¹ Mod. Lang. Rev., X, 171-180.

² Mod. L. Notes, XXXIII (1918), 73.

³ The First Quarto Edition of Shakespeare's Hamlet, University of Wisconsin Studies, 1920.

⁴ Hamlet: its Textual History. Amsterdam, 1923.

⁵ Harness Prize Essays on the First Quarto of Hamlet, 1880.

⁶ “The copy for ‘Hamlet’ 1603,” and “The ‘Hamlet’ Transcript 1593,” in Library, vtvr. Afterwards published in booklet form. My theory, restated by Mr. Wilson, has since been frequently attributed to him—as, for example, by Mr. G. B. Harrison (Introd. to the Badley Head Quarto ed. of Hamlet) in his discussion of the “Marcellus theory.” The error is perhaps a natural one in view of the fact that Mr. Wilson himself makes this assumption—though referring at the same time to Professor Hubbard's reply to my paper.

⁷ See the mistakes listed in my former paper.

⁸ After Ophelia's first exist in IV, v, the King says, “Follow her close; give her good watch, I pray you.” The old copies give no stage direction, but modern editors mark an exit for Horatio, who evidently did not perform this duty. It is possible that M, with the Gentleman who describes Ophelia at the beginning of the scene, stood in the background, as an attendant guard, but, as he does not give the line nor mark the entrance, this is not likely.

⁹ Anglia, vols. 12 and 13 (1890 and 1891). Thomas Kyd und sein Kreis; 1892.

¹⁰ Introduction to his edition of Kyd's Works, 1901.

¹¹ Introduction in the Arden edition. The parallels are between Spenser and the old Harry the Sixt poet. In arguing against Kyd's authorship of Arden of Faversham, Dr. Boas writes: “The imitation here . . . . is so transparent that it is almost sufficient of itself to prove that Kyd could not have written the anonymous play.” Yet the particular parallel he cites is not so close as some of those by which he tries to prove Kyd's authorship in Q₁. Kyd's influence on the author of Wily Beguiled is much stronger than upon the author of Q₁ passages. It is odd that among the parallels between this play and S T there are two of the nine which occur in Q₁. “Try my cunning” occurs twice; and we have also the following, which is one of the best given by Dr. Boas:

Robin: And wherein can I do you good in this?

Churms: Marry, thus, Sir. . . . .

Robin (in reply): An excellent device.

¹² Two other scenes have a couplet followed by Latin or Italian lines; one has a couplet separated by a half line; one has four lines ending with the same rime; and one scene ends with rich rime, the same word three times used. None of these variants occurs in Q₁. On the other hand, X ends two scenes with double couplets, which Kyd does not do in S T. Soliman and Perseda resembles S T but not Q₁ in ending nine scenes with blank verse and only six with couplets. Rime, however, is not abundant in this play, as in S T. It has apparently been much worked over and rewritten, the revision showing the influence of Shakespeare's later history plays.

It should be noted, also, that X has no alternate rime, which is fairly abundant in S T.

¹³ For these figures I have depended upon the counting of Miss Linda Van Norden, a graduate student at Stanford. Miss Van Norden has noticed, also, the stanzaic structure of much of the dialogue in S T, of which there is no trace in Q₁ [This is particularly characteristic of Cornelia.] She remarks that the dialogue in the scene between the Queen and Horatio, which has no exact counterpart in Q₂, is very uncharacteristic of Kyd, inasmuch as that author would have had Horatio narrate such events as he has here to recount in a long and Scenecan recital, instead of supplying the conversational and commonplace dialogue that we have. X misses the gusto, the implacable energy of the characters, the fatalistic irony of Kyd. He has no sententious lines in Kyd's manner. [The maxims that Corambis deals out to Ophelia after his advice to Laertes belonged, I think, to Shakespeare's first version.] Miss Van Norden counts in S T: thirteen instances of stichomythia (76 lines), fifteen instances (184) lines of balanced words or phrases, thirty-three successions of sentences or clauses, and seventeen of phrases introduced by the same word or having the same construction, thirty-six occurrences of classical imagery, and seventy-nine classical references, many of them unusual. X is practically devoid of all and wholly devoid of most of these habitual mannerisms of Kyd. He has, for example, only two classical names: Mars (as in the Shakespeare passage) and Vulcan (which is not among the seventy-nine in S T), and both of these are of the sort that anyone would pick up. Every distinctive characteristic of Kyd is absent from the verse of X. As Dowden says, there is nothing pre-Shakespearean about this Q₁ verse, and much that is entirely unlike Kyd. One of the distinguishing characteristics of X is his omission of the relative pronoun; note lines, 159, 712, 1233, 1791, 1814, 1818. This feature is not characteristic of Kyd, but may be noted in many of the later dramatists of the period.

Dr. Boas notes the lyrical quality of Kyd's verse in contrast to Q₁, and suggests a rewriting of the old Hamlet before it reached Shakespeare. I have suggested a similar revision of Soliman and Perseda; but there the lines that are like Kyd are very much like him, while here the imitative verse is all of a piece, and constantly incorporates Shakespearean phrases. Verbal parallels imply the original and not a substituted verse.

¹⁴ Compare also the Queen's description of Ophelia's death in Shakespeare,

There with fantastic garlands did she come,

Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples . . . . with the easy abridgement of X,

Hauing made a garland of sundry sortes of floures. 1823.

¹⁵ “Thomas Kyd's Hamlet” in Westminster Review, 170:551 and 684.

¹⁶ “The Authorship of the Early Hamlet” in the Furnivall English Miscellany, p. 288.

¹⁷ We know from Webster's Induction that Marston's Malcontent was confiscated by the King's men from the company that stole “Jeronimo in decimo-sexto” from them. Dekker's reference in Satiromastix might be to a performance of this purloined Hamlet, and not to a revival of Kyd's, at Paris Garden. But it seems to me more likely that the rival company would give Hamlet on tour rather than try to compete with the original in London.

¹⁸ Mr. A. W. Pollard thinks Q₁ represents (imperfectly) the play as shortened for a tour, but does not suggest the rival company. Dr. de Groot attributes many of its peculiarities to condensation for this same purpose, but does not see the natural conclusion that it was X who performed the task. Professor Hubbard comments on the suitability of Q₁ for stage production and the indications that it was published by arrangement with the company which owned it. As the same publisher brought out Q₂ the next year, and as the King's men would never have consented to the appearance of Q₁ as it stands, it is more likely that the confiscating company gave the play to the publisher than that the publisher dealt in an underhanded way directly with M. Dr. Gertrude Southwick Kingsland also dwells upon Q₁ as an acted drama in her thesis, The First Quarto of Hamlet in the Light of the Stage, 1923.