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Dating Shakespeare’s Plays: Hamlet

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T he Tragedy of Hamlet

Hamlet can be dated between the latest source, c. 1586, and the entry in the Stationers’ Register in 1602.1

Publication Date

The play was entered in the Stationers’ Register, 26th July 1602:

[SR, 1602] xxvjtoJulij. James Robertes. Entred for his Copie vnder the handes of master Pasfield and master Waterson warden A booke called the Revenge of Hamlett Prince Denmark as yt was latelie Acted by the Lord Chamberleyne his servantes. vjd

A quarto version (Ql) was published the following year in 1603:

[Q1, 1603] The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke by William Shake-speare. As it hath beene diuerse times acted by his Highnesse seruants in the Cittie of London: as also in the two Vniuersities of Cambridge and Oxford, and else-where At London: printed [by Valentine Simmes] for N. L. [Nicholas Ling] and Iohn Trundell, 1603.

Two examples of Q1 are known and only one (in the Huntingdon Library) preserves the title page. Q1 is usually known as the ‘bad’ quarto by many scholars who have taken it to be a pirated version of Hamlet, memorised badly, or at least incompletely.2 A much longer version of the play (Q2) was published in 1604:

[Q2, 1604] 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. [James Roberts] for N. L. [Nicholas Ling] and are to be sold at his shoppe vnder Saint Dunstons Church in Fleet-street, 1604.

The title page of some editions of Q2 carry the date 1605. A third quarto (Q3) followed in 1611, based on Q2, but with some variations:

[Q3, 1611] The tragedy 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 coppy. At London: printed [by George Eld] for Iohn Smethwicke, and are to be sold at his shoppe in Saint Dunstons Church yeard in Fleetstreet. Vnder the Diall, 1611. A fourth quarto in 1622 showed the continuing

popularity of the play:

[Q4, 1622] The tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke. Newly imprinted and inlarged, according to the true and perfect copy lastly printed. By William Shakespeare. London: printed by W. S. [William Stansby] for Iohn Smethwicke, and are to be sold at his shop in Saint Dunstans Church-yard in Fleetstreet: vnder the Diall, [1622].

The play was printed near the end of the First Folio (F1), occupying the seventh position among the tragedies, after Macbeth and before King Lear.

Relationship of Q1, Q2 and F1

There has been much discussion but little agreement about the relationship between these

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Title page to the First Quarto of Hamlet, 1603; it has generally been believed that this version was a ‘Bad Quarto’ derived from the Folio text. Some scholars, however, have argued that it was an early

version by Shakespeare, which he later revised. By permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

versions. According to Irace’s line counts, Q1 is much the shortest edition of the play, with about 2,221 lines, compared to the longest version, Q2, which contains approx 4,056 lines. The most variation occurs in Hamlet’s “To be or not to be speech ...” as it appears in Q2; originally in Q1, this speech began with the lines: ‘To be or not to be; ay there’s the point. / To die, to sleep: is that all? Ay all.’ Overall, the speech is about ten lines shorter than in Q1. There are also changes to the names of characters: in Q1, the King’s counsellor is called Corambis and his spying servant

Montano, whereas in Q2 they are called Polonius and Reynaldo. The sequence of events is slightly different: in Q1, the nunnery scene is introduced immediately after Ophelia’s father suggests testing Hamlet (Q1, scene 8; Act 2 Scene 2 in the longer texts), but in the following scene (3.1) in Q2. Various productions have found the Q1 sequence more logical. The question of Gertrude’s complicity in murder is explicitly denied in Q1, where she promises to help Hamlet exact revenge. In Q2, however, Gertrude’s conscience is not known; she makes no offer of help beyond keeping

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The title page to the Second Quarto of Hamlet, 1604–5.By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

quiet. The F1 version is about 3,901 lines in total, lacking about 230 lines in Q2, but containing about 80 lines not in Q2.

In her edition of Q1, Kathleen Irace considers three possible relationships between the texts:

(a) Revision is the commonly cited reason, arguing that the dramatist composed the longer version (Q2) and then shortened it as Q1, perhaps for playing and touring purposes; according to this view, Q1 must have been authorised, since those involved in the publication of Q1 (Nicholas Ling,

John Trundell and the unacknowledged printer, Valentine Simmes) were reputable. Many commentators, e.g. Sams, believe that Shakespeare wrote Q1, then revised and expanded it as Q2.

