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Notes
Quotations are given in the spelling of the text quoted. Passages common to Folio and Quarto are quoted as in the Quarto. The line numbering is that of the Globe edition.
See J.R.Brown, 'The Compositors of Hamlet Q2 and The Merchant of Venice', Studies in Bibliography, VII (1955), 17 ff; F. Bowers, 'The Printing of Hamle, Q2', Ibid., pp. 41 ff.
I have purposely excluded those extra words in F which are best explained as mere errors and sophistications (e.g. unnecessary relative pronouns); a few doubtful conjunctions, articles and personal pronouns; and, though this is perhaps to classify too nicely, words which seem less properly regarded as additions than as parts of paraphrases (e.g. II.ii.314, Q nothing, F no other thing; V.i.68, Q in, F to Yaughan).
Mommsen in Neue Jahrbücher für Philologie und Paedagogik, Band 72 (1855) (see especially pp. 110-112); Van Dam, The Text of Shakespeare's Hamle (1924) (see especially pp. 98-102).
If we now add Munro (The London Shakespeare, 1958), the number of omissions goes up from Sisson's 24 to 27.
Prefaces to Shakespeare, 3rd series, p. 78; What Happens in Hamle, p. 129; Arden edition, p. 102.
Even accepting the metrical criterion, is it not better to follow Q and read Hora. It would haue much a maz'd you. Ham. Very like, Stay'd it long?
Greg once argued this (in Principles of Emendation in Shakespeare, the British Academy Lecture for 1928) but was later led to withdraw (Modern Language Review, XXX (1935), 84-85). It is still asserted by Sisson (New Readings in Shakespeare, II, 206) and Greg himself quite recently saw a Shakespearean revision as a possible explanation of variants in Othello (The Shakespeare First Folio, 1955, p. 369).
Textual Problems of the First Folio, pp. 138 ff. See also her discussion in the New Cambridge edition of Othello, pp. 124-126, where she compares with the bad quartos and Richard III. She remarks on the possibility that the Q Othello and the F Hamle derive from transcripts made by the same scribe. On the likelihood of actors' corruptions in a playhouse transcript, cf. M.R. Ridley in the new Arden Othello (pp.xxv-xxvi), 'This type of error, so prevalent in Richard III, may well be present, though less conspicuously, in other plays'. It is interesting to find these two editors in agreement on the general principle in view of their complete disagreement about the status of the two Othello texts.
Problems not discussed here include the use F made of Q and the equally thorny one of its relation to the promptbook. Dover Wilson has usually been followed in holding that it was based upon a transcript of the promptbook, but I agree with Greg in finding the evidence not clear (The Shakespeare First Folio, p. 316. Cf. p.323, 'if prompt-book it is').
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