mentioned in two accounts of Lord Eure’s protection of the border in Robert Borland, Border Raids and Reivers (Dumfries: Thomas Fraser, Dalbeattie, 1898): 12, 245. 177 Joseph Bain, ed. “Border Papers volume 2: February 1596”, Calendar of Border Papers: Volume 2: 1595-1603 (1896): 102-11. URL: http://www.britishhistory.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=45580 >; and Joseph Bain, ed. “Border Papers volume 2: May 1597”, Calendar of Border Papers: Volume 2: 1595-1603 (1896): 313-32. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=45595 >. 178 Walter William Greg, “Blackfriars Records,” Collections Vol. 2 Part 1 (Oxford: Malone Society at the Oxford University Press, 1907): 98. 179 Bowes’s death saw the handover of his monopoly stake to Edward Darcy, sparking what would become one of English common law’s most famous cases, Darcy v. Allen, also known as “The Case of the Monopolies.” See Thomas B. Nachbar, “Monopoly, Mercantilism & the Politics of Regulation,” Public Law and 169

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Legal Theory Working Paper Series, Paper 32 (University of Virginia Law School, 2005): 13-15. 180 R.A. Roberts, ed. “Cecil Papers: November 1597, 16-30”, Calendar of the Cecil Papers in Hatfield House, Volume 7: 1597 (1899): 483-500. URL: . 181 Greg, Collections, 123n22. 182 Greg, Collections, 71. 183 Greg, Collections, 70. 184 Knutson, Repertory, 99. 185 Arber, Vol. 3, 226. 186 Knutson, Repertory, 137. 187 William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Arden 3, ed. David Bevington (London: Arden, 1998): 121. 188 Richard Dutton, “The Birth of the Author,” Text and Cultural Change in Early Modern England, eds. Cedric Brown and Arthur F. Marotti (New York: St. Martin’s, 1997): 153-78; esp. 167. 189 Croft, 22. 190 Susan Doran, “Revenge her Foul and Most Unnatural Murder? The Impact of Mary Stewart’s Execution on Anglo-Scottish Relations,” History 85.280 (2000): 589-612. 191 Croft, 24. 192 Bruce, 57. 193 R.A. Roberts, ed. “Cecil Papers: November 1602, 1-15.” Calendar of the Cecil Papers in Hatfield House, Volume 12: 1602-1603 (1910): 460-473. URL: 194 R.A. Roberts, ed. “Cecil Papers: July 1602, 1-10.” Calendar of the Cecil Papers in Hatfield House, Volume 12: 1602-1603 (1910): 208-221. URL: 195 R.A. Roberts, ed. “Cecil Papers: July 1602, 21-25.” Calendar of the Cecil Papers in Hatfield House, Volume 12: 1602-1603 (1910): 239-252. URL: 196 Bergeron, 33. 197 The date of the event is fixed by the correspondence of John Chamberlain, who wrote on 5 March, 1600, that Verreyken had “this day” feasted at The Lord Treasurer’s and would be hosted at The Lord Chamberlain’s “to-morow.” Sarah Williams, ed. The Letters of John Chamberlain During the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (BiblioLife LLC, 2009): 71. For discussion of the two performances, see Knutson, Repertory, 96-98; Whitney, 77-78. 198 Knutson, Repertory, 97. 199 Knutson, Repertory, 97. 200 Williams, 73. 201 Williams, 73-74. 202 Arber, Vol. 3, 249. 203 Arber, Vol. 3, 245. 204 Arthur Collins, ed. Letters and Memorials of State. Vol. 2 (London, 1746): 262. 205 Arber, Vol. 3, 245.

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206

Chambers, Elizabethan, Vol. 3, 367. Annabel Patterson, “Censorship and Interpretation,” Staging the Renaissance: Reinterpretations of Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama, eds. David Scott Kastan and Peter Stallybrass (New York: Routledge, 1991): 40-49; esp. 43. 208 Chambers, Elizabethan, Vol. 3, 254-55. 209 Arber, Vol. 3, 273. 207

Chapter Three 1 Leah S. Marcus, Puzzling Shakespeare: Local Reading and its Discontents (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988): 33. 2 Marcus, 33-34. 3 Marian Card Donnelly, Architecture in the Scandinavian Countries (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1992): 99. 4 See Cay Dollerup, Denmark, Hamlet, and Shakespeare: A Study of Englishmen’s Knowledge of Denmark Towards the End of the Sixteenth Century with Special Reference to Hamlet (Salzburg: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, 1975); Ralph Berry, “Shakespeare’s Elsinore,” Contemporary Review 273 (1998): 310-14; and Rebecca Olson, “Hamlet’s Dramatic Arras,” Word & Image 25.2 (2009): 143-53. 5 Alan Swanson, “Courts and Culture in Renaissance Scandinavia,” Princes and Princely Culture, 1450-1650, Vol. 1, eds. Martin Gosman, Alasdair A. MacDonald, Arie Johan Vanderjagt (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2003): 259-78; esp. 274. 6 Olson, 149. 7 Sir James Balfour, Letters to King James the Sixth from the Queen, Prince Henry, Prince Charles, the Princess Elizabeth and Her Husband, Frederick, King of Bohemia, and from their Son Prince Frederick Henry (Edinburgh: The Maitland Club, 1835): xi. 8 Walther Kirchner, “England and Denmark, 1558-1588,” The Journal of Modern History 17.1 (1945): 1-15; esp. 3. 9 Dollerup, 37. 10 Kirchner, 10. 11 Kirchner, 11-12. 12 Edward P. Cheyney, “England and Denmark in the Later Days of Queen Elizabeth,” The Journal of Modern History 1.1 (1929): 9-39; esp. 10-11. 13 Olson, 148. 14 Bertram and Kliman, 52. 15 Bertram and Kliman, 54. 16 Olson, 148-49. 17 Bertram and Kliman, 86-87. 18 Bullough, 92. 19 Arthur John Butler, ed. “Elizabeth: August 1582, 16-20”, Calendar of State Papers Foreign: Elizabeth, Volume 16: May-December 1582 (1909), 253-61. URL: ; Sophie Crawford Lomas, ed. “Elizabeth: May 1586, 26-31”, Calendar of State Papers Foreign: Elizabeth, Volume 20: September 1585-May 1586 (1921), 672-701. URL:

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; The Institute of Historical Research. “Cecil Papers: April, 1586.” Calendar of the Cecil Papers in Hatfield House, Volume 3: 1583-1589 (1889): 138-41. URL: 20 OED, “nowhere,” Forms. 21 Paul Werstine, “The Textual Mystery of Hamlet,” Shakespeare Quarterly 39.1 (1988): 1-26; esp. 2. 22 Bertram and Kliman, 34. 23 Bertram and Kliman, 34. 24 Menzer, 32. 25 Menzer, 66. 26 Menzer, 66. 27 Bertram and Kliman, 96. 28 Bertram and Kliman, 98. 29 Bertram and Kliman, 98. 30 Steven Urkowitz makes a similar claim about Hamlet’s guardedness in the “nunnery” exchange with Ophelia in Q1. Steven Urkowitz, “‘I there’s the point’ in Context: Theatricality and Authorship,” Stage Directions in Hamlet: New Essays and New Directions, ed. Hardin L. Aasand (Cranbury, New Jersey: Associated University Presses, 2003): 134-39; esp. 135-36. 31 Bullough, 90. 32 Bullough, 91. 33 Bullough, 93. 34 Bullough, 99. 35 Bullough, 101. 36 Bullough, 102. 37 Bullough, 104-07. 38 Bullough, 108-11. 39 Anthony Miller, “Hamlet: Mirrors of Revenge,” Sydney Studies in English 11 (1985-6): 3-22; Hidematsu Nojima, “The Mirror of Hamlet,” Hamlet and Japan, ed. Yoshiko Uéno (New York, AMS Press, 1995), 21-35. For similar treatments of the idea of mirroring in the play, see David Scott Kastan, “‘His semblable is his mirror’: Hamlet and the Imitation of Revenge,” Shakespeare Studies 19 (1987): 111-24; and Tadeusz Kowzan, Hamlet, ou, Le Miroir du monde (Paris: Editions universitaires, 1991). 40 Nojima, 30-32. 41 Margrethe Jolly has made a similar argument about the proximity of Q1 to Belleforest, although she does so to recapitulate a linear transmission trajectory, whereupon Q2 is written after Q1 as a revision to it, and there is no suggestion that Q1 is written after Q2 but with reference to earlier performances, as I am arguing here. See Jolly, “Hamlet and the French Connection: The Relationship of Q1 and Q2 Hamlet and the Evidence of Belleforest’s Histoires Tragiques,” Parergon 29.1 (2012): 83-105. 42 Sylvan Barnet, “Coleridge on Puns: A Note to His Shakespeare Criticism,” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 56.4 (1957): 602-09; esp. 602. 43 Barnet, 602-03.