(b) Memorial reconstruction, Irace believes, is the most reasonable explanation for the differences between the plays. Chambers states that “Q2 substantially represents the original text of the play, as written once and for all by Shakespeare.” This is followed by many editors, e.g. Jenkins and Hibbard. It is further thought that the

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actor who played the parts of Marcellus, Lucianus and Voltemand in the longer (as yet unpublished) Q2 version helped to prepare a ‘bad’ quarto of the play as Q1, without the author’s permission. The idea that Q1 was unauthorised is suggested on the title page of Q2, “Newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much againe as it was, according to the true and perfect Coppie.” Q2’s comment may, however, have been a sales pitch.

(c) Theatrical adaptation is also possible, perhaps by actors for performance in the provinces, with Q1 an abridged version of the original Q2.

Irace makes no final judgement about the relationship between these plays. Wells & Taylor accept Q1 as a memorial reconstruction of Q2, but believe that Shakespeare himself revised the play as printed in F1. Other scholars are not so circumspect as Irace: Somogyi offers a flow diagram which has in its initial box ‘Shakespeare’s Manuscript 1600’, and confidently asserts that Q1 is a ‘memorial reconstruction’ and that Q2 and F1 should be combined to form the composite Hamlet, on the assumption that the dramatist only produced one complete play. Since it is possible that the dramatist revised the play (perhaps twice, from Q2 to Q1 then from Q2 to F1), all three versions may have authority.

Early References to Performances

Towards the end of Elizabeth’s reign, there were certainly three, and possibly four or five, references to a play about Hamlet.3 Firstly, Thomas Nashe wrote an address to the “Gentlemen Students of both Universities” printed as an introduction to Robert Greene’s romance Menaphon (STC 12272, 1589); Nashe stated:

English Seneca read by candle-light yields many good sentences, as Blood is a beggar, and so forth; and if you entreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls of tragical speeches

The second reference occurs in Henslowe’s Diaries, which mention a performance of a play called Hamlet at Newington Butts, south of the river on 9 June 1594. The entry lies on the same

page as two other plays with Shakespearean titles:

ye 5 of June 1594 R/ at andronicous xijs

ye 9 of June 1594 R/ at hamlet viijs

ye 10 of June 1594 R/ at the tamynge of A shrowe ixs

ye 12 of June1594 R/ at andronicous vijs

The third reference occurs when Thomas Lodge in his Wit’s Misery and the World’s Madness (1596) describes a devil:

He walks for the most part in black under colour of gravity, & looks as pale as the Visard of ye ghost which cried so miserally [sic] at ye Theatre, like an oisterwife, Hamlet, revenge.

It is thought likely that Lodge saw the play at The Theatre in Shoreditch.

A fourth allusion to a play about Hamlet occurs in a hand-written marginal comment by Gabriel Harvey in his copy of Chaucer, published in 1598 by Speght:

The younger sort takes much delight in Shakespeares Venus, & Adonis: but his Lucrece, & his tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke haue it in them, to please the wiser sort.

The passage is not dated but has been tentatively assigned to between 1598 and not later than February 1601 since the note mentions Essex as alive, “The Earle of Essex much commendes Albions England . . .”

A fifth possible allusion occurs in Edward Pudsey’s manuscript Book of Commonplaces in which he quotes from Hamlet (apparently Q2). This book has been tentatively dated to 1600.4

The Stationers’ Register records (on 26th July 1602) performance of The Revenge of Hamlett, Prince [of] Denmark, “as yt was latelie acted by the Lord Chamberlayne his servants”. The title page of Q1 in 1603 mentions performances in London, Oxford and Cambridge. Halliday notes a further performance on 5th September 1607 on board Captain William Keeling’s East Indiaman, Red Dragon, when anchored off the coast of Africa.

Known performance places, therefore, seem to be Newington Butts, the City of London, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and on board Captain Keeling’s ship. In the late twentieth century there was an interesting plaque in the entrance to a coaching inn called The Golden

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Cross in Oxford stating Boas’s deduction that Hamlet was performed in that city in 1593, but that plaque has now been removed.5

Was there an Ur-Hamlet ?

In 1877, Furness reviewed the attempts by previous editors to date Shakespeare’s Hamlet and noted that discussion on the text and date of the play “continues to divide the Shakespearean world”. Malone first suggested that all references before 1600 to a play about Hamlet were simply to another, earlier play by someone other than Shakespeare; the so-called Ur-Hamlet, perhaps by Thomas Kyd. When Dr. Farmer discovered Lodge’s allusion in 1767, Malone proposed a date of 1596 for Hamlet in his chronology of the plays. However, when Nashe’s 1589 reference was found, Malone hastily revised his date and dismissed the Henslowe reference on the grounds that Henslowe only received eight shillings for the play.

