THE TRAGEDIE OFHAMLET,PRINCE OF DENMARKE

A STUDY WITH THE TEXTOFTHE FOLIO OF 1623

BYGEORGE MACDONALD

"What would you gracious figure?"

TO

MY HONOURED RELATIVE

ALEXANDER STEWART MACCOLL

A LITTLE LESS THAN KIN, AND MORE THAN KIND

TO WHOM I OWE IN ESPECIAL THE TRUE UNDERSTANDING OF

THE GREAT SOLILOQUY

I DEDICATE

WITH LOVE AND GRATITUDE

THIS EFFORT TO GIVE HAMLET AND SHAKSPERE THEIR DUE

GEORGE MAC DONALD

BORDIGHERA

Christmas, 1884

Summary:

The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark:
a study of the text of the folio of 1623
By George MacDonald
[Motto]: "What would you, gracious figure?"

Dr. Greville MacDonald looks on his father's commentary as the "mostimportant interpretation of the play ever written… It is his intuitiveunderstanding … rather than learned analysis—of which there is yetoverwhelming evidence—that makes it so splendid."

Reading Level: Mature youth and adults.

PREFACE

By this edition of HAMLET I hope to help the student of Shakspere tounderstand the play—and first of all Hamlet himself, whose spiritualand moral nature are the real material of the tragedy, to which everyother interest of the play is subservient. But while mainly attempting,from the words and behaviour Shakspere has given him, to explain theman, I have cast what light I could upon everything in the play,including the perplexities arising from extreme condensation of meaning,figure, and expression.

As it is more than desirable that the student should know when he isreading the most approximate presentation accessible of what Shakspereuttered, and when that which modern editors have, with reason good orbad, often not without presumption, substituted for that which theyreceived, I have given the text, letter for letter, point for point, ofthe First Folio, with the variations of the Second Quarto in the marginand at the foot of the page.

Of HAMLET there are but two editions of authority, those called theSecond Quarto and the First Folio; but there is another which requiresremark.

In the year 1603 came out the edition known as the First Quarto—clearlywithout the poet's permission, and doubtless as much to his displeasure:the following year he sent out an edition very different, and larger inthe proportion of one hundred pages to sixty-four. Concerning the formermy theory is—though it is not my business to enter into the questionhere—that it was printed from Shakspere's sketch for the play, writtenwith matter crowding upon him too fast for expansion or development, andintended only for a continuous memorandum of things he would take up andwork out afterwards. It seems almost at times as if he but markedcertain bales of thought so as to find them again, and for the presentthrew them aside—knowing that by the marks he could recall the thoughtsthey stood for, but not intending thereby to convey them to any reader.I cannot, with evidence before me, incredible but through the eyesthemselves, of the illimitable scope of printers' blundering, believeall the

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