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Weimann, Author’s, 177. John Russell Brown, “The Compositors of Hamlet Q2 and The Merchant of Venice,” Studies in Bibliography 7 (1955): 17-40; esp. 17. 46 Brown, 18-19. 47 Bertram and Kliman, 176-77. 48 W.W.Greg, ed. Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor 1602 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910): xvi. 49 A.W.Pollard, ed. A New Shakespeare Quarto: The Tragedy of King Richard II Printed for the third time by Valentine Simmes in 1598 (London: Quaritch, 1916): 96-98. 50 For an excellent overview of how Greg’s theories took shape over many years, see Werstine, “Narratives,” 69-79. 51 Menzer, 25. 52 Menzer, 33. 53 Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (London: Faber and Faber, 1967). 54 Sjögren, 157. 55 James Voelkel, Johannes Kepler and the New Astronomy (Oxford University Press, 1999): 53-54. 56 Charles V. Berney, “In Search of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,” Shakespeare Matters 3.3 (2004): 1, 12-17. 57 Berney, 1, 12. 58 Allen Rosenkrans, The Rosenkrans Family of Europe and America (Newton: New Jersey Herald Press, 1900). 59 Byrne, 205. 60 OED, “resin,” 1.a. ; “craft,” 2.a. 61 OED, “gilder,” n.1. 62 Margaret J. Beckett, The Political Works of John Lesley, Bishop of Ross (152796) (Dissertation, University of St. Andrews, 2002): 26-34. 63 Beckett, 49. 64 Bertram and Kliman, 12. 65 Werstine, “Century,” 311. 66 See Gurr, Company, 217-46. 67 Scott McMillin, “Casting the Hamlet Quartos: The Limit of Eleven,” The ‘Hamlet’ First Published (Q1, 1603): Origins, Form, Intertextualities, ed. Thomas Clayton (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992): 179-94; Thompson and Taylor, 553-65. 68 Werstine, “Century,” 319-20. 69 Hansen, 5-15. 70 J. Thomas Looney, “Shakespeare” Identified in Edward de Vere, the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford (London: C. Palmer, 1920): 400-07. 71 Lilian Winstanley, Hamlet and the Scottish Succession: Being an Examination of the Relations of the Play of Hamlet to the Scottish Succession and the Essex Conspiracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1921): 109-28. 72 Daphne Pearson, Edward de Vere (1550-1604): The Crisis and Consequences of Wardship (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005): 106. 45

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Winstanley, 114-18. Wilson, 303. 75 Anne Somerset, Elizabeth I (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1991): 595-96. 76 Somerset, 596. 77 Jolly, “Dating,” 17. 78 Jolly, “Dating,” 18. 79 OED, “cor2” 80 Ribner, 52-57. See also Eugene D. Hill, “The First Elizabethan Tragedy: A Contextual Reading of Cambises,” Studies in Philology 89.4 (1992): 404-33. 81 Hill, 404. 82 Louis B. Wright, ed. Advice to A Son: Precepts of Lord Burghley, Sir Walter Ralegh, and Francis Osborne (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1962): ix. 83 Josephine Waters Bennett, “Characterization in Polonius’ Advice to Laertes,” Shakespeare Quarterly 4.1 (1953): 3-9; esp. 3-4. 84 Conyers Read, “A Letter from Robert, Earl of Leicester, to a Lady,” The Huntington Library Bulletin 9 (1936): 15-25. 85 Nicholas Breton [N.B.], A Smale Handfull of Fragrant Flowers (London, 1575). 86 Adams, 18-19. 87 Wilson, 216. 88 Hammer, Polarization, 58-60. 89 Sarah Gristwood, Elizabeth and Leicester (New York: Bantam Books, 2007): 414-15. 90 Hammer, Polarization, 60-68. 91 Michael MacDonald, “Ophelia’s Maim’d Rites,” Shakespeare Quarterly 37 (1986): 309-17. 92 Bullough, 23n2. 93 See, for example, Rocellus Sheridan Guernsey, Ecclesiastical Law in Hamlet: The Burial of Ophelia (New York: Brentano Bros., 1885); James V. Holleran, “Maimed Funeral Rites in Hamlet,” English Literary Renaissance 19.1 (1989): 6593; and Luke Wilson, “Hamlet, Hales vs. Petit, and the Hysteresis of Action,” ELH: English Literary History 60.1 (1993): 17-55. 94 Luke Wilson, 28-29. 95 Bertram and Kliman, 224. 96 Bertram and Kliman, 226. 97 In Q1, the character is given as Ofelia, the more Italianate form of Ophelia, although I do not think the difference undermines the present argument about the parallels with Sidney’s Astrophel, which in Italian is also recorded as Astrofil or Astrofel. The name Ofelia could well have been an embellishment made in 1603, at the time of writing the Q1, given Kempe’s more recent experiences in Venice, as dramatised by John Day. See Wiles, 36-37. 98 Katherine Duncan-Jones, ed. Sir Philip Sidney: The Major Works including “Astrophil and Stella” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989): 357. 99 See, for example, J.A.Lavin, “The First Two Printers of Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella,” Library 26.3 (1971): 249-55; and MacDonald P. Jackson, “The Printer of 74