Most modern scholars have followed the suggestion of an Ur-Hamlet, some (e.g. Chambers, Jenkins and Edwards) without question, believing that this earlier version was used by Shakespeare as a source. Shakespeare is then supposed to have written his own version of Hamlet around the turn of the century. Wells & Taylor (following Bullough) are more cautious about the existence of an Ur-Hamlet, somewhat reluctantly accepting the suggestion, mainly because the phrase “Hamlet, revenge!” quoted by Lodge in 1596 does not occur in Q1 (but fail to note that neither does the phrase occur in Q2 or F1). The hypothesis of an earlier play by a different author, however, is not supported by reference to any extant manuscript or printed document. If the Ur-Hamlet ever existed, it is now lost.

Other scholars are doubtful about an Ur-Hamlet: E. A. J. Honigmann had originally accepted the idea (in “The Date of Hamlet”, 1956) but changed his mind by 1985 (Shakespeare: the ‘ lost years’) when he argued for an early version by Shakespeare. The most recent editors of the Arden edition of Hamlet, Thompson & Taylor, accept that it is possible that Nashe, Henslowe and Lodge were referring to Shakespeare’s play (or at least to a version of it). Cairncross, Alexander and Bloom go further and reject the entire notion of a different author, asserting that these three references are to an early version of the Shakespeare play.

Sources

Consideration of the sources used by Shakespeare depends to a large extent on the view taken about an earlier version of Hamlet. While any version of such a play would have derived from Belleforest, it is impossible to know how much more of the reading listed below would have been done by the supposed other writer.

Geoffrey Bullough has surveyed the extensive sources used for Hamlet, many of them in Latin, French or Italian. Saxo Grammaticus’s Latin text, Danicae Historiae (1514), was the earliest printed source for the tale of Amleth, as the Prince was originally called. It is possible that the dramatist consulted both Saxo Grammaticus and a French translation by François de Belleforest in 1576, which was included in Les Histoires Tragiques, volume V of which contains the story of Hamlet. Jenkins argues for use of a further source in French and since the correspondence of thought suggests that Shakespeare had read Montaigne’s Essais (published in French in 1580–88 and in English translations which began to appear inconsistently from 1595).

From classical sources, it is also thought that Shakespeare used Seneca both for his rhetorical features (e.g. doubling devices, oppositional pairs and hendiadys, as noted by Kermode) and as a model for a revenge play: Polonius even refers to Roman playwrights: “Seneca cannot be too heavy nor Plautus too light for the law of writ and liberty.” (2.2.401–2) Seneca was available in the original Latin or in various translations, e.g. Thomas Newton’s of 1581. There are also internal references to Virgil’s Aeneid in Hamlet’s request for a speech, based on Aeneas’s tale in Book II told to Dido (available either in the original Latin or in a translation such as Henry Howard’s of the 1540s, or Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage, published 1594). Bullough also suggests as sources works by Livy (in Latin or in Philemon Holland’s translation of 1600), Plutarch (in Latin or in North’s translation of 1579) and Plautus’s Menaechmi (probably in Latin, but also available from 1594 in an English translation by Warner) and possibly Juvenal’s Tenth Satire. He further considers it likely that The Murder of Gonzago and the description of the ghost is based on the story of Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino. The murder of this duke, who was in Venice at

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the time, was described in a book (published in Venice in 1546 with later reprints) by Paul Iovii, Eulogia Virorum Bellica Virtute Illustrium, with an engraving based on a portrait by Titian.6 Jenkins comments that an important source for the “To be or not to be speech” was Cardanus’ Comfort (available either in the Latin text of 1514 or in Thomas Bedingfield’s English translation of 1573). Erasmus’ Moriae Encomium (1511, translated into English as In Praise of Folly, 1549) has also been identified as a likely source, especially for combining serious issues with humour.

Bullough also describes Italian sources, especially as Hamlet himself comments on The Murder of Gonzago: “His name’s Gonzago: the story is extant and writ in choice Italian” (3.2.250). Bullough mentions the influence of Baldasarre Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano, published originally in Italian (1528), then translated into English (by Hoby in 1561) and into Latin (by Clarke, 1572). Bullough then lists a small number of possible sources or analogues from English texts: John Lyly’s Euphues: Anatomy of Wit (1578) and Euphues and his England (1580); Sidney’s Arcadia (1590); Tarlton’s Newes out of Purgatorie (1590); A Warning for Fair Women (anon, published in 1599) and Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge (1600). There is also a play in German, Der bestrafte Brudermord (Fratricide Punished) which seems to have derived from Q1. Dover Wilson adds that Shakespeare was acquainted with Timothy Bright’s A Treatise of Melancholy, printed in 1586; Jenkins cautiously accepts some influence.

