Richard Burbage played the titular hero. It was a part in which he could excel, and proves to an almost excessive degree that the art of Elizabethan drama was the art of character. There is an allusion to Burbage’s acting of Hamlet in a poem of 1604, which describes how the apparent madness of the prince was signified by Burbage sucking on a pen as if it were a tobacco pipe and drinking from an inkpot as if it were a bottle of ale. It seems to have been a memorable piece of stage “business.” If we were to provide a Jinglelike anatomy of Hamlet’s changing passions, however, it would read something like this. In turn Hamlet displays himself as ironic, sincere, obedient, despairing, disgusted, welcoming, questioning, disgusted, speculative, impetuous, angry, scholarly, antic, jocular, actorish, despairing, of mimic disposition, sarcastic, welcoming, speculative, despairing, exuberant, self-punishing, changeable (very), confused, contemptuous, actorish, courteous, playful, threatening, hesitant, fierce, scornful, rhetorical, bewildered, soul-searching, macabre, furious, mocking, stoical, parodic, and resigned. It has become well known as a part to challenge actors; to play it competently, by general consent, they have to drag into the light parts of their personality they thought they had lost.
Shakespeare was known to be the master of soliloquy long before Hamlet — it was one of his “strengths” that could be called upon in patching up a play such as Sir Thomas More— but in this play he refines his art to the extent that the soliloquy seems to become the index of evolving consciousness. It is no longer a summary of “this is what I am” but, rather, of “this is what I am becoming.” It has been remarked that, in the same period, the growth of literacy was leading to a great extension of letters and private diaries; writing itself encouraged “introspection and reflection.” 1 This throws new light on the often noticed allusions to books in Hamlet.
But can we speak of interiority on the Elizabethan stage, where a whole set of theatrical conventions determined staging and acting? It is perhaps with Hamlet that it first becomes possible to do so. For the first time it is not anachronistic to discuss the “character” of Hamlet even if it remains utterly mysterious, not least to Hamlet himself. Julius Caesar and Henry V live in a world of circumstance and event; they are lodged, as it were, in a real world. Hamlet’s reality, in contrast, is almost entirely self-created. His soliloquies often have a dubious relation to the action of the plot, which is why they can be added or removed in the various versions of the play without any noticeable interruption to the story. Nevertheless Hamlet remains the very pivot of the narrative. Like his creator, his centre is nowhere and his circumference is everywhere.
Hamlet has no reason to exist except as a projection from Shakespeare. He is a master of every mood and subject to none. He is possessed by an extraordinary mental agility and energy. He has many voices, but it is hard to locate any central or defining voice. No one is so free with words and yet so secretive about himself. He is addicted to puns and to word-play, but his obscenities are matched by what Sigmund Freud called his “sexual coldness.” 2 The play is invaded by the theme of duality and doubleness, of appearing to be what you are not. That is why it is also suffused with the spirit of playing. It is not too much to say that Hamlet could only have been written by a consummate actor.
It soon became one of Shakespeare’s most celebrated dramas. It seems to have the singular distinction of being the only play performed, during Shakespeare’s lifetime, at both the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. This was a sea-change in the academic response to contemporary vernacular drama. Before this period plays in English were considered to be below serious consideration. Sir Thomas Bodley banned plays from his new library at Oxford, stating that they were “of very unworthy matters” and that the keeper and underkeepers of the library “should Disdain to seek out … Haply some Plays may be worthy the Keeping: But hardly one in Forty.” 3 He was probably correct about the proportion, but Hamlet itself was certainly considered to be “worthy.” There is a reference in 1604, stating that “faith, it should please all, like Prince Hamlet.” 4 Three years later, it was performed off the coast of Sierra Leone by a group of seamen. Hamlet was referred to in private, and diplomatic, correspondence. The young John Marston paid the ultimate compliment of copying from it with a remarkably similar revenge tragedy entitled Antonio’s Revenge. It has in fact been suggested that the order of composition should be reversed, and that Shakespeare copied Marston’s play. There is no reason why he should not have been inspired by an ingenious original to produce a compelling masterpiece of his own. He had been doing it all his life.
Yet the origins of Hamlet are much more complicated than that. There was a true and “original” Hamlet on the public stage by 1589, since it is mentioned by Nashe in that year. There was also a version of Hamlet being performed by the combined forces of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men and the Admiral’s Men in the summer of 1594 at Newington Butts; this production is confirmed by the notes of Philip Henslowe. At some point between 1598 and 1601, the remark being privately transcribed in a book, Gabriel Harvey referred to Shakespeare and “his tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke.”5
The complex matter is further complicated by the presence of a printed version of the play, issued in quarto form in 1603. It has generally been described as a “bad” quarto, but at a length of 2,500 lines it is in fact a perfectly good acting version of the long drama marred by stylistic infelicities. The publishers, Nicholas Ling and John Trundell, had known associations with Shakespeare’s plays and with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, so there is no question of its being a “pirated” edition. On the title page it is described as “By William Shake-speare.”
A second edition was published in the following year and, with twelve hundred extra lines, was advertised as “newly imprinted and enlarged” according to “the true and perfect copy.” In the first version Hamlet is younger, and some of the names are different; Polonius, for example, is called Coram-bis. More importantly, perhaps, in the first version Gertrude becomes convinced of her second husband’s guilt and colludes with her son. The first and shorter drama is an exhilarating and exciting piece of work, in no way inferior as a stage production to the second version. The second version is more rhetorical and deliberate, with much greater attention paid to the text itself.
The most likely explanation for these different versions seems to be that Shakespeare took an old play of Hamlet and fashioned it into new and surprising shape for the performance at Newington Butts in 1594. This is the version printed as the first quarto. Then, at a later stage, he revised it for a new production at the Globe in 1601. This is the second quarto. It should be noted that Shakespeare then seems to have revised Hamlet for a third time, adding and subtracting material for a version that became the Folio edition of the play published in 1623.