University of Virginia Library

Playhouse Interpolations in the Folio Text of Hamlet
by
Harold Jenkins [*]

Among the numerous variants between the Second Quarto and the Folio texts of Hamlet is a large group consisting of words and phrases which occur in the Folio (F) but are absent from the Quarto (Q2 or Q). I do not here refer to five extended passages totalling some eighty lines,[1] but to textual matter ranging from single words to passages no more than a line in length. Q is reasonably held to have been printed from Shakespeare's own foul papers, and Professor Dover Wilson, who demonstrated this, explained its lack of numerous words and phrases by a hypothesis of a bungling and inexperienced compositor with a habit of careless omission.[2] Now that it is known, however, that Q was in fact set by two compositors[3] and that the instances are equally divided between their shares, it is clear that this explanation will not do. It is still true that many missing words and phrases have to be explained as compositors' lapses either because their absence leaves Q deficient in sense or metre or because — like the King's 'lawful espials' (III.i.32) or Hamlet's sudden 'and more strange' return (IV.vii.47) — they are so unlike accretions due to a scribe or player that they can only be accounted for as part of Shakespeare's original composition. But in many cases the question naturally arises whether a word or phrase was in fact omitted by the Q compositors or whether perhaps it never stood in Shakespeare's manuscript at all. Through his discovery that Q was the work of two compositors Mr. John Russell Brown was led to the suggestion that many instances of apparent omission in Q might instead be additions in F having 'no stronger authority than that of a scribe or the players'

prompt-book'. The likelihood of this is of course greatest with all those words and phrases which add nothing material to the context in which they appear. I give below, without any claim of completeness for the list,[4] sixty-five examples which incur suspicion.

• I. ii. 132 O
• 135 fie
• 185 Oh
• 224 indeed
• 237 very like
• iii. 120 Daughter
• iv. 45 oh
• v. 29 hast
• 104 yes
• 107 my Tables
• 122 my Lord
• 132 Looke you

• II. i. 53 At friend, or so, and Gentleman.
• 55 with you
• ii. 85 very
• 174 excellent
• 190 farre gone
• 219 Sir
• 287 Why
• 323 no
• 527 Inobled Queene is good.
• 610 Oh Vengeance!
• 611 I sure

• III. i. 76 these
• 92 well, well
• 142 Go
• 146 O
• 147 too
• ii. 41 Sir
• 107 And
• 191 Wormwood
• 263 Pox
• 288 two
• 289 sir
• 315 rather
• 319 farre
• iv. 5 with him
• 6 Ham. within. Mother, mother, mother.
• 22 (a) helpe
• (b) helpe, helpe
• 139 Extasie?

• IV. ii. 2 Gentlemen within. Hamlet, Lord Hamlet.
• iii. 54 and
• v. 57 la
• 96 Qu. Alacke, what noyse is this?
• 165 Hey non nony, nony, hey nony:
• 183 Oh
• 200 I pray God.
• vi. 22 good
• vii. 36 How now? What Newes?
• Mes. Letters my Lord from Hamlet.

• V. i. 3 and
• 12 and
• 130 for such a Guest is meete.
• 135 and
• 190 this Scul
• 198 this same Scull sir
• 202 Let me see.
• 231 as thus
• ii. 95 put
• 104 but
• 186 ee'n
• 190 yours
• 265 Come on.
• 297 A touch, a touch
• 369 O, o, o, o.

That some of these words and phrases in F are additions to the dialogue by the actors who spoke it on the stage is not a novel hypothesis. It was conveniently resorted to by eighteenth-century editors to explain phrases they disliked; and it was arrived at after careful examination of the texts by Mommsen in the nineteenth century and again by Van Dam in the twentieth.[5] But it cannot be said that the labours of these scholars bore much editorial fruit. It is true that most nineteenth-century editors recognised some interpolations in practice if without comprehending them in theory, but what they omitted usually amounted to no more than a few exclamations which were seen to disrupt the metre. Thus of the 65 words and phrases I have listed as suspicious the Cambridge and the Globe editions omitted 15 and 16 respectively; and of the 14 they omitted in common Dowden, one of the few editors to acknowledge explicitly that F contained 'some actors' additions', nevertheless restored two. Of course the extent of the intrusive matter could not possibly be assessed so long as F was regarded as the more reliable of the two texts. What is surprising is that after its deposition by Dover Wilson a quarter of a century ago, editors of Hamlet have continued to give a place to most of the 65 F readings

