Page 77 - Hamlet: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

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Sully, Sarah Bernhardt and many another) the best of
French acting; and Germany, which first came to know
Shakespeare's Hamlet within at latest ten years after
Shakespeare's death, has brought, with Schroder and the
two Devrients, the romantic Hamlet to his height, and in
Reinhardt has added to the great producers of the
1
tragedy .
In a study of this length, therefore, it is best to attempt
no more than a sketch of the play in the hands of the
leading actors in the theatres of London, including
foreigners only when they have contributed something
interesting or valuable to the conception of the character
or the play. In London the performances would be the
best that the times could offer (although in old days,
Bath, Dublin or Edinburgh, and some other provincial
towns saw Hamlets that London never saw); and the
London stage is the best field in which to observe the
changes that have come in the conception of Hamlet and
the staging of the tragedy. Those changes have never
been more than slight. The text of Hamlet was left alone
—except for cutting down—until the brief vogue of the
version made by Garrick in his last years at Drury Lane;
and even Frederic Reynolds respected it. Hamlet, there-
fore, has no such history of adaptation and a gradual
return to purity as have (to take two notable instances)
King Lear and King Richard III.
The play of Hamlet entered by the Stationers to
James Roberts on July 26, 1602, was 'latelie Acted
by the Lord Chamberleyne his servantes.' The title-
page of the First Quarto (1603) states that Hamlet
had been acted 'by his Highnesse seruants in the
Cittie of London: as also in the two Vniuersities of
Cambridge and Oxford, and else-where.' The mention
1
For the stage-history of Hamlet in Germany and
Austria see W. Widmann, Hamlets Buhnenlaufbahn (1601-
18y7); Schriften der Deutschea Shakespeare-Gesellschaftj
Leipzig, Tauchnitz, 1931.