words, the metre is broken, and there are frantic efforts to say compensatively in large something not fully grasped or appreciated in details. Other explanations have been proposed to account for the peculiarities of the First Quarto, but they are not more generally approved.

In 1604 another edition, differing materially from the preceding, was published with the following titlepage, "THE Tragicall Historie of HAMLET, Prince of Denmarke. By William Shakespeare. Newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much againe as it was, according to the true and perfect Coppie. AT LONDON, Printed by I. R. for N. L. and are to be sold at his shoppe vnder Saint Dunstons Church in Fleetstreet. 1604." This is the Second Quarto, and is in many respects the most important of all the texts. Another issue of the play, known as the Third Quarto, appeared in 1605. There was a Fourth Quarto, printed in 1611, and there was also a Fifth, showing no date, but probably published considerably later. No other issues of Hamlet are heard of until the printing of the First Folio in 1623. This, which is now accepted in general as the standard text of Shakespeare, for the thirty-five plays that appear in it, furnishes a somewhat less complete form of the piece than the Second

Quarto, and shows some rather egregious typographic errors. Most editors, and notably Clark and Wright in the Globe and Cambridge editions, follow the Second Quarto. The lines of the present text reproduce where practicable the readings of the First Folio.

The Hystorie of Hamblet, from which Shakespeare or the antecedent playwright drew, is a long and discursive story, impracticable to quote. The headings of the first six chapters will show how closely the original has been followed:

Chap. I. How Horvendile and Fengon were made Governours of the Province of Ditmarse, and how Horvendile marryed Geruth, the daughter to Roderick, chief K. of Denmark, by whom he had Hamblet: and how after his marriage his brother Fengon slewe him trayterously, and marryed his brothers wife, and what followed.

Chap. II. How Hamblet counterfeited the mad man, to escape the tyrannie of his uncle, and how he was tempted by a woman (through his uncles procurement) who thereby thought to undermine the Prince, and by that meanes to finde out whether he counterfeited madnesse or not: and how Hamblet would by no meanes bee brought to consent unto her, and what followed.

Chap. III. How Fengon, uncle to Hamblet, a second time to intrap him in his politick madnes, caused one of his counsellors to be secretly hidden in the queenes chamber, behind the arras, to heare what speeches passed between Hamblet and the

Queen; and how Hamblet killed him, and escaped that danger, and what followed.

Chap. IIII. How Fengon the third time devised to send Hamblet to the king of England, with secret letters to have him put to death and how Hamblet, when his companions slept, read the letters, and instead of them counterfeited others, willing the king of England to put the two messengers to death, and to marry his daughter to Hamblet, which was effected; and how Hamblet escaped out of England.

Chap. V. How Hamblet, having escaped out of England, arrived in Denmarke the same day that the Danes were celebrating his funerals, supposing him to be dead in England; and how he revenged his fathers death upon his uncle and the rest of the courtiers; and what followed.

Chap. VI. How Hamlet, having slain his Uncle, and burnt his Palace, made an Oration to the Danes to shew them what he done; and how they made him King of Denmark; and what followed.

The play of Hamlet, while the most unsatisfying of Shakespeare's dramas, is perhaps to the majority of students and readers the most inspiring. Those who comprehend it least, or are most in doubt as to its essential meanings, are often most completely under its spell. It carries the reader and the spectator to high planes of contemplation. It makes profound and philosophical thought seem fascinating even to vulgar minds. It reveals the subtleties, the frames, the pas

sions, of a singularly noble spirit. We do not sympathize with the hero in every part of the play, but we everywhere admire and covet his integrity and strength. Indeed, the character, with its self-questionings and intolerance of wrong and weakness, seems a complete type of the northern mind, as Brutus, in the Julius Caesar, seems a type of the classical or southern. Brutus could not be brought, by anything less than failure, to distrust the sufficiency of his integrity and his name. But Hamlet, had the time. not been out of joint, and had he not, in his own view, been born merely to set it right, would still have lived virtually in self-condemnation. It is seemingly this aspiration and unrest, so inherent in the nature of his race, that has brought the character and the play so near the sympathies of the Teutonic world.

Three things are requisite for the understanding and appreciation of Shakespeare's work. The first is some knowledge of the Elizabethan peculiarities in the English of a given play. The second is such acquaintance with the Latin part of our present English vocabulary, and, if possible, with the elements of Latin itself, as will insure recognition of the nice distinctions in Shakespeare's personal use of words, and his occasional dependence upon constructions, bor

rowed from that language. The Notes are intended to supply as much as seems practicable of both these wants, and to encourage further study of the suggestive and powerful diction abounding in this play. Finally and chiefly, there is need of gifts and training to discern the deeper meanings of the author. These are often missed, and indeed are not very confidently grasped by the best of us. To reduce the unit of difficulty in this part of the work, Outline Questions have been added after the Notes. More mature attempts to solve the difficulties of the piece should be preceded, with such helps as Furness's Variorum Hamlet, Schmidt's Shakespeare Lexicon, and especially the Oxford English Dictionary, by a closer study of the text. A convenient summary of the best criticism will be found in the second volume of Dr. Furness's Variorum.