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the First Quarto of Astrophil and Stella (1591),” Studies in Bibliography 31 (1978): 201-03. 100 Sir Philip Sidney, Syr P.S. His Astrophel and Stella (London, 1591): A.iii. 101 Bertram and Kliman, 194-96; 204-06. 102 Bertram and Kliman, 204. 103 Gristwood, 337. 104 William Chappell, Popular Songs of the Olden Time: A Collection of Ancient Songs, Ballads, and Dance Tunes Illustrative of the National Music of England, Part Two (London: Chamber, Beale, & Chappell, 1844-61): 390. 105 Bertram and Kliman, 192. 106 See Margaret Dean-Smith, “English Tunes Common to Playford's ‘Dancing Master,’ the Keyboard Books and Traditional Songs and Dances. Preceded by Some New Findings Concerning the Life and Career of John Playford,” Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 79 (1952-1953): 1-17; esp. 12-13. 107 Frederick William Sternfeld, Music in Shakespearean Tragedy (London: Routledge, 2005): 58-9. 108 Katherine Wallace, “‘Take thy lute, wench’: Music-making Madwomen on the Renaissance Stage,” Royal Shakespeare Association Annual Meeting, Venice, 8 April, 2010. Unpublished MS. Cited with permission. 109 See Maurice Charney and Hanna Charney, “The Language of Madwomen in Shakespeare and His Fellow Dramatists,” Signs 3 (1977): 451-60; Elaine Showalter, “Representing Ophelia: Women, Madness, and the Responsibilities of Feminist Criticism,” Shakespeare and the Question of Theory, ed. Patricia Parker and Geoffrey Hartman (London: Methuen, 1985): 77-94; and Judith Wechsler, “Performing Ophelia: The Iconography of Madness,” Theatre Survey 43.2 (2002): 201-21. 110 Katherine Roberts, “The Wandering Womb: Classical Medical Theory and the Formation of Female Characters in Hamlet,” Classical and Modern Literature: A Quarterly 15 (1995): 223-32. 111 J. Max Patrick, “The Problem of Ophelia,” Studies in Shakespeare, ed. Arthur D. Mathews and Clark M. Emery (Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1953): 139-44; esp. 141. 112 Lucile F. Newman, “Ophelia’s Herbal,” Economic Botany 33.2 (1979): 227-32; esp. 227. 113 Beverly Seaton, The Language of Flowers: A History (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1995). 114 The findings of the inquest are reproduced in full in Steve Roth, Hamlet: The Undiscovered Country (Seattle: Open House, 2009): 167-68. 115 Bertram and Kliman, 90. 116 Gurr, Company, xiii. 117 Knutson, “1594,” 466-67. 118 See, for example, Steve Sohmer, Shakespeare’s Mystery Play: The Opening of the Globe Theatre, 1599 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999): 4-5. 119 Wiles, 52-53. 120 Wiles, 104.

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121 Leo Salingar, Shakespeare and the Traditions of Comedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974): 1. 122 Bertram and Kliman, 28. 123 Bertram and Kliman, 150. 124 Bertram and Kliman, 151. 125 On the figure of the “lord of misrule” in Kempe’s approach to clowns, see Wiles, 26-29. 126 Bullough, 47-48. 127 H.R.Woudhuysen, Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts, 15581640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000): 416. 128 Kenneth Thorpe Rowe, “The Countess of Pembroke’s Editorship of the Arcadia,” PMLA 54.1 (1939): 122-38. 129 Mary Floyd-Wilson, “Hamlet, the Pirate’s Son,” Early Modern Literary Studies Special Issue 19 (2009): 12.1-11. . 130 Bertram and Kliman, 208. 131 For a summary of the difficulties associated with early modern stage conventions related to the presentation rather than the reporting of action on the seas, see Alan C. Dessen, Elizabethan Stage Conventions and Modern Interpreters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988): 14-17. 132 Bertram and Kliman, 208. 133 Bertram and Kliman, 240-41. 134 Bertram and Kliman, 242. 135 Karl P. Wentersdorf, “Hamlet’s Encounter with the Pirates,” Shakespeare Quarterly 34.4 (1983): 434-40. 136 Bertram and Kliman, 161. 137 Bertram and Kliman, 160. 138 Naomichi Yamada, “Omissions in the First Quarto of Hamlet,” Hitotsubashi Journal of Arts and Sciences 38 (1997): 1-12. 139 Yamada, 8. 140 Yamada, 10. 141 Thompson and Taylor, 553-65. 142 Bertram and Kliman, 56, 60. 143 Thompson and Taylor, 562. 144 For an analysis of the humour in Hamlet, including a precise demonstration of how the gravedigger gets the better of Hamlet, see Manfred Daudt, “The Comedy of Hamlet,” Atlantis 24.2 (2002): 85-107. 145 Lucy Potter’s work on the echoes of Christopher Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage (1594) in Hamlet’s Priam and Pyrrhus speech (2.2.434-48) helps us to date this section of the Corambis-Polonius dialogue—the speech is in Q1 as well as the Q2/F texts—to any time after Marlowe’s play, making it a viable addition to the play only after 1594, during which time Kempe is most likely to have acted as Corambis. See Potter, “Shakespeare, Marlow, and the Fortunes of Catharsis,” Rapt in Secret Studies: Emerging Shakespeares, eds. Darryl Chalk and Laurie Johnson (Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010): 287-303. 146 Bertram and Kliman, 82.

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Bertram and Kliman, 82. Bertram and Kliman, 106. 149 Bertram and Kliman, 107. 150 Alice Walker, “The Textual Problem of Hamlet: A Reconsideration.” The Review of English Studies 2.8 (1951): 328-38; esp. 336. 151 Ralph M. Rosen, Beyond Aristophanes: Transition and Diversity in Greek Comedy (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995): 123. 152 Barbara K. Gold, “A Question of Genre: Plato’s Symposium as Novel.” MLN 95.5 (1980): 1353-59; esp. 1356. 153 Bertram and Kliman, 138. 154 While they do not agree with the use of this sole reference for dating Hamlet, Anne Thompson and Neil Taylor provide a neat summary of such arguments in their Arden 3 edition of Hamlet: 49-50. 155 A competing date for the staging of Julius Caesar is offered in Steve Sohmer, “12 June 1599: Opening Day at Shakespeare’s Globe,” Early Modern Literary Studies 3.1 (1997): 1-46. The essay was subsequently reproduced and expanded in Sohmer, Mystery. We shall consider Sohmer’s argument presently. 156 Thompson and Taylor, 51. 157 Initially suggested by F.S. Boas, University Drama in the Tudor Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1914): 268. 158 Ernest Schanzer, “A Neglected Source of Julius Caesar,” Notes and Queries 199 (1954): 196-97; Jacqueline Pearson, “Shakespeare and Caesar’s Revenge,” Shakespeare Quarterly 32.1 (1981): 101-04. 159 Jacqueline Pearson, 103. 160 Lizette Andrews Fisher, “Shakespeare and the Capitol,” Modern Language Notes 22.6 (1907): 177-82; esp. 178. 161 Fisher, 178. 162 Brents Stirling, “Julius Caesar in Revision,” Shakespeare Quarterly 13.2 (1962): 187-205; esp. 199. 163 F.S.Boas, ed. The Tragedy of Caesar’s Revenge. Malone Society Reprints (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1911). 164 Bertram and Kliman, 236. 165 R.A.Roberts, ed. “Cecil Papers: May 1593,” Calendar of the Cecil Papers in Hatfield House, Volume 4: 1590-1594 (1892): 308-27. URL: 166 R.A.Roberts, ed. “Introduction,” Calendar of the Cecil Papers in Hatfield House, Volume 5: 1594-1595. (1894): I-XXIII. URL: 167 Greenblatt, Will, 236. 168 Bertram and Kliman, 14. 169 Bertram and Kliman, 20. 170 Sohmer, “12 June,” 24-33. 171 Kent T. Van den Berg, Playhouse and Cosmos: Shakespearean Theatre as Metaphor (Cranbury, New Jersey: Associated University Presses, 1985): 47. 172 Van den Berg, 48. 148