under discussion. Those editions which have not done so are either freaks like Van Dam's, which, while omitting 56 of them, also omitted and rearranged much besides, or else, like Dover Wilson's Cranach edition (with 37 omissions) and the edition of Parrott and Craig (with 46) were so committed to following Q wherever possible as to seem, if the phrase may be allowed, editions à thèse. Moreover, this last group of editors recanted later. For Parrott in his Twenty-three Plays and the Sonnets (revised 1953) restored 12 of the most conspicuous items, including 'O Vengeance', 'Mother, mother, mother,' and 'this skull', and Craig, in his edition of the Complete Works (1951), reverted to the Globe text. As for Dover Wilson himself, after confronting the problem with characteristic boldness and recognising that many of F's extra words and phrases were 'of the actor variety' (MSH, pp.77 ff., 256), he finally decided that most of them were sufficiently Shakespearean for it to be 'safer to include them' (p.245). One cannot help suspecting that they seemed Shakespearean partly because they had been made familiar by that very preference for F which Dover Wilson was attacking. Ironically, F, even while he was deposing it, contributed to his view of the 'skipping compositor' from whom he held Q to have suffered. He concluded that 'the Q2 compositor is indeed so prone to omission that we are justified in accepting all extra words and phrases in F1 which are not clearly unnecessary or incorrect' (pp.178-9). In this vexed matter of the interpolations, if in no other, his work has left us very much where we started. Of the 65 suspected readings his New Cambridge edition (1934) relinquished only two more than the old Globe. The principal Shakespearean editors since, Kittredge, Alexander and Sisson, concur in rejecting another of them, Alexander and Sisson together reject another, and Sisson alone rejects four more.[15a] The present position is, then, that of the words and phrases which are open to suspicion as unauthorized F additions at least two-thirds still remain in the standard modern texts. The time seems ripe for a further appraisal of this matter.

One may begin with the two examples of what Dover Wilson called 'within-speeches'. When the Queen is waiting with Polonius in her closet for Hamlet to come to her she says, 'With-drawe, I heare him comming' (III.iv.7), and this is preceded in F but not in Q by the line 'Ham.within. Mother, mother, mother'. Something similar happens two scenes later when Hamlet has just managed to stow away Polonius's body before he hears the courtiers coming after him: 'What noyse, who

calls on Hamlet? O heere they come'. In F but not in Q we find 'Gentlemen within. Hamlet, Lord Hamlet.' (IV.ii.2). Twice, then, when a character speaks of hearing someone coming, F provides, though Q does not, for the audience to hear it too. Dover Wilson saw the correspondence between these passages and the possibility that both were added by a scribe. Yet he concluded that 'because they are just the sort of thing our compositor might omit, and because their inclusion does clarify the situation, we are justified in adopting them' (MSH, p.246). Yet surely it would be too great a coincidence that Q should each time (and with a different compositor involved) omit the off-stage shouting accidentally. I infer that Q omits it because it was not in Shakespeare's manuscript and that the actors put it in. Indeed this is the sort of literalism in production from which we sometimes suffer in the modern theatre, as though we are not capable of imagining that the characters in their world of the play may see or hear things that are not made visible or audible to us. Such things are at best superfluous and at worst merely crude. What sort of prince is this who cannot come to his mother's chamber without announcing his arrival by calling 'Mother' three times in the corridor? It is a small thing, but it degrades the play for a moment, and, like Dyce, 'I certainly am not disposed to find fault with those editors who have omitted this speech.' The second instance is dramatically less objectionable; but textually the position is the same. It does not seem very logical for Parrott and Craig to reject the first as 'an actor's interpolation' while retaining the second as perhaps 'carelessly omitted by the Q printer'.

This is not the only case where additions in F afford mutual condemnation. When Hamlet kills Polonius, the Queen cries in Q 'Helpe how', but in F 'Helpe, helpe, hoa'; and her cry is echoed by the victim, in Q with 'What how helpe', in F with 'What hoa, helpe, helpe, helpe' (III.iv.22). Dover Wilson thought these extra cries 'assist both the run of the verse and the excitement of the situation' (MSH, p. 254) and listed them as probable Q omissions; but granted that to omit the repetition of a word is an easy error for a printer to make, is it not asking too much to suppose that a printer in mere carelessness omitted the word help three times in two lines? It is not Q that has omitted but (as Parrott and Craig saw) F that has elaborated.

