Everything about The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is problematic. Gritical uncertainty concerning the character of the Prince, his attitudes, and the tragic quality of his highly dramatic situation is matched by a corresponding diversity of scholarly opinion regarding such matters as the date of the play, its precise relation to its sources, and its textual authority. An editor approaches his task with a proper awe that is the more profound from his steady realization that he is, after all, dealing with the most celebrated work in English literature.
The revised Norton Critical Edition of Shakespeare's masterpiece again bases its text on the second quarto (1604-5). When necessary, the editor has also drawn upon the folio, recording all departures from the quarto in the Textual Notes.Punctuation and stage directions for the play have been refined, and the textual annotations have been both revised and expanded.
The "Intellectual Backgrounds" and "Extracts from the Sources" sections remain as germane as ever and are, therefore, unchanged. In order to help the reader place Hamlet in the proper historical context, "Intellectual Backgrounds"includes important readings on melancholy, demonology, the nature of man, and death. Represented are works by Peter de la Primaudaye, Timothy Bright, Lewes Lavater, G. Gifford, Michel de Montaigne, and Hieronymous Cardanus. "Extracts from the Sources" offers pre-Shakespearean accounts of the story of Hamlet with substantiai extracts from Saxo Grammaticus's Historia Danica and Belleforest's Histoires Tragiques.
The editor has carefully revised the "Criticism" section in order to accommodate the most significant recent interpretations, while continuing to retain the seminal essays of the First Edition. Twenty-three criticaI analyses are featured,six of them new. Included in this wide selection are essays by Samuel Johnson,Johann Wolfgang yon Goethe, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Hazlitt, D. H.Lawrence, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, Harry Levin, Peter J. Seng, Rebecca West,Arnold Kettle, Margaret W. Ferguson, Jacqueline Rose, and William Empson.
A thoroughly updated Selected Bibliography is also included.
Preface
Preface to the Second Edition
The Text of Hamlet
Hamlet
TEXTUAL COMMENTARY
Textual Notes
Intellectual Backgrounds
MELANCHOLY
Peter de la Primaudayc · The French Academy
Timothy Bright · A Treatise of Melancholy
DEMONOLOGY
Lewes Lavater · Of Ghosts and Spirits Walking by Night
G. Gifford · A Discourse of the Subtle Practices of
Devils by Witches and Sorcerers
THE NATURE OF MAN
Peter de la Primaudayc · The French Academy
Michel de Montaigne · An Apology of Raymond Sebond
DEATH
Hieronymous Cardanus · Comfort
Michel de Montaigne · An Apology of Raymond Sebond
Michel de Montaigne · Of Physiognomy
Extracts from the Sources
Saxo Grammaticus · Amleth
Belleforest · The Hystorie of Hamblet, Prince of Denmarke
Essays in Criticism
John Dennis · From All Essay on the Genius and Writings of
Shakespeare
Anonymous · Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet
Prince of Denmark
Samuel Johnson · [The Praise of Variety]
William Richardson · The Gharacter of Hamlet
Henry Mackenzie · Griticism oil the Gharacter and
Tragedy of Hamlet
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · [A Soul Unfit]
Augustus William Schlegel · Griticisms on Shakespeare's
Tragedies: Hamlet
Samuel Taylor Goleridge · Notes on the Tragedies:
Hamlet
William Hazlitt · Gharacters of Shakespear's Plays:
Hamlet
A. G. Bradley · [What Actually Happens in the Play]
D. H. Lawrence · [An Aversion from Hamlet]
T. S. Eliot · Hamlet and His Problems
G. Wilson Knight · The Embassy of Death: An Essay
on Hamlet
Harley Granville-Barker · The Five Acts of the Editors
C. S. Lewis · Hamlet: The Prince or the Poem?
Ernest Jones · Tragedy and the Mind of the Infant
Harry Levin - An Explication of the Player's Speech
Peter J. Seng · [Dramatic Function of the Songs in Hamlet]
Rebecca West · The Nature of Will
Arnold Kettle · [Hamlet in a Ghanging World]
Margaret W. Ferguson · Hamlet: Letters and Spirits
Jaequeline Rose · Sexuality in the Reading of Shakespeare:
Hamlet and Measure for Measure
William Empson · [Up-dating Revenge Tragedy]
Selected Bibliography