Shaheen has identified more biblical allusions in Hamlet than in any other Shakespeare play. These allusions often echo the specific wording of the protestant Geneva Bible (published in 1560), e.g. at 3.1.77–79:

But that dread of something after death,The undiscover’d country, from whose bournNo traveller returns.

This reference to Job 10.21 reads “shall returne no more.” Other versions read “not turne agayne.” Further echoes of the Geneva Bible occur at 3.3.80, 5.1.229–30 and 5.2.219–20.

There is also intriguing legal knowledge throughout the play, especially in the interchange between the gravediggers (5.1) : “Is she to be buried in Christian burial, that willfully seeks her own salvation?” The discussion which follows

is based on the case of Hales v. Pettit, decided in 1560 (reported in Plowden, 253). Sokol & Sokol refer to various studies of this scene and find detailed, precise legal knowledge as well as allusion to “issues carrying considerable moral and philosophical importance”. Plowden’s reports were written in French and were published in London in 1571 as Les Commentaries, ou Reportes de Edmunde Plowden un Apprentice de le Comen Ley.

The above brings together most of the large number of sources identified by major scholars. Hamlet ranks alongside Richard II as the play for which the dramatist did most research. Bright’s Treatise of Melancholy (1586) seems to be the latest definite source for the play.

Orthodox Dates

Chambers and Bullough date the play between 1598 and 1601. J. Dover Wilson gives a slightly wider range from 1596–1601; Jenkins, Hibbard and Edwards prefer a slightly narrower range 1599–1600. Wells & Taylor give the slightly later date 1600–01, which is accepted by Cantor (after much comment about the conjectural nature of the chronology of the plays). Many see the composition of Hamlet as immediately following Shakespeare’s composition of Julius Caesar. Thompson & Taylor, however, allow that Shakespeare’s play may be dated back as far as 1589:

The argument that Hamlet refers back to Julius Caesar, while attractive, remains unproven. Once that is conceded, and once it is further conceded that we are not just looking for one precise date but a process of production which involves drafts of manuscripts, performances in different venues, and the publication of a number of different texts, then it becomes possible to admit that a version of Hamlet by Shakespeare may date back to 1589 or even earlier.

Alexander, Honigmann and Bloom argue for an original date c. 1589, with a revision c. 1600, for Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Wiggins agrees that Shakespeare’s version dates to 1600.

Orthodox Dates – External Evidence

The proposed dates are closely related to scholars’

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interpretations of the external evidence provided by Nashe (1589), Henslowe (1594), Lodge (1596) and Meres (1598) in contemporary documents. Most scholars reject or ignore the possibility that Nashe, Henslowe and Lodge were referring to Shakespeare’s play, postulating another play, now lost, by another author and labelled the Ur-Hamlet, and placing Shakespeare’s play in the late 1590s.

Some support for this position is claimed from Francis Meres, who did not mention Hamlet in his Palladis Tamia (1598). Most scholars see this omission as significant, precluding any earlier date. Meres’s 1598 list becomes an inflexible baseline, indicating proof of when certain plays had or had not been written. Hibbard leans towards this theory and uses Meres as ‘“strong presumptive evidence” that a Shakespearean Hamlet had not yet been staged. But examination of Meres shows that he does not give a complete list of Shakespeare’s plays written by 1598, e.g. he makes no mention of the three plays about the reign of Henry VI. To use Meres thus is to overstate his value. The third Arden Hamlet editors, Thompson & Taylor, report:

An accidental omission by Meres, although unlikely, is not inconceivable: he was not to know how important his list would be for future scholars.

However, there are dissenting voices against a date c. 1600 for Shakespeare’s play. Cairncross considers Hamlet to have been written by 1589. The nineteenth- century German scholar, Elze, preferred an earlier date 1585–86. Alexander, Honigmann, Sams and Bloom (among others) all accept the references in Nashe, Henslowe and Lodge (possibly also Harvey) as indicating an early version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Bullough notes the topicality of a Hamlet at the time of Mary Queen of Scots’ trial and execution (1586–87). There are parallels with the trial of Mary Queen of Scots and the dilemma of Queen Elizabeth which were both explored in detail in the eighteenth-century observations of Plumptre (reported by Furness) and much later by Winstanley. Furthermore, the idea that Polonius (named Corambis in Q1) is a caricature of Lord Burghley (whose motto was: Cor unum via una) is accepted by several commentators, including Simpson (a biographer),7 Rowse (a historian)8 and

Dover Wilson (a literary critic).9 The identification of Corambis/Polonius with Burghley was queried by Chambers and has been denied by others, including Bate, Matus and Jenkins. The caricature does become much more likely if Q1, with the counsellor called Corambis, was from the 1580s. It could then be argued that Shakespeare revised that name to Polonius in his 1604 edition of Q2, as a mark of respect for Burghley who died in 1598, and because by 1604 the caricature would have lost its contemporary relevance. Jenkins has suggested that the change in the name of the King’s counsellor from ‘Corambis’ to Polonius may have been suggested by a treatise in Latin by a Polish writer, Wawrzyniec Golicki De optimo senatore libri duo (Venice, 1568), which was translated as The Counsellor exactly portraited in two books (1598). Golicki argued that rulers should be responsible for their own actions.