Coincidence seems equally incredible with the extra 'and' that F inserts in the speeches of the Clowns in the graveyard. It occurs in F but not in Q twice in the first dozen lines of the scene (V.i.) and again at line 135: 'I tell thee she is, and therefore make her Graue straight'; 'an (Q to) Act to doe and to performe'; 'I doe not lye in't; and yet it

is mine'. Dover Wilson put these three examples into three different categories: omission was regarded as only doubtful in the first case, but certain in the second and probable in the third. Yet they appear to be a single phenomenon and attributable to the same cause. They must be additions in F, as Parrott and Craig, Alexander and Sisson recognised by dropping the and consistently.

Dramatically these are small matters, but textually they are indicative. Now that we begin to see what lies behind some few of the extra words in F, others perhaps fall into place. Twice when the dialogue refers to a sound being heard F supplies it 'within'; and the same principle operating the other way round is detectable when a stage-direction for 'a noise within' provokes in F a piece of dialogue. This stage-direction at IV.v.96 denotes the arrival of Laertes with his rabble. Q itself draws attention to the noise by the King's next word, 'Attend', but this is not enough for F, which substitutes a more obvious exclamation from the Queen: 'Alacke, what noyse is this?' This seems a palpable playhouse addition but editors have always taken it for an omission from Q and conflated the two texts.

Laertes' return to the Danish court is heralded by a noise off-stage. Hamlet's is heralded by the arrival of a messenger with letters. But in the same way, lest the messenger's appearance should make insufficient éclat, F but not Q has the King inquire, 'How now? What Newes?' and the messenger reply, 'Letters my Lord from Hamlet' (IV. vii.36). In Q the King is not told the letters come from Hamlet; he is left to find this out as he reads, and his cry 'From Hamlet' betokens his astonishment on doing so. I think Hamlet would not have approved of the F messenger who robs his bomb of the full force of its explosion. Shakespeare's messenger did not even know he carried such a bomb, for the letters had reached him via sailors who were ignorant of their sender. They took him for 'th'Embassador that was bound for England' (IV.vi.10). F, with its too knowledgeable messenger, by seeking to enhance the effect, destroys it.

When extra dialogue in F embellishes the stage-business, then, it does so in a crude and obvious way. Another unfortunate example occurs when F makes Hamlet say 'Let me see' (V.i.202) as though to take the skull from the grave-digger. This looks innocuous enough, but is found on examination not quite to fit its context. For the skull should have changed hands two lines before. The grave-digger has ceased to call it 'this' and, in response to Hamlet's 'This?', has already referred to it as 'that'. F again, though its addition is accepted by all modern editors save Van Dam and Parrott and Craig, is manifestly wrong.

Similarly condemned by its context, I believe, is the famous cry, 'Oh Vengeance', which F but not Q inserts extra-metrically in the middle of one of Hamlet's soliloquies (II.ii.610). To be sure it works him up to a fine theatrical outburst but at some risk of incongruity. For, though passionate, his speech is not incoherent. He has just mocked himself as a coward (l.598) and 'pidgion liuerd' (l.605) and he will go on in the same vein to sneer at his conduct as 'most braue' (l.611). He has just called the King a 'bloody, baudy villaine', with four more epithets to boot, and he will now complain that this is merely to 'fall a cursing' (l.615). So he abandons his self-reproaches and plans action. But the point at which the shift occurs is clearly marked a few lines later: 'fie vppont, foh. About my braines' (l.617). The crisis of his passion comes in this cry of self-disgust, not vengeance, and it is here, not earlier, that his thoughts, till now directed inwards, turn 'about' to confront his task in the world outside himself. F, by introducing his call for vengeance while he is still absorbed in self-reproaches, both anticipates and misconstrues this crisis. This subtle perversion of the pattern we may derive from the rest of the speech gives plausibility to the notion of Parrott and Craig that 'Oh Vengeance' might have been added by an actor in reminiscence of the notorious 'Hamlet, revenge' of the old play.

Another of F's extra phrases which seem to disturb the dramatic effect comes when Hamlet has received the Ghost's command and, sending his companions about their business, adds 'for my owne poore part I will goe pray' (I.v.131-132). This is crucial to the understanding of the tragedy. Hamlet separates himself from his fellows because henceforth their way is not his. They have the common business of men to attend to while he is enjoined to a holy task. If this in one aspect is to kill his father's murderer, in another it is to restore order to a time that is 'out of ioynt', to free the world from the satyr and redeliver it to Hyperion. So in the midst of what seem to Horatio 'wilde and whurling words' the will to pray has a solemnity which a theatrical colloquialism in F does not enhance: 'for mine owne poore part, Looke you, Ile goe pray'.