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173 Alvin B. Kernan, “This Goodly Frame, the Stage: The Interior Theater of Imagination in English Renaissance Drama,” Shakespeare Quarterly 25.1 (1974): 1-5; esp. 2. Quoted in Van den Berg, 48. 174 For arguments related to Julius Caesar, see Jack D’Amico, “Shakespeare’s Rome: Politics and Theatre,” Modern Language Studies 22.1 (1992): 65-78; and Dennis Kezar, “Julius Caesar and the Properties of Shakespeare’s Globe,” English Literary Renaissance 28.1 (1998): 18-46. 175 James Shapiro devotes two chapters of his groundbreaking book, A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005), to the suggestion that Hamlet was among the plays that had been developed for the Globe Theatre’s early run of plays in the second half of 1599. While he maintains that Shakespeare may have performed in one of the earlier ur-Hamlet performances, a play that he remains happy to attribute to Kyd as per convention, Shapiro sees the play as an early effort to divide Kempe’s clown role between Armin’s Gravedigger and Burbage’s tragic protagonist (288-89). For mine, of course, the role was not being divided between the gravedigger and Hamlet; rather, the role of Hamlet had previously begun life as a Kempe-oriented clown, and Burbage’s rise precipitated a reduction of some aspects of the tragic protagonist’s clown-like ways, after which the arrival of Armin necessitated a further change in the role of the gravedigger. 176 Dio Cassius, Roman History, trans. Earnest Carey, The Loeb Classical Library, vol. 6 (London: Heinemann; Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1961): 268-72. 177 Arnaldo Momigliano, Claudius: The Emperor and His Achievement, trans. W.D.Hogarth (Cambridge: W. Heffer and Sons, 1934): 83. 178 Lisa Hopkins, The Cultural Uses of the Caesars on the English Renaissance Stage (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2008): 35-45. 179 Arber, Vol. 3, 677-78. 180 Gabriel Egan, “Thomas Platter’s Account of an Unknown Play at the Curtain or the Boar’s Head Inn,” Notes and Queries 245 (2000): 53-56. 181 John Prince, Worthies of Devon (1701): 45-47. 182 J.A.Ramsaram, “Sir Francis Drake in Contemporary Verse,” Notes and Queries 4.1 (1957): 99-101; esp. 100. 183 Jorge H. Castelli, “Fortescue Family III: Filleigh Line,” Tudorplace. URL:

184 See, for example, J. Valcour Miller, “Corambis, Polonius, and the Great Lord Burghley in Hamlet,” Oxfordian Vistas, ed. Ruth Loyd Miller (Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, 1975): 430-47; Jolly, “Writing,” 173. 185 Terry Ross, “Oxfordian Myths: Was Burghley Called ‘Polus’?” The Shakespeare Authorship Page. URL: 186 OED, “Polonian,” 1. 187 Bullough, 43-45. 188 Bertram and Kliman, 176-77. 189 Bertram and Kliman, 16. 190 Bertram and Kliman, 80. 191 Bertram and Kliman, 186-90.

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Greenblatt, Will, 293. Bertram and Kliman, 86. 194 Alex Newell, “The Dramatic Context and Meaning of Hamlet’s ‘To Be or Not to Be’ Soliloquy,” PMLA 80.1 (1965): 38-50. 195 Newell, 46. 196 See Hirsh, “Shakespeare and the History of Soliloquies,” Modern Language Quarterly 58.1 (1997): 1-26; and “The ‘To be, or not to be’ Speech: Evidence, Conventional Wisdom, and the Editing of Hamlet,” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 23 (2010): 34-62. For additional arguments on why this soliloquy should be seen as a deception by Hamlet, see David Ball’s performancebased reading in Backwards & Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays (Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University, 1983): 22-23; and Edna Zwick Boris, “To Soliloquize or Not to Soliloquize—Hamlet’s ‘To Be’ Speech in Q1 and Q2/F,” Stage Directions in Hamlet: New Essays and New Directions, ed. Hardin L. Aasand (Cranbury, New Jersey: Associated University Presses, 2003): 115-33. 197 Helen Cooper, “Hamlet and the Invention of Tragedy,” Sederi 7 (1996): 20118; esp. 216. 198 For further discussion of the separation of mind and body in the speech, see Laurie Johnson, “‘Nobler in the Mind’: The Emergence of Early Modern Anxiety,” AUMLA Special Issue (2009): 141-56. 199 Q2 differs from F in listing this as “proude man’s contumely” rather than “poor man’s Contumely,” but I am opting to use the F variant for reasons that will soon become apparent, and I am inclined to think that the source text from which Q2 was typeset may well have used a handwritten “poore” that was misconstrued as “proude” by the compositor. On the capacity for an “re” combination to be misconstrued as a “de” combination, compare the looser forms of “d,” “e,” and “r” as demonstrated in Byrne, 203-04. 200 Thompson and Taylor, 286; OED, “bodkin,” 1. For a detailed examination of Shakespeare’s debt to Chaucer here, see Seth Lerer and Deanne Williams, “What Chaucer Did to Shakespeare: Books and Bodkins in Hamlet and The Tempest,” Shakespeare 8.4 (2012): 398-410. 201 Lamar M. Hill, Bench and Bureaucracy: The Public Career of Sir Julius Caesar, 1580-1636 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988). 202 Amanda J. Snyder, The Politics of Piracy: Pirates, Privateers, and the Government of Elizabeth I, 1558-1588. Thesis. (University of North Carolina Wilmington, 2006): 62-67. 203 Tim Stretton, Women Waging Law in Elizabethan England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998): 72-73. 204 Richard Rowland, Thomas Heywood’s Theatre, 1599-1639: Locations, Translations, and Conflict (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2010): 59 205 Richard Rowland, ed. The First and Second Parts of King Edward IV (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005): 1-2. 206 Lamar Hill, 2. 207 Lamar Hill, 3-5. 208 Lamar Hill, 10. 193

308 209

Notes

Lamar Hill, 93-94. Lamar Hill, 24. 211 Lamar Hill, 24-25. 212 Lamar Hill, 25. 213 Maxine MacKay, “The Merchant of Venice: A Reflection of the Early Conflict Between Courts of Law and Courts of Equity,” Shakespeare Quarterly 15.4 (1964): 371-75. 214 Elizabeth Stafforde v Humfrey Stafforde, PRO Req. 2/166/171, qtd. in Stretton, 144. 215 Lamar Hill, 95. 216 Lamar Hill, 279n27. 217 In at least one non-Shakespearean play of this period, the company presented the fall of Caesar in a manner that could be read as topical: as Roslyn Knutson has shown, the controversial Sejanus by Ben Jonson depicts an over-reaching Sejanus plotting the fall of Caesar in order to gain advancement. Knutson, Repertory, 128. 218 Lamar Hill, 119, 282n20. 219 James C. Bulman, Shakespeare in Performance: The Merchant of Venice (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991): 13. 220 See Laurie Johnson, “‘To pay our wonted tribute,’ or Topical Specificity in Cymbeline,” The British World: Religion, Memory, Society, Culture, ed. Marcus K. Harmes, Lindsay Henderson, Barbara Harmes, and Amy Antonio. Conference Proceedings, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, 2012: 129-40. Portions of the following three paragraphs have been adapted from the text of this essay. 221 Horace Howard Furness, jr., ed., The Tragedie of Cymbeline: A New Variorum Edition (Philadelphia: J.B.Lippincott & Company, 1913): 3. 222 See Donna B. Hamilton, Shakespeare and the Politics of Protestant England (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1992): 128-62. 223 Logan Pearsall Smith, The Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, Vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907): 100-107. 224 OED, “Lucianical” 225 Barbara Ravelhofer, The Early Stuart Masque: Dance, Costume, and Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006): 109; Bella Mirabella, “‘In the sight of all’: Queen Elizabeth and the Dance of Diplomacy,” Early Theatre 15.1 (2012): 65-89. 226 See M. Bella Mirabella, “Mute Rhetorics: Women, the Gaze, and Dance in Renaissance England,” Genre 28.4 (1995): 413-43; esp. 438-40. 227 OED, “mar-” 228 William Shakespeare, Henry V: The Life of Henry the Fifth, Shakespeare Folios, ed. Nick de Somogyi (London: Nick Hern Books, 2004): xxxii-xxxiii. 229 See Thomas L. Berger, “Casting Henry V,” Shakespeare Studies 20 (1988): 89104; King Henry V, Arden 3, ed. T.W. Craik (London: Arden, 1995): 405-06; Gurr, Henry, 67. 230 See the Oxford Shakespeare edition of Henry V: 312-15. 231 Gurr, Company, 20-21. 232 Kathman, “Grocers.” 210

