‘Hamlet,’ 1602.
At any rate, in the tragedy that Shakespeare brought out in the year following the production of ‘Julius Cæsar,’ he finally left Jonson and all friends and foes lagging far behind both in achievement and reputation. This new exhibition of the force of his genius re-established, too, the ascendency of the adult actors who interpreted his work, and the boys’ supremacy was quickly brought to an end. In 1602 Shakespeare produced ‘Hamlet,’ ‘that piece of his which most kindled English hearts.’ The story of the Prince of Denmark had been popular on the stage as early as 1589 in a lost dramatic version by another writer—doubtless Thomas Kyd, whose tragedies of blood, ‘The Spanish Tragedy’ and ‘Jeronimo,’ long held the Elizabethan stage. To that lost version of ‘Hamlet’ Shakespeare’s tragedy certainly owed much. [221] The story was also accessible in the
‘Histoires Tragiques’ of Belleforest, who adapted it from the ‘Historia Danica’ of Saxo Grammaticus. [222] No English translation of Belleforest’s ‘Hystorie of Hamblet’ appeared before 1608; Shakespeare doubtless read it in the French. But his authorities give little hint of what was to emerge from his study of them.
The problem of its publication.
The First Quarto, 1603.
Burbage created the title-part in Shakespeare’s tragedy, and its success on the stage led to the play’s publication immediately afterwards. The bibliography of ‘Hamlet’ offers a puzzling problem. On July 26, 1602, ‘A Book called the Revenge of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, as it was lately acted by the Lord Chamberlain his Servants,’ was entered on the Stationers’ Company’s Registers, and it was published in quarto next year by N[icholas]
L[ing] and John Trundell. The title-page stated that the piece had been ‘acted divers times in the city of London, as also in the two Universities of Cambridge and Oxford and elsewhere.’ The text here appeared in a rough and imperfect state. In all probability it was a piratical and carelessly transcribed copy of Shakespeare’s first draft of the play, in which he drew largely on the older piece.