All the words that F adds do not of course cheapen the action. Often indeed they do no more than reduplicate what is already present in Q. But when they do no more than this they may still spoil the verse. When Hamlet swears that the Ghost's command shall live in his brain 'Vnmixt with baser matter, yes by heauen' (I.v.104), F interjects a second 'yes'. Three lines below Hamlet exclaims 'My tables, meet it is I set it downe' and the F repetition, 'My Tables, my Tables', deepens

the impression of uncontrollable emotion only at some metrical expense. Similarly with the extra 'fie' at I.ii.135 and the repeated 'hast' at I.v.29. These are instances in which the metrical clue has regularly led editors to reject the repetition. But it does not seem consistent to regard repetitions in verse lines as F interpolations and those in prose as Q omissions. It is true that Hamlet is not normally made to say he knows Polonius 'excellent, excellent well' (II.ii.174) with the repeated adverb of F—Dover Wilson lists this among 'Burbadge's additions to his part'. But other instances he defends. When Ophelia asks Hamlet how he does, he answers in Q 'I humbly thanke you well' (III.i.92), which F expands into 'I humbly thanke you:well, well, well'. In this repetition Granville-Barker heard 'princely irony', Dover Wilson boredom, and Dowden impatience.[6] Where they seem to agree is in accepting some nuance beyond what is present in Q. But if we regard Q as the more authoritative text, should we not regard the F reading here as an unwarrantable exaggeration? So too, when Osric leaves Hamlet saying, 'I commend my duty to your Lordshippe' and Hamlet mocks him, 'Yours', one may see F exaggerating by repeating, 'Yours, yours' (V.ii.190). Yet almost all editors, including Parrott and Craig, have accepted these repetitions as authentic. In another instance, when the Player Queen says something that strikes at the Queen who is watching the performance, Q makes Hamlet interject 'That's wormwood' and F shows an access of venom with 'Wormwood, Wormwood' (III.ii.191). Here Dover Wilson supposes both texts 'guilty of omission' (MSH, p.302) and, followed by Alexander and Sisson, to my mind unjustifiably conflates.

Whereas editors tend to reject those repetitions in F which break the regularity of the verse, they tend correspondingly to accept those which they can employ to preserve it. Examples occur in the dialogue after Hamlet has first heard about his father's ghost.

The editorial regard for the pentameter will be dangerous if it confers status on inane repetitions like these. But Dover Wilson justifies them —along with the repetition in —as 'essential to the metre' (MSH. p.82). Two of these three lines, however, even in F are not regular blank verse.[7] In the early scenes especially, there are many speeches of less than a line in length which have taxed the ingenuity of editors to arrange them so as to look like pentameters, which in the result they rarely do exactly. The truth, I think, is that in these scenes extended blank-verse speeches are interspersed with staccato dialogue for which no regular scansion should be sought. McKerrow has a clear-sighted discussion of the 'short lines which often occur in rapid interchange of speech' and concludes that 'little regard, even in what is clearly verse, seems to have been paid to the formation of complete lines'.[8] So there is no need to regard these repetitions as other than interpolations like the rest.

The reiteration of little phrases like those discussed above has sometimes been thought to be a trick of speech that Shakespeare gave to Hamlet. Bradley in particular made a point of this,[9] but of four examples that struck him as 'intensely characteristic' two are in F only. It has to be conceded that there are some in Q. After hearing the Ghost's story Hamlet says, 'hold, hold my hart' (I.v.93) and then 'Rest, rest, perturbed spirit' (I.v.183). When he sees the Ghost in his mother's closet and she asks what he is gazing at, he replies, 'On him, on him' (III.iv.125). To Polonius's question, 'What doe you reade', he answers, 'Words, words, words' (II.ii.194), and when Polonius takes his leave, 'You cannot take from mee any thing that I will not more willingly part withall: except my life, except my life, except my life' (II.ii.221). But such repetitions are closely related to the moment and the mood and it is doubtful whether from Q alone one could reasonably infer that they are an idiosyncrasy of Hamlet's speech. Is it not the accumulated repetitions of F that have given this impression? At least one must beware of accepting the F instances as authentic, as Parrott and Craig do several times, because they are 'characteristic'. Dover Wilson, as one would expect of him, perceived the difficulty; he decided that some of them are due to Burbage. But as he thought Burbage only exaggerated what was already a feature of his role,[10] he declined to attribute to him all that are not in Q. Whether Burbage was quite so thoroughly inside his part may be left an open question. But the phenomenon is not confined to Hamlet's role. F suggests that other actors too made the most of their lines. There is the grave-digger