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233 See, for example, Gurr’s refutation of Kathman in “The Work of Elizabethan Plotters, and 2 The Seven Deadly Sins,” Early Theatre Journal 10.1 (2007): 67-87, and Kathman’s response in “The Seven Deadly Sins and Theatrical Apprenticeship ,” Early Theatre 14.1 (2011): 121-39. 234 Cheyney, 31-32. 235 Winstanley, 172. 236 Edward S. Le Comte, “The Ending of Hamlet as a Farewell to Essex,” ELH 17.2 (1950): 87-114; esp. 93. 237 Le Comte, 88. 238 Le Comte, 89-90. 239 Hammer, Polarization, 32. 240 Le Comte, 109. 241 Bullough, Vol. 7, 30-32. 242 Le Comte, 96-106. 243 Hammer, “Shakespeare’s,” 4-18. 244 Jolly, “Dating,” 173. 245 Hammer, Polarization, 200. 246 Cheyney, 31-33. 247 Cheyney, 34. 248 See, for example, the summary provided by Thompson and Taylor, 82-85.

Conclusion 1 For some recent examples, see Stanley Cavell, Disowning Knowledge in Seven Plays of Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); William W. Demastes, “Hamlet in His World: Shakespeare Anticipates/Assaults Cartesian Dualism,” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 20.1 (2005): 27-39; and Colin McGinn, Shakespeare’s Philosophy: Discovering the Meaning Behind the Plays (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007). 2 Stephen Greenblatt, “The Touch of the Real,” Representations 59 (1997): 14-29.

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INDEX

A Larum for London, 98; 108; 113-16; 119; 134; 143; 165-67 A Warning for Fair Women, 98; 105; 114; 132 Aesop’s fables, 57-58 Albright, Evelyn May, 128 Alexander, Peter, 61 Allde, Edward, 108; 113-14 Allen, Giles, 137 Alleyn, Edward, 79 Amleth tale Belleforest, Francois de, 29-33; 45; 51; 59-60; 73-75; 85; 87-88; 159; 173-74; 178-79; 181; 185-90; 192; 197; 205-206; 214-15; 21718; 220-22; 245; 267 Icelandic origins, 29-30; 203 Roman origins, 29-30 Saxo Grammaticus, 29-30; 45; 59; 85; 174; 189; 215; 220 transmission of, 64-66; 73-74; 76; 85; 88-89; 159-61; 173-79; 18592; 196; 203; 205; 208-209; 211; 214-21; 229-35; 245; 249; 26568; 275 apprenticeship, 80-82; 120; 262-63 Arber, Edward, 115-19 Arden of Faversham, 105; 108-109; 134 Armin, Robert, 81; 91-94; 200; 231; 244; 262 Two Maids of More-clacke, 91 Arundel, Earl of, see Fitzalan, Henry Aspley, William, 120-22 Barbour, John, 234 Barnes, Barnabe, 99 Devil’s Charter, 99 Beaumont, Francis, 97; 99 Philaster, 99

Bednarz, James, 143 Beeston, Christopher, 200 Benedict, Barbara M., 23 Bergeron, David, 23; 165 Beringaccio, Vannuci, 2 Berney, Charles, 193-94 Bertram, Paul, 219; 223 Bevington, David, 83 “Bishops’ Ban”, 110-11; 127-28; 133; 242 Blackfriars Estate, 137; 151-55; 159; 254 Blayney, Peter, 36-37; 101; 109 Bloom, Harold, 61 Blount, Christopher, 104 Blount, Edward, 104 Boas, Frederick, 64-66 Bonion, Richard, 157; 165 book culture, 34; 37; 45-46; 67-71; 86-92 Bowes, Henry, 152 Bowes, Jerome, 151-55; 159 Bowes, Ralph (playing cards), 36; 153 Bowes, Ralph (son of Robert Bowes), 153-54 Bradbrook, Muriel Clara, 92 Bradley, David, 68 Brahe, Tycho, 193-94 Braun, Georg, 175-76 Breton, Nicholas, 208 Brochetta, Antonio, 257 Brooke, Henry, 23; 126; 137-38 Brooks, Douglas, 23 Bruce, Edward, 149 Bullough, Geoffrey, 28-29; 70; 209; 220; 244; 265-67 Burbage, Cuthbert, 80; 137-38; 154; 200 Burbage, James, 137-38; 152-55; 238

The Tain of Hamlet

333

 Burbage, Richard, 11; 62; 67; 79-86; 137-38; 153-55; 200; 216; 229; 235-36 Burby, Cuthbert, 109; 120-22; 125 Burkhart, Robert, 62-63 Burr, Walter, 120-22 Busby, John, 121-22 Byrne, Muriel St. Clare, 119 Caesar, Julius (Elizabethan), 250-58; 261-62; 276 Caesar, Julius (Roman), 232-42; 24950; 259 Caesar’s Revenge, 233-34; 241; 250 Carey, George, 24; 110-12; 127-28; 134-41; 145-46; 149-59; 163-70; 253-55; 274 Carey, Henry, 55-56; 62; 136-40 Carey, Robert, 146; 149-50 Caxton, William, 34-35; 57 Cecil, Anne, 207-209; 211-12; 214; 229 Cecil, Robert, 144-46; 149-51; 15556; 159; 162-65; 207; 235 Cecil, Thomas, 204; 207 Cecil, William, 151; 153; 203-209; 235-36; 243-45; 252-53; 258; 262; 267-69 censorship, 126-28; 134; 155; 159; 163-64; 169-70; 172-73; 254; 274 Chambers, Edmund Kerchever, 62; 65; 199-200; 203 Chapman, George, 9; 144 Eastward Ho!, 9; 170 Charlewood, John, 110; 212 Chartier, Roger, 23-26 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 7 Monk’s Tale, 234; 249 Troilus and Criseyde, 146-48; 157; 159 Cheyney, Edward, 263; 270 Children of Paul’s, 143 Children of the Chapel, 143; 155 Cloth Breeches and Velvet Hose, 98; 104; 108; 112; 115; 134 Coke, Edward, 145

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 7; 13-16; 54; 79; 180; 189; 217 Collier, John Payne, 38 Collins, Richard, 116-19 commonplace tables, 26; 77 Condell, Henry, 200 Cooper, Helen, 248 Correr, Mac’Antonio, 258 Court of Assistants, 25; 116-23; 125; 133-34; 141; 149; 155-58; 16468; 274 Cowley, Richard, 200 Creed, Thomas, 121-22 cultural history, 5; 21; 23-27; 123; 158; 172; 272-77 Dacre, Magdalen, 253 Danter, John, 105; 108-109; 212 Danvers, Henry, 150 Darnton, Robert, 23-24 Davenant, William, 12 De Grazia, Margreta, 6-9; 11-15; 54; 69 De Vere, Edward, 173; 193; 203-209; 212; 216 Dead Man’s Fortune, 80 Dean-Smith, Margaret, 213 Dekker, Thomas, 9; 99; 143 Honest Whore, 9 Satiro-mastix, 98; 143 Denmark Anglo-Danish relations, 161-65; 177-79; 220; 263; 269-70; 273 Danish court, 193-96 elective succession, 70; 159-61; 205; 208-209 history of, 22; 29-31; 87-89; 15961; 188; 217 Kempe in, 66; 70-71; 73; 75-78; 82; 88; 90; 176; 181; 188; 195; 208 Kronborg Castle, 64-66; 70-71; 73; 78; 82; 88; 161; 174-79; 181; 18384; 188-89; 195; 208-209; 240 Descartes, René, 273 Detobel, Robert, 103 Devereaux, Penelope, 211