A further connection with Burghley is found in the range of flowers mentioned by Ophelia when mad. A significant authority on flowers and plants was John Gerard, Burghley’s gardener of more than twenty years, who published The Herbal in 1596. The 1597 edition at least contained as part of its dedications the crest and motto of Burghley, as cited above. In this text, Gerard refers to his travels in the northern parts of Europe, including Denmark and Polonia.10

Orthodox Dates – Internal Evidence

The principal internal evidence that is offered concerns the “little eyases” (2.2 336 ff), which is supposed to be a reference to the boy actors who were established at the Blackfriars theatre, from Michaelmas 1600. Jenkins is one who recognizes this is sometimes taken as a later insertion, however, and not unambiguously proof of date of composition. Chambers raises a query about “a falling out of tennis” (2.1. 59), wondering whether there was an allusion here to the famous quarrel in a tennis court between Sir Philip Sidney and the Earl of Oxford in 1579.

The only agreement is that there is much uncertainty about the date at which Shakespeare’s Hamlet was written, and that the relationships between Q1 and Q2 “are complicated and controversial”, as Hibbard writes.

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Oxfordian Dates

Those who argue that the Earl of Oxford wrote the plays of ‘Shakespeare’ claim that Hamlet was composed in the 1580s. Both Holland and Clark suggest around 1583–84, Clark stating that it would be after the trip to Denmark of Peregrine Willoughby d’Eresby (the brother-in-law of Oxford) where he dined with the great Danish families including those named Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Oxfordian Date – Internal Evidence

Links with the seventeenth Earl of Oxford include allusions, names and possible biographical references. Many references can be found in Monstrous Adversary, Alan Nelson’s biography of Oxford:

• The play has detailed, precise legal references (Sokol & Sokol); Oxford trained at Gray’s Inn (Nelson 46).

• The gravedigger’s puns on felo de se may be an allusion to Oxford killing an under-cook in Burghely’s household in 1567; the verdict of the jury was that the cook committed felo de se (Nelson 48).

• The play alludes to Cardanus’ Comfort. Bedingfield’s 1573 translation of this work was dedicated to Oxford (Nelson 77).

• Osric parodies Lyly’s Euphues; Oxford worked with Lyly (Nelson 183).

• There are references to young players, “eyases”; Oxford had a company of boy players (Nelson 247–8).

• There are musical images; Oxford was an accomplished composer (Nelson 382).

• The pirate scene; Oxford had been captured by pirates and set ashore in his shirt (Nelson 135).

• Hamlet’s confidant in the play is Horatio, and another character is Francisco; Oxford had cousins called Horace and Francis, who were known as the Fighting Veres (Nelson 169–71).

• There is reference to “a falling out at tennis” in the play; Oxford had a tennis court quarrel with Philip Sidney (Nelson 195).

Further internal references in the play link Polonius (Corambis) to Oxford’s guardian and father-in-law, William Cecil, Lord Burghley (references can be found in Conyers Read’s two volume biography):

• Polonius offers precepts for the behaviour of Laertes when abroad; Burghley, Oxford’s father-in-law, wrote similar precepts for his sons (Read, Cecil, 214; Burghley, 304).

• Polonius asks Reynaldo to spy on Laertes; Burghley arranged for his elder son Thomas to be spied upon in Paris (Chambers, WS, I, 418; Beckingsale, 92).

• Polonius is a “fishmonger”; Burghley protected the English fishing fleet by insisting on ‘fish-days’ (Read, Cecil, 272–3).

Finally, Sigmund Freud was much struck by Hamlet’s predicament and Oedipus complex, which he described in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), linking the play to William Shakespeare’s family background in Stratford-upon-Avon (see Thompson & Taylor’s introduction). However, by the time he wrote his autobiography in 1925, (translated as Autobiographical Study, 1927), Freud had come to the conclusion that the plays of ‘Shakespeare’ had been written by Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. Sally Hazelton reports that, like many others, Freud saw a huge correlation between the situation of Hamlet and the life of the Earl of Oxford.

