Bad quarto of Hamlet: a critical study

Abstract

We have found that in considering the first Quarto text of Hamlet we do not escape some unanswerable problems. Did the old play, or a Shakespearian first draft, contain a dialogue between Horatio and the Queen corresponding to that in Qi scene xiv? I have claimed that in this scene the dialogue embodies material taken from the full Shakespearian play incoherently confused with material taken from the old play. Was the staging taken from the old play? In my opinion the Brudermord preserves the UrHamlet version of the episode described in Qi scene xiv, and in the Brudermord the story is related by Hamlet to Horatio as in Q2 and Fi. But according to my hypothesis this does not necessarily mean that it was related by Hamlet to Horatio in the pre- Shakespearian play: the persons responsible for the text -basis of the Brudermord may have retained the Q2 -text staging in this respect, while reverting to the Ur- Hamlet story. The Qi staging may preserve a trace of the old play. But on the other hand it is equally possible that this QI staging was the invention of the reporter, or of a stage- adapter of the full Shakespearian play. I can see no evidence on either side; we are left with only a balance of probabilities.Again, consider the question of abridgment. Is the fact that the QI text is so much shorter than those of Q2 and Fi due in any measure to abridgment in the version underlying it, as well as to defective memorial transmission? And if so, in what measure? Mr Crompton Rhodes thinks that the brevity of the Qi text was "less deliberate than determined by. .. failure of memory" on the part of the reporter: Mr Alfred Hart attributes it in part to deliberate abridgment.' I can find no evidence either way. There is no omission in the text which could not be the result of simple failure of memory on the reporter's part; on the other hand, nothing would surprise me less than that a fairly drastic stage abridgment of Hamlet was made, legitimately or otherwise, for provincial performance. These are examples of problems which cannot positively be answered. There is another question, to which the Qa text itself gives no answer, but to which, as we have seen, a solution is suggested by Der Bestrafte Brudermord. Was the memorial reconstruction given in QI undertaken to provide some band of actors with a prompt- copy -a prompt -copy to which they were not entitled? Or was it undertaken at the instigation of the publishers? I have suggested that the first of these answers is the correct one. The Brudermord is not directly based upon the Qi text, but it contains echoes of passages in it which, as I have shown, owe their form or their very existence to the reporter and to no one else. It seems to me on the whole more likely that these echoes of the Qi text were introduced into the Brudermord text -basis from memory than that consultation of the Qi text itself -in manuscript or print -was a factor in the production of that text -basis. For the debt of the Brudermord to Qi is mostly confined to a phrase or two scattered here and there throughout the play. Accordingly I have suggested as the most probable solution that the Qi text was acted, presumably in the English provinces, before its publication, and that one or more of the players who compiled the text -basis of the Brudermord had taken part in it. In the Introduction we traced the establishment of the Orlando class of memorial reconstructions -that is, reconstructions made for acting in the provinces. It looks very much as if the first Quarto text of Hamlet was essentially a member of this class of text. And so is the Brudermord.Let me state briefly in conclusion the general hypothesis which I would advance to explain the condition of the Qi text and its relationship to the authentic Shakespearian texts published later. The Qi text post -dates these, and practically everything in it depends upon the full Shakespearian text of Q2 or upon a stage version of that.' It is a memorial reconstruction, made for provincial performance by an actor who had taken the part of Marcellus and perhaps another part or parts in the full play, and who was able, when his memory failed, to write blank verse of his own in which he often incorporated reminiscences and quotations of countless passages scattered throughout the full text. The only document to which he had access was the manuscript part of Voltemar, or a copy of that. The reporter's work was revised and to some extent amplified by himself or by a second agent (perhaps an actor too). In at least one particular (the position of the "nunnery" scene) Qi represents an alteration of the texts published later in Q2 and F I : the reporter may himself have been responsible for this, or it may have appeared in a previous stage version of the Q2 text. At other points the reporter incorporated the phraseology and characteristics of the pre- Shakespearian Hamlet, for the existence of which there is good evidence: he may have done this deliberately or involuntarily. But the debt of the Qi text to this old Hamlet is infinitesimal when compared with its debt to the Q2 text. Furthermore, Qi does not represent the play as it stood at any stage, pre - Shakespearian or Shakespearian, in its development: it is a conglomeration of elements from quite distinct versions - from the pre- Shakespearian play and from that given in Q2 -and for this conglomeration the reporter is entirely responsible. In short, while basing his text essentially upon that of Q2, the Qi reporter has introduced both material from the old play and alterations of the final Shakespearian version. Finally, this conglomerate type of memorial reconstruction is exemplified in both the "bad" texts of Hamlet-that of the first Quarto and that of Der Bestrafte Brudermord.