334 Devereaux, Robert, 23; 58; 95; 109; 123; 128-32; 134-35; 142-46; 149-50; 156; 158; 163-65; 254; 264-69 Digges, Leonard, 194 Donne, Daniel, 162 Dorrington, George, 255 Dover Wilson, John, 15-20; 190; 203 Drake, Barnard, 242-43 Drake, Francis, 242-43 Dudley, Robert, 63-66; 80; 89-90; 113; 151-55; 181; 205; 207-209; 213; 219; 259-60; 265; 269 Duke, John, 200 Duncan-Jones, Katherine, 58-59; 64; 66 Duthie, George Ian, 39-40 Dutton, Richard, 157 Earl of Essex’s Men, 58 Earl of Leicester’s Men, 58-60; 6266; 70; 113; 151-54; 205; 209; 211; 219; 222 Earl of Pembroke’s Men, 63; 138 Earl of Sussex’s Men, 63 Earl of Worcester’s Men, 89-90; 140 Egan, Gabriel, 242 Eliot, Thomas Stearns, 28 Elizabeth I death of, 135-36; 141; 144-46; 14951 López affair, 129-30; 132 Nonsuch Palace, 179-80 patronage of Queen’s Men, 58-59; 137; 151-52 Protestantism, 59 relations with Spain, 131; 161; 16667; 176-77; 263 Richard II analogy, 128-29; 266 Robert Dudley and, 90; 205; 208; 213; 259-60 succession question, 95; 128-29; 144; 150; 167 Empson, William, 13-14; 67; 95 Erne, Lukas, 46; 100-101; 107; 111; 114 Essex, Earl of, see Devereaux, Robert

Index Eure, Ralph, 152; 162-63 Fair Em, 96; 98 Fair Maid of Bristow, 98 Farmer, Alan, 36-37 Ferbrand, William, 108; 113-14 Fisher, Lizette Andrews, 234 Fitter, Chris, 129-30 Fitzalan, Henry, 252 Fleming, Morna, 147 Fletcher, John, 71; 97; 99 Philaster, 99 Floyd-Wilson, Mary, 23; 220-21 Fortescue, Gertrude, 243 Foxe, John, 57 Furness, Horace Howard, 116; 118 Gascoigne, George, 2; 166 Spoyle of Antwerp, 166 Geertz, Clifford, 273 Gheeraerts, Marcus, 259-60 Giles, Nathanael, 155 Gowrie, 97; 99 Greenblatt, Stephen, 32-33; 52-54; 58-59; 130; 244; 273 Greene, Robert, 260 Groats-Worth of Wit, 31-32; 49; 5860; 66-67 Menaphon, 8-9; 58; 66-67 Greene, Thomas, 90 Greg, Walter Wilson, 15-17; 19-20; 39-41; 111-12; 191; 198 Greville, Fulke, 220 Grote, David, 78; 140 Gurr, Andrew, 56; 66-67; 71-72; 78; 89; 92-94; 96; 103-105; 137; 200; 216; 261-62; Hales, James, 210 Hales, Margaret, 210 Hamlett, Katherine, drowning of, 20911; 214; 229 Hammer, Pauline, 266 Hansen, William, 29-30 Hardie, William, 253 Harvey, Gabriel, 7-8; 243 Hawkes, Terence, 15-20 Heminges, John, 62; 200 Henke, Robert, 77

The Tain of Hamlet

335

 Henslowe, Philip, 9; 55-56; 90; 96; 103; 236 Herbert, John, 162 Heyes, Thomas, 108; 118; 126; 13334; 165 Heywood, Thomas, 1 Edward IV, 251-52 Hill, Lamar, 252-53 Hirrel, Michael J., 92-93; 116-21; 124 Hirsh, James, 248 History plays, 48-49; 51; 53; 75; 12632; 134-36; 141-43; 160; 217 Hogenborg, Frans, 175-76 Holinshed, Raphael, 75; 257 Holland, Peter, 10 Hopkins, Lisa, 241 Hotson, Leslie, 194 Howard, Charles, 137; 253-54 Howard, Henry, 149; 170 Howard, Thomas, 168 Hunsdon, First Baron, see Carey, Henry Hunsdon, Second Baron, see Carey, George intentional fallacy, 3; 5; 18; 47; 276 Ioppolo, Grace, 95; 101 Jack, Albert E., 57-58 Jaggard, William, 104; 165 James I (James VI of Scotland) Anne Murray and, 147-48; 161-62 English accession, 144-46; 149-50; 156-57; 159-63; 165; 250; 264 essays on poesy, 147-49; 159 marriage to Anne, 70; 146-47; 159; 162; 176 Mary executed, 70; 160; 264 Oath of Allegiance, 258 patron of King’s Men, 90; 135-36; 168-69 Jeffes, Abell, 120 Jenkins, Harold, 67; 73-74; 78 jigs, 71; 77; 79; 85-86; 89-94; 174; 213; 217-18 John of Gaunt, 105 Johnson, Nora, 91 Jolly, Eddi, 100; 205-206

Jones, William, 128 Jonson, Ben, 9; 26; 99; 123; 135; 143; 147-48; 157; 168; 170 Alchemist, 99 Eastward Ho!, 9; 170 Every Man in His Humour, 98; 115; 120; 135 Every Man Out of His Humour, 98; 200 Sejanus, 98; 170 Volpone, 99 Kastan, David Scott, 46-47 Kathman, David, 80; 262-63 Kean, Edmund, 83 Kempe, Will, 27; 62; 64-66; 70-86; 88-94; 100; 135; 140; 169; 171; 174; 176; 184; 188-89; 194-95; 199-201; 208; 216-22; 229-32; 235-36; 244-45; 258-63; 267-68; 271; 275-76 Kempe’s Jig, 213 Kemps Nine Daies Wonder, 75-76; 89 Rowland jigs, 85; 90; 213 Singing Simpkin, 85 Kernan, Alvin B., 239 Killigrew, Thomas, 12 King’s Men, 90; 97-99; 108; 136; 155-58; 256 Kirchner, Walther, 177 Kliman, Bernice W., 219; 223 Knell, William, death of, 58; 62; 6465 Knollys, Lettice, 265 Knutson, Roslyn Lander, 72; 81; 9699; 103-105; 156-57; 166; 216 Kyd, Thomas Spanish Tragedy, 9; 32; 51; 60; 6566; 73-75; 80-81; 120; 122; 208 “ur-Hamlet”, 9; 50-60; 64-66; 68; 70-71; 86-89; 216; 220; 274 Lauring, Palle, 29 Law, Matthew, 135-36; 141 Le Comte, Edward, 264-66; 269 Leicester, Earl of, see Dudley, Robert Lennox, Charlotte, 28

