Page 34 - Hamlet: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

I N T R O D U C T I O N xxvli

of the manuscripts used by the original printers. Readers
of previous plays in this edition who have taken the
trouble to study the 'note on the copy' preceding the
notes in each volume will be familiar with the method.
But whereas for none of the fourteen Comedies is there
more than a single authoritative text to reckon with, in
the case of Hamlet there are two, very different in
character and each presenting most complicated prob-
lems of its own. Furthermore, when the two texts are
analysed they disclose a situation exactly the reverse of
that assumed by most editors since Rowe, and necessitate
the working out of entirely fresh editorial principles.
In The Manuscript of Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' I have
been able to prove—or so at least I hope—that the copy
for Hamlet used by the printers of the First Folio, though
ultimately derived from the author's autograph, reached
them in a very corrupt condition. It was in short a
transcript of a transcript: a transcript made in 1622 or
1623 for the publication of the Folio; made from the
Globe prompt-book which, though itself in all proba-
bility taken direct from Shakespeare's manuscript, had
been edited in a more or less high-handed fashion by the
bookholder of the theatre; and made by a slovenly play-
house scribe, who to save himself the trouble of keeping
his eye constantly on the prompt-book before him
frequently trusted to a treacherous memory of the play
as he had seen it performed. On the other hand, there
is good reason for believing that the Hamlet of 1605
was printed, if badly printed, from Shakespeare's auto-
graph, which the company sold to the publisher, the
bookholder having no further use for it once he had
prepared his prompt-copy for the actors. The text of the
present volume is therefore based, not on that of the
First Folio, but on the Second Quarto; and is, I believe,
the first modernised edition of Hamlet to follow that
printed 'according to the true and perfect Coppie.' Un-
fortunately, however perfect the copy, the printing of the