This consciënce makes cowards of us all."
I have put in italics in the text the marginal corrections of "proof" as shown above, inserted in their proper places; a comparison with the first Quarto will show how the printer, not the shorthand man or playdresser, by inserting them in the wrong places, has produced the nonsense that has caused so many groundless hypotheses.
"When we awake,
And borne before an everlasting Judge,
From whence no passenger ever return'd
The undiscover'd country, at whose sight
The happy smile," &c.
And farther on:
"Ay that O this conscience," &c.
The erroneous notions with regard to these imperfect Quartos arise, in a great measure, from their being compared with the carefully edited later versions; were they also edited and emended the differences would appear much smaller than they do now. The earlier (1601) form of this play was evidently hurriedly prepared during the journey to Scotland, in which the company visited the universities, at a time when the public taste for revenge-plays had been revived by the reproduction of Kyd's Jeronymo (Spanish Tragedy) by the Chapel children, probably at Jonson's suggestion; a new version of Kyd's Hamlet naturally followed. Other such plays were: Marston's Antonio and Mellida (Paul's, 1599-1600); Shakespeare's Julius Cæsar (1600); Chettle and Heywood's Hoffman, or Revenge for a Father, also called Like quits Like (Admiral's, January 1603): Chapman's Revenge of Bussy is of later date. A passage in Ram Alley (c. 1609), v. 1, "The custom of thy sin so lulls thy sense," &c., is apparently imitated from iii. 4. 161, &c., a passage not found in the Folio. This would lead to the conjecture that the Folio abridgment was made after 1609; on the other hand, the re-insertion in it of ii. 2. 350-379 points to a date, about 1610, when Underwood and Ostler had "grown to common players," and were admitted among the King's men. It was probably made then by Shakespeare himself. It is indeed most unlikely, that were it not so, its text should have been preferred, by the editors of the Folio, to the fuller one of the Quarto, which lay ready printed to their hands. We have, then, in the forms of this play, an example of Shakespeare's hurried revision of the work of an earlier writer, but it must be remembered in a most mutilated form; of the full working out of his own conception, in the shape fittest for private reading; and finally, of his practical adaptation of it to the requirements of the stage. The date of the printing of the first Quarto, and, therefore, of the revision made in the second, is after 19th May 1603, as the actors are called "King's servants" in the title-page. I. 1. 107-125, which surely allude to the death of Elizabeth, are omitted in the Folio. In iii. 2. 177, iv. 5. 77, alternative readings—