336 Lesieur, Stephen, 163 Lesley, John, Bishop of Ross, 196 Lesser, Zachary, 36-37 Levin, Richard, 173 Ling, Nicholas, 26; 37; 106-107; 125; 169 Locke, Michael, 255 Lodge, Thomas, 9; 31-32; 44-45; 5052; 55; 73; 85; 113-14 London Prodigal, 98 Looney, J. Thomas, 203 Lord Admiral’s Men, 56; 89; 114; 137 Lord Burghley, see Cecil, William Lord Chamberlain’s Men, 22-23; 31; 43; 51-52; 55-56; 59-64; 69-72; 80-81; 86; 89-91; 96-98; 101; 103; 105; 108-17; 120-23; 12526; 131-33; 135-41; 143; 148-49; 152; 156-58; 164; 199-200; 216; 228; 236-39; 244; 252-54; 26163; 268 Lord Cobham, see Brooke, Henry Lord Strange’s Men, 62-66; 70; 81; 100; 233-34; 252 Lydgate, John, 249 Lyly, John, 260 MacKay, Maxine, 254-55 MacLean, Sally-Beth, 62-64; 66 Maguire, Laurie, 40 Mallin, Eric, 144-45 Malone, Cynthia, 10-11 Marcellus, Marcus Claudius, 240-41; 276 Marcus, Leah, 171-73 Markham, Gervase, 108 Marston, John, 9; 108; 133; 136; 140; 143 Eastward Ho!, 9; 170 Malcontent, 98; 136; 140 Scourge of Villainy, 108 Martin Marprelate controversy, 26061 Marwick, Arthur, 25 Masten, Jeffrey, 91; 94 Maxwell, Julie, 30-31

Index McMillin, Scott, 62-64; 66; 69-70; 79; 136; 200; memorial reconstruction, 39-44; 61; 75; 78; 82; 85-86; 93; 140; 174; 179; 181-84; 188; 197-201; 203; 215; 222; 225-29; 237; 244; 267; 274-75 Menzer, Paul, 182-83; 191-92 Meres, Francis, 47-50; 52-53; 97; 126; 131-32; 231 Merry Devil of Edmonton, 98 Middleton, Thomas, 9; 133 Honest Whore, 9 Revenger’s Tragedy, 9; 99 Yorkshire Tragedy, 99; 106 Miller, Anthony, 187-88 Millington, Thomas, 103-105; 121-22 Mirrour for Magistrates, 260 More, William, 153 Mucedorus, 98; 103; 113; 132 Nashe, Thomas, 8-9; 31; 50; 56-60; 64; 66-67; 71; 73; 87; 216; 231; 260 New Textualism, 69 Newell, Alex, 246 Newman, Lucile, 214 Nojima, Hidekatsu, 187 Oxford, Earl of, see De Vere, Edward Palfrey, Simon, 75 Paster, Gail Kern, 23 Patrick, J. Max, 214 patronage, 23-24; 110-12; 127-28; 133-40; 151-53; 167-70; 208-209; 253-56; 274 Patterson, Annabel, 170 Paulet, William, 252 Pavier, Thomas, 120-22 Pearson, Jacqueline, 233-34 Percy, Henry, 150 Perry, Curtis, 147 Petit, Cyriack, 210 Phillips, Augustine, 200 piracy, textual, 27; 36-37; 42-43; 78; 106; 109-10; 124-26; 165; 18283; 191; 199; 212; 261; 274-75 Pitcher, Seymour, 121

The Tain of Hamlet

337

 plague closures, 90; 101; 140; 157; 165; 235 Plato Symposium, 231 Plato Comicus, 231 Platter, Thomas, the Younger, 242 Plautine Comedy, 47-50; 84; 231-32 Plowden, Edmund, 210 Plutarch Lives of the Roman Emperors, 23334 Pollard, Alfred W., 36; 38-39; 10912; 124-25; 191 Pope, Thomas, 62; 65; 70; 200 presentism, 17-19; 172; 272-74 Preston, Thomas Cambises, King of Persia, 206 primogeniture, 54-55; 95 printing press, 34-36; 133-34; 181 Queen’s Men, 58-60; 62-66; 72; 114; 121; 137; 151 Radclyffe, Thomas, 151 Randolph, Thomas Jealous Lovers, 9-10 repertory studies, 43; 59-60; 63; 7172; 95-99; 103-10; 113-15; 12223; 133-35; 138-40; 156; 164-69; 256 Roberts, James, 22-23; 25; 37; 90-91; 102-19; 121-27; 132-35; 140-41; 143-44; 149-50; 155-59; 163-70; 190; 254 Roberts, Katherine, 214 Roberts, R.A., 235 Robin Goodfellow, 97; 99 Rogers, Daniel, 70 Rosenkrans, Allen, 195 Ross, Terry, 243 Rowe, Katherine, 23 Rowe, Nicholas, 52-53; 180 Rowland, Richard, 251-52 Salingar, Leo, 218 Salkeld, Duncan, 83 Sams, Eric, 53-54 Sandys, George, 123 Schanzer, Ernest, 233

Schoenbaum, Samuel, 64 Schoone-Jongen, Terence, 63 Scofield, Martin, 3 Scoloker, Antony, 8; 11 Senecan Tragedy, 32; 47-50; 57-58; 64-65; 74-75; 218; 231 Seton, Gregory, 123 2 Seven Deadly Sins, 80 Shakespeare, John 54-55; 66; 243 Shakespeare, William coat-of-arms, 54-55; 242-43 collaboration, 70-75; 174; 216 death of son, 52-55; 95; 242; 257 entry to London theatre, 59-60; 6268; 70; 211 New Place, 55 Shakespeare, William (plays) A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 47; 98 All’s Well that Ends Well, 90; 9798; 104 Antony and Cleopatra, 99; 104; 106; 256 As You Like It, 97-98; 104; 114-16; 121; 143; 238-29 Comedy of Errors, 47; 96; 98 Coriolanus, 99; 256 Cymbeline, 75; 99; 257-58 Love’s Labour’s Lost, 47; 98; 103; 106; 122; 125-26; 132 Love’s Labour’s Won, 47-48; 97-98; 104 Hamlet Augustan interpretation, 12-13 Barnardo, name of, 242-43 bedchamber scene, 29-30; 32; 38; 179; 188; 190-92; 203-205; 208; 218-19; 221; 229; 247; 275 Claudius, name of, 241 clowns in, 44; 76-79; 81-85; 202; 210-11; 218-19; 221-23; 226-31 Corambis, name of, 29; 38; 192; 197; 200; 203-207; 211; 235; 243-45 Corambis/Polonius, 26; 29; 38-39; 44; 51; 81; 85; 178-79; 185-88;

338

Index 192; 197; 209; 218; 221-23; 225; 228-37; 246-48; 258-59; 261-62; 267; 269; 275-76 cue scripts, 39; 41-42; 88; 182-84; 191-92; 198; 201-202; 222-23; 227; 244; 259; 275 Francisco, name of, 242-43 ghost in, 1-3; 9; 15; 30-33; 40-41; 52-53; 73-74; 178; 185-87; 190; 201-202; 225-27; 237-38; 24041; 248; 273-74 graveyard scene, 6; 9-10; 30; 44; 81-82; 85; 186-87; 190; 201-11; 221; 226-30; 232; 234; 262; 275-76 Guildenstern, name of, 184; 19293; 195-96 Lucianus, name of, 259 Marcellus, name of, 240-41; 25859; 261 mirror analogy in, 1-4; 15-16; 73; 187-88; 218-19; 268; 276-77 Murder of Gonzago, 4-5; 15; 30; 74-75; 186-87; 190; 219; 226; 232; 246-47; 262; 265-69; 276 “nunnery” exchange, 83; 184; 188; 215; 218; 225; 245 Ophelia, 5; 9; 53; 74; 81-83; 179; 184-88; 190; 192; 204; 207-15; 218-19; 221; 225; 228-30; 24748; 268; 275 Ophelia, name of, 211-12 performed at Oxford, 34; 100; 161; 233-36; 250-52 pirates in, 28; 219-22; 250 Polonius, name of, 29; 38; 44; 192; 197; 203-205; 236-37; 242-46; 258; 261; 275 puns in, 82-85; 189; 195-97; 206; 211; 217-18; 233; 243 “purpose of playing”, 4; 94; 21719; 268; 276 psychological reading, 6; 13-15; 54; 83; 95; 180-81; 273 Q1-Q2 differences, 25-26; 33; 3845; 67; 76-79; 81-88; 93-94;