Oxfordian Date – External Evidence

Further links to Oxford include:

• Oxford knew Latin, Italian and French, the languages of the sources. (Nelson, 37; 155–7).

• Hamlet was played at universities; Oxford’s Men had been recommended in Cambridge. (Nelson, 244).

• Oxford was known to write plays; none survive unless anonymous or under another name.

• Oxford was a commissioner at the trial of Mary Queen of Scots (Nelson 302).

• Burghley’s brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Hoby, made an English translation of The Courtier; Oxford’s friend, Bartholomew Clerke, made a Latin version. This text described a Renaissance courtier and was very influential on Hamlet. (Nelson, 277)

• Elizabeth’s dilemma about how a prince can take the life of another ruler exactly parallels Hamlet’s; Oxford was a courtier.

• Elizabeth delayed until she was certain

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of the threats against her own life; so does Hamlet. (Chambers sees Gertrude as “certainly not a Lady Macbeth” and guiltless of any knowledge of Claudius’s crime, tending to support Plumptre’s 1796 reading).

• Belleforest was a political anti-English, anti-Protestant writer and aware of Burghley and Oxford; Belleforest was a source for Hamlet.12

These points, both internally and externally referring to the play, vary in force. Some are general rather than specific to Hamlet, but their accumulative impact and close connection with Oxford is disconcerting at the least, and they support an earlier date.

Access to the recognised sources for the play is also disconcerting: where did the author read the vast range of texts? These sources, however, were readily available to Oxford. He purchased a copy of Plutarch’s Lives in 1569, which was also in the library of Sir Thomas Smith (Oxford’s tutor). Oxford purchased a Geneva Bible in 1569, which has been identified as the copy held by the Folger Library in Washington. The Folger copy, which has the Blue Boar and coronet of Oxford on its cover, contains about 200 underlinings and various annotations. Roger Stritmatter has demonstrated this copy to be a very significant source for Shakespearean studies. For instance, Ezekiel 16:49, the only verse marked between chapters three and sixteen, begins: “Beholde, this was the iniquite of thy sister Sodom, Pride, fulness of bread . . . .” This reference to dying in a sinful, gluttonous state is echoed in Hamlet’s words at 3.3.80 about his uncle murdering his father after lunch: “A took my father grossly, full of bread.” Shaheen notes that this allusion is one of the specific instances where Shakespeare used the Geneva Bible, since the Coverdale, Matthew, Tavener, Great and Bishops’ Bibles all have “fulnesse of meate”.

Smith’s library also held Saxo’s treatise (1566 edition). One of the most significant Renaissance libraries belonged to William Cecil, Lord Burghley; Oxford was a member of Burghley’s household from about the age of twelve in 1562 (when Burghley became his guardian), until 1575 when Oxford went on his continental travels. We know that Belleforest’s Histoires Tragiques (volume II; we do not know about volume V)

was in Burghley’s library, as was Juvenal’s Tenth Satire, Paul Iovii’s Eulogia Virorum Bellica Virtute Illustrium dated 1551, and Erasmus’s Moriae Encomium (In Praise of Folly) in several different editions. Burghley’s library also held other sources relevant to Hamlet, such as Seneca, Plautus, Livy, Virgil, and Baldasarre Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano in Italian.

Even more closely linked to Oxford is the Latin version of The Courtier because he wrote a warm and elegant dedication to Bartholomew Clerke’s translation of it. Oxford’s writing here demonstrates his use of rhetorical features such as doubling devices, oppositional pairs and hendiadys, all features of the text of Hamlet. Thomas Bedingfield dedicated his 1573 translation of Cardanus Comfort to the young earl and Oxford’s eloquent reply is printed in the prefatory material.

Other possible sources of knowledge to which Oxford was privy include medical studies; his tutor, Sir Thomas Smith was interested in medicine and had appropriate books. Oxford also visited Padua, the most important place in European for the study of medicine at the time. Moreover, Burghley’s gardener of twenty years, John Gerard, had travelled past Denmark’s coast as well as producing in 1597 his Herbal, a history of plants in which there are illustrations to, for instance, “long purples”.

Finally, a bright star is described by Bernardo at 1.1.35:

When yond same star that’s westward from the pole Had made his course t’illume that part of heaven Where now it burns . . .

This star has been identified with a supernova, SN 1572, which was observed at Wittenberg in 1572 and described by the Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe. Brahe was known to Oxford’s brother-in-law, Peregrine Willoughby d’Evesby, who visited Denmark five times on official government business between 1582 and 1585.11 Any reference to this unusual star was no longer topical by 1600.

