Page 37 - Hamlet: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

xxx H A M L E T

(Qz prophane and trennowed, Fi fond and winnowed) at
5. 2. 193.
Needless to say these emendations are proposed with
varying degrees of confidence, and some of them are not
included in the text.
In my opinion, however, the most important effect of
the new apparatus criticus is to make available for the
first time the stage-directions, speech-headings and
punctuation of the Second Quarto. By so doing it reveals,
for example, the second scene of the play as a meeting
of the King's Council, a Protestant minister conducting
the 'maimed rites' of Ophelia's funeral, and the true
character of the fencing-match in the final scene, while
it gives an entirely fresh turn both in sense and rhythm
to the most famous of Hamlet's prose speeches. For a
discussion of these and other new points, and of the
readings quoted above, the reader must be referred to
the notes. But a word in general must here be said on
the matter of punctuation.
Dr Johnson wrote 'In restoring the author's works to
their integrity, I have considered the punctuation as
wholly in my power,' and until Mr Percy Simpson
published his Shakespearian Punctuation in 1911 all
editors have cheerfully assumed a like tyrannical
authority. Mr Simpson's contention that Shakespeare's
punctuation was dramatic and rhetorical destroyed their
cheerfulness without entirely moving editorial sinners to
repentance. For though he made out a strong case in
many of his examples, he committed the mistake, natural
in the first flush of revolutionary discovery, of claiming
that dramatic punctuation was a general feature of all
plays printed in the First Folio. After editing fourteen
of them and examining as many more, I have come to
the reluctant conclusion that, while the original pointing
should always receive respectful consideration as being
ultimately derived from the playhouse, it is too often
overlaid and confused by the high-handed action of