106-107; 114; 174-75; 177-92; 195-203; 210-11; 215; 218-31; 235-37; 244-46; 249-50; 25859; 268-69; 274-76 Q1 title page, 34; 233 Q2 title page, 107 registration, 22-23; 37; 91; 101102; 106-10; 124-25; 132; 159; 254; 269 Restoration staging, 11-12; 214 “rogue and peasant slave”, 82; 84; 245; 262 Rosencrantz, name of, 184; 19296 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, 10; 26; 183-86; 192; 244-47 sentinels in, 38; 44; 197-203; 225; 237; 242-43; 275-76 “to be or not to be”, 4; 26; 42; 82; 184-88; 218; 225; 245-46; 248 ur-Hamlet, 9; 22; 29; 31-32; 4247; 50-61; 64; 66-72; 86-87; 100; 220; 274-77 Voltemand, name of, 259-61 1Henry IV, 47-49; 53; 96; 104-105; 125-27; 129; 132; 134-36; 138; 141; 166; 206 2Henry IV, 47-49; 53; 129; 134-35; 138; 206 Henry V, 59; 72; 78; 115; 120-21; 134; 173; 238-39; 261; 265 1Henry VI, 48-50; 72; 103-105; 129; 138 2Henry VI, 48-50; 72; 96; 103-105; 113; 126; 129; 138 3Henry VI, 48-50; 72; 96; 103-104; 122; 126; 129; 138 Henry VIII (All is True), 99 Julius Caesar, 12; 97-98; 232-42; 244; 252; 261 King John, 47; 52; 59; 63; 72; 96; 98; 103 King Lear, 13; 60; 69; 72; 75; 80; 97; 99; 105; 256 Macbeth, 75; 99 Measure for Measure, 99; 256

The Tain of Hamlet

339

 Merchant of Venice, 47-48; 98; 10810; 117-18; 125-35; 142; 156; 158; 164-65; 254-58 Merry Wives of Windsor, 12; 78; 98; 135; 143 Much Ado About Nothing, 81; 98; 115; 120; 135; 141 Othello, 12; 80; 99 Pericles, 97; 99; 104; 106; 256 Richard II, 47-49; 98; 105; 109; 125-29; 135-36; 140-42; 233; 266 Richard III, 47-49; 60; 98; 105; 125-26; 129; 135-36; 140-41 Romeo and Juliet, 47-49; 92; 98; 105-106; 125 Taming of the Shrew, 48; 56; 72; 96; 98; 103; 113; 138 Tempest, 87; 99; 256 Timon of Athens, 99 Titus Andronicus, 47-48; 56; 72; 96; 98; 105-106; 108; 134; 138-39 Troilus and Cressida, 96-98; 108109; 111; 125; 135-36; 140-49; 156-59; 165; 168 Twelfth Night, 92; 97-98; 143 Two Gentlemen of Verona, 47; 72; 96; 98 Winter’s Tale, 99; 256 Sharpe, Robert, 145-46 Sheffield, Lady Douglas, 208-209; 213-14 Shirley, Anthony, 131; 134-35; 164 Sidney, Philip Astrophel and Stella, 211-12 Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia, 28; 220-21; 250 references to Kempe, 64; 89-90 Simmes, Valentine, 37; 107; 125; 167-70; 181 Simson, Frances, 120 Simson, Gabriel, 120-24 Sincler, John, 200 Sir John Oldcastle, 98; 166 Sjögren, Gunnar, 193 Sly, Will, 200 Smith, Helen, 35

Sohmer, Steve, 238; 241-42; 252 Solomon and Perseda, 105 Somers, George, 123 source studies, 9-10; 24-25; 28-30; 32-33; 44-46; 50-52; 60-61; 64; 70-71; 73; 75; 87-88; 178; 181; 190; 193-94; 206; 208; 215-17; 220-21; 229; 231-33; 265-67; 275 Spanish Maze, 97; 99 Spencer, Gabriel, 123 Spenser, Edmund, 57 Stabler, Arthur, 30; 32 Stallybrass, Peter, 26; 69 stationers, 22-25; 34-37; 88; 90-91; 96-97; 101-21; 124-26; 132-33; 135-36; 140-42; 153; 155-59; 161-70; 191-92; 212; 269; 274 Stationers’ Company, 23; 35-36; 90; 102-103; 106; 110-11; 116; 120; 125; 133; 155; 269 Stationers’ Register, 25; 47; 49; 71; 90; 96; 102-106; 108-21; 124-26; 132-33; 135-36; 140-41; 150; 153; 155-57; 163; 167 Stern, Tiffany, 26; 75 Stirling, Brents, 234 Stoppard, Tom, 192-93 surveillance culture, 110; 127; 248; 267-68 tain, mirror, 1-6; 19-21; 27; 74; 171; 272; 276-77 Tarleton, Richard, 79 Taylor, Gary, 261 Taylor, Neil, 10; 13-15; 38; 200; 22728; 233 Theatres Boar’s Head Inn, 242 Curtain, 21; 137-38 Globe, 10-11; 21-22; 89; 92; 101; 134; 137-38; 142; 154; 157; 216; 238-42; 250; 259-61; 263; 268; 276 Newington Butts, 9; 21; 55-56; 81; 98; 103-104; 161; 250 Red Lion, 21 Rose, 21

340 Swan, 21 Theatre, 9; 21-22; 31; 44; 51-53; 56; 113; 137; 151; 154; 238-39; 243 Theobald, Lewis, 180 Thomas, Lord Cromwell, 98; 140 Thompson, Ann, 10; 13-15; 38; 200; 227-28; 233 Tilney, Edmund, 126; 138 Tooley, Nicholas, 200 topical reading, 11; 70; 73; 79; 12732; 143-45; 171-81; 188-90; 19697; 201-209; 212; 215-17; 229; 232-35; 238; 242; 249-56; 25870; 275 Tribble, Evelyn, 37 Trundell, John, 37; 107; 125; 169 Van den Berg, Kent T., 238-39 Verreyken, Louis, 166; 274 Virgil, Polydore, 257 Voelkel, James, 193 Wallace, Katherine, 213 Walley, Henry, 157; 165 Walsingham, Francis, 89; 220; 253; 267-68 “War of the Theatres”, 11; 38; 97; 121; 143 Watkins, Richard, 120

Index Watkins, Thomas, 120 Webster, John White Devil, 9 Weever, John, 128 Weimann, Robert, 78; 189 Wells, Stanley, 54-55; 58-59 Wentworth, Peter, 150 Werstine, Paul, 39-44; 180-81; 198; 202; 226 Westfall, Suzanne R., 23 White, Edward, 105; 108; 134 White, Paul Whitfield, 23 White, William, 120-22 Wiles, David, 78-79; 81-82; 85; 8991; 217 Wilkins, George Miseries of Enforced Marriage, 99 Winstanley, Lilian, 203; 207; 264-66 Wise, Andrew, 105; 109; 120-22; 135-36; 141 Wotton, Henry, 258 Wright, Abraham, 9-10 Wright, Louis, 207 Yachnin, Paul, 90 Yamada, Naomichi, 223-28 Yates, Francis, 239-40