Conclusion

The play can be dated to any time between the latest source, probably Timothy Bright’s A Treatise of Melancholy, 1586, and the entry in the

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Stationers’ Register in 1602. An early date for composition around 1587

follows a straightforward acceptance of the allusions to the play from 1589 (Nashe), 1594 (Henslowe), 1596 (Lodge), 1598 (Henslowe), 1598–1602 (Harvey), and around 1600–02 (Pudsey). The earliest publication of the short form of the play, known as Ql, was sufficiently popular in 1603, for a revised version, Q2, to be printed in 1604. Some orthodox scholars accept an early date c. 1588.

Furthermore, the allusions and topicality of Hamlet mean that its most likely date of composition and first performance is early 1587. It could have been written as a satirical portrait of the then unpopular Lord Burghley (banned from Queen Elizabeth’s presence for four months after the rapid execution of Mary Queen of Scots), and perhaps even with the distinct purpose of presenting Gertrude as innocent of the death of a sovereign, as Elizabeth wished to be innocent of the death of Mary, and with Hamlet reflecting the delays and dilemma of Elizabeth all those years she kept Mary prisoner. Arguably, the moment of decision for Hamlet comes when he discovers the intent of Claudius to take Hamlet’s life, just as Elizabeth’s moment of decision to proceed against Mary came when she was finally convinced that Mary had sought to take her (Elizabeth’s) life.

Not only does an earlier date make straightforward sense of all the dates around Hamlet, but it also establishes Shakespeare as a great writer at about the same time as Marlowe, his contemporary, was writing. It would make Shakespeare a reviser of this play at least – and it would mean that he did not, after a good decade’s experience of playwriting, suddenly write in around 1600 a play (Q2) that was too long for the theatre and had to be abridged (Q1), a rather peculiar situation that scholars have to acknowledge if Q2 really did precede Q1.

There are only two minor difficulties to prevent scholars accepting a later date. Firstly, Meres omitted to mention Hamlet in his Palladis Tamia (1598). Meres, however, was far from comprehensive: he had similarly omitted Shakespeare’s three plays about the reign of Henry VI (although the reference to the “tiger’s heart” seemed famous, according to its mention in Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit); nor does he mention any play about Hamlet although the

contemporary evidence shows that Hamlet’s revenge was famous. Secondly, Malone originally suggested a date for Hamlet c. 1600 on very slender grounds and many subsequent editors have followed this ‘established’ date.

The evidence appears to support an early date around 1587–9.

Notes

1. A shorter version of this chapter appeared in Great Oxford, ed. R Malim, 2004.

2. The label ‘Bad Quarto’ is examined by Irace (see ‘Relationship of Q1, Q2 and F1’, below) and by Lukas Erne, Shakespeare as a Literary Dramatist, 2003, 80–86. The term ‘bad Quarto’ was coined by A. W. Pollard, Shakespeare Folios and Quartos, 1909, and has been widely accepted since, e.g. by Chambers.

3. The first four allusions are considered by Chambers, WS, I, 408-425 and by Thompson and Taylor, 44-48.

4. Edward Pudsey’s Book of Commonplaces MS in the Bodleian Library contains extracts from various writers including Shakespeare. There is an abridgement, Shakespearean extracts from “Edward Pudsey’s books” by Richard Savage, 1888, reprinted in1910. J. Rees offers a date for the manuscript in “Shakespeare and Edward Pudsey’s Booke, 1600”, Notes and Queries 237, 1992, 330–1.

5. Frederick Boas, University Drama in the Tudor Age (1914: 277) states that both the Queen’s Men and the Lord Admiral’s Men performed in Oxford between 1589 and 1591. Fuller details, taken from the audited accounts in the Oxford municipal archives, are in his article “Hamlet at Oxford” in the Fortnightly Review for August 1913.

6. The original portrait is in the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence.

7. Richard Simpson, Edmund Campion, (1866: 145) describes the court of Elizabeth in the years after 1576, noting “the counsellors: the mysterious Burghley, in whom the world discovered a Solon, while Shakespeare more truly painted him as Polonius”.

8. Rowse writes (1989): “Polonius had his worldly wise Precepts; those with which Burghley equipped his son . . . Whether Polonius was Burghley or no, Burghley was certainly a Polonius.”

9. J. Dover Wilson (1934) states: “The figure of Polonius is almost without doubt intended as a caricature of Burleigh [sic].”

