TRAGEDY OF

HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK.

Edited, with Notes,

BY

WILLIAM J. ROLFE, LITT. D.,

FORMERLY HEAD MASTER OF THE HIGH SCHOOL, CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

OPRAY RIPH

Weirs of

W. H. Wait

553

142

R7

1892

PREFACE.

THE text of this edition of Hamlet is based upon a careful collation of the quarto of 1604 and the folio of 1623 with the other early editions and the leading modern ones. All the important varia lectiones are given in the Notes; so that the reader, if he considers my text too "conservative," has all the materials necessary for making one to suit himself.

In the Notes my indebtedness to Furness is acknowledged on almost every page, and yet is by no means fully recorded. His edition furnishes an abstract and epitome of the vast literature of Hamlet, and is indispensable to the teacher and the critical scholar. He found it no easy task to condense his material into two octavo volumes; and in carrying out my more modest plan I have found a like difficulty in keeping within my limited space. The play is one of the longest (about twice as long as Macbeth), and the amount that has been written about it far exceeds that on any other of Shakespeare's works. Furness does not exaggerate when he says: "No one of mortal mould (save Him whose blessed feet were nailed for our advantage to the bitter cross') ever trod this earth, commanding such absorbing interest as this Hamlet, this mere creation of a poet's brain. No syllable that he whispers, no word let fall by any one near him, but is caught and pondered as no words ever have been, except of Holy Writ. Upon no throne built by mortal hands has ever 'beat so fierce a light' as upon that airy fabric reared at Elsinore."