10. See Marcus Woodward (ed.),Gerard’s herbal. The

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© De Vere Society

history of plants London, Senate 1994).11. On the marriage of Lady Mary Vere to Peregrine

Bertie, Lord Willoughby d’ Eresby (early in 1578), see Alan Nelson, 179. For the embassies to Denmark, see Charles Henry Parry (ed.), A Memoir of Peregrine Bertie who states (2008: 41): “She [Elizabeth] sent the Order of the Garter to Frederick II, King of Denmark, and Peregrine, Lord Willoughby, to invest him with it. He staid some time in Denmark . . .” A personal letter of Willoughby is accompanied by a list including the names of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (British Library: Cotton MSS Titus C VII 224–29).

12. This reference occurs in a tract published in 1572: L’ innocence de la tres illustre tres-chaste, et debonnaire Princesse, Madame Marie Royne d’Ecosse . . . (a copy of which is held by the British Library at shelfmark 600.d.19). This book, attributed to Francois Belleforest, George Buchanan and John Leslie, Bishop of Ross, protests the innocence of Mary Queen of Scots.

Other Cited Works

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Bate, J., The Genius of Shakespeare, London: Picador, 1997

Beckingsale, B. W., Burghley: Tudor Statesman, London: Macmillan, 1967

Bloom, Harold, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, New York: Riverhead Books 1998

Bullough, G., Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, vol. VII, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973

Cairncross, A. S., The Problem of ‘Hamlet’: A Solution. London: Macmillan and Co., 1936

Cantor, Paul A., Shakespeare, Hamlet, Cambridge: CUP, 2004

Chambers, E. K. (ed.), Hamlet. The Arden Shakespeare, Boston: Heath and Co, 1902

—, William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems, 2 vols, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930

Clark, E. T., Hidden Allusions in Shakespeare’s Plays, New York: William Farquhar Payson, 1931

Edwards, Philip (ed.), Hamlet, Cambridge: CUP, 1985

Elze, K. F. (ed.), Hamlet (with critical notes), German ed. 1857; English trans. 1882

Furness, H. H., A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: vol IV part 2 Hamlet, London: Lippincott, 1877. Reprinted by Classic Books, 2001.

Halliday, F. E., A Shakespeare Companion, London: Duckworth and Co., 1955

Hazelton, Sally, “Freud and Oxford”, Great Oxford, Malim, R. (ed.), Tunbridge Wells: Parapress,

2004Hibbard, G. R. (ed.), Hamlet, The Oxford Shakespeare,

Oxford: OUP, 1987Holland, H. H., Shakespeare, Oxford and Elizabethan

Times, London; D. Archer, 1933Honigmann, E. A. J., “The Date of Hamlet”,

Shakespeare Survey, 9, 1956: 24–34—, Shakespeare: the ‘ lost years’, Manchester: MUP,

1985Irace, Kathleen (ed.), The First Quarto of Hamlet,

Cambridge: CUP, 1998Jenkins, H. (ed.), Hamlet, London: Methuen Arden,

1982Kermode, F., Shakespeare’s Language, Harmondsworth:

Penguin, 2001Matus, I., Shakespeare, IN FACT, New York:

Continuum, 1997Nelson, Alan, Monstrous Adversary: The Life of Edward

de Vere, seventeenth earl of Oxford, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2004

Read, Conyers, Mr Secretary Cecil and Queen Elizabeth, London: Jonathan Cape, 1955

—, Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth, London: Jonathan Cape, 1960

Rowse, A. L., Discovering Shakespeare, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989

Sams, Eric, The Real Shakespeare, New Haven: Yale UP, 1995

Shaheen, Naseeb, Biblical Allusions in Shakespeare’s Plays, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1999

Simpson, R., Edmund Campion, London: 1866Sokol, B. J. & Mary Sokol, Shakespeare’s Legal

Language: a dictionary, London: Athlone Press, 2004

Somogyi de, Nick (ed.), Hamlet: The Shakespeare Folios, London: Nick Hern Books, 2001

Stritmatter, R., The Marginalia of Edward de Vere’s Geneva Bible, Northhampton: Oxenford Press, 2003

Strype, J., The Life of the Learned Sir Thomas Smith, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1820

Thompson Ann, and Neil Taylor (eds), Hamlet, London: Arden Shakespeare, 2006

Wells, S. & Taylor, G. The Oxford Shakespeare, Oxford, OUP, 1986

—, William Shakespeare: a textual companion, Oxford: OUP, 1987

Wiggins, Martin (ed.) British Drama 1533–1642:, A Catalogue, Volume II: 1567–1589 (2012); Volume IV: 1598-1602. Oxford, OUP, 2014

Wilson, John Dover (ed.), Hamlet, Cambridge: CUP, 1934

—, What Happens in ‘Hamlet’, Cambridge: CUP, 1964

Winstanley, L., Hamlet and the Scottish Succession, Cambridge: CUP, 1921

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