with the skull. It is only in F that he repeats 'Heres a Scull now:this Scul. . .' (V.i.190) and a few lines later 'This same Scull Sir, this same Scull sir' (V.i.198). One might think this a case where two additions are mutually damning. It does not seem consistent for the majority of editors to accept, and Dover Wilson to argue for, the first and then reject the second (MSH, p.257). The part of Polonius has several examples. Shaking his head over Hamlet's strange behaviour, he says, 'A is farre gone', and F repeats 'farre gone' (II.ii.190). Joining Hamlet in savouring a phrase in the Player's speech, he pronounces, 'That's good' (II.ii.527), which F renders 'That's good: Inobled Queene is good' ('Inobled' for 'mobled'). Van Dam is, as far as I know, the only editor to have rejected the repetition here, but it is not fundamentally different from the others. An actor can duplicate something in his part less obviously than by a simple reiteration of what immediately precedes. F's extra-metrical vocative in 'For (Q from) this time Daughter' (I.iii.120), which almost all editors dispense with, must be an echo from 'these blazes daughter' three lines before; but the usual explanation that the eye of a scribe picked up the word a second time—what was there to confuse the eye?—is less likely than an actor echoing himself. An illuminating passage is that where the rambling Polonius loses his thread and Reynaldo has to prompt him. Q reads: The speaker is away again, but F, reading 'He closes with you thus', makes him more exactly repeat what he had said before (cf. l.45). The extra words are again condemned by the metre, and though here a copyist might have been confused, again it is more probable that an actor was responsible. This may have been a deliberate expansion, for Reynaldo's prompt is amplified from the preceding dialogue in exactly the same way. F makes him give Polonius back his words more fully: But since what Polonius seizes on is the first part of the cue and not the second, the extra words in F make the dialogue run not more naturally but less. They have, that is to say, the stamp of theatrical interpolation and not of original composition. Editors since the eighteenth century have almost always kept them, but the Furness Variorum quotes a significant comment by Elze, 'For this unmistakable interpolation we are probably indebted to some actor who wished to repeat the laughable gestures which accompanied it'. A similar explanation is available when the grave-digger, breaking into song, sings in F two lines instead of one (V.i.130). The second line is supplied from the complete stanza which he has sung before, but its inclusion is not an improvement. After his offhand answer to Hamlet's question the grave-digger may effectively sing one line, but not two, before Hamlet cuts in with his retort. F's 'Hey non nony, nony, hey nony' in one of Ophelia's songs (IV.v.165) is comparable but less objectionable.

It is unnecessary to consider in detail all the tiny words that are suspect in F. Ands and buts smooth out the dialogue and many little exclamations occur — 'why', 'la', and on several occasions 'O'. A few of these which fall outside the verse have been regularly discarded by the editors, and after Hamlet has ended his death-speech with 'The rest is silence', hardly any one since Rowe[11] has been willing to add the 'O,o,o,o' with which F represents his dying groans. But if we reject this as an actor's interpolation, should we not logically do the same elsewhere? It would be in the nature of an actor to heighten Hamlet's impatience with the player who acts the murderer, 'Pox, leaue thy damnable Faces, and begin' (III.ii.263), and to increase the emphasis in 'Man delights not me; no, nor Woman neither' (II.ii.323). Dover Wilson upholds F's 'Why' at II.ii.287 because it 'adds something to the effect of Hamlet's half-suppressed outburst of indignation' (MSH, p. 254), and Sisson thinks it 'irresistible'[12]; but if Hamlet's use of 'why' on other occasions gives it some plausibility, this might equally be a reason for an actor to put it in. A striking ejaculation which only F gives occurs when the Queen supposes that Hamlet's seeing his father's ghost is the result of 'extacie' (III.iv.139). In F Hamlet takes up the word in an extra-metrical cry, 'Extasie', before replying in a regular blank-verse speech. This is a theatrical touch which no editor but Van Dam seems to have relinquished; but there is too much of this sort of thing for an assumption of an omission in Q to be at all acceptable. Again it seems clear that what we are faced with is interpolation in F.

There are inevitably some doubtful cases. The redundancy in the 'good' turn Hamlet was to do (IV.vi.22) and the 'two' Provincial roses he wanted for his shoes (III.ii.288) could easily have come from Shakespeare's pen and as easily been dropped in the printing of Q. But of

the sixty-five examples listed, I believe all can, and most must, be explained as interpolations.

It has sometimes been suggested that some of the variants in F — those which an editor may happen to prefer — may be revisions made by Shakespeare working over his play.[13] This is not an opinion which I share. But it is not in any case a hypothesis which could account for the kind of expansion in F which has been demonstrated here. For we cannot suppose that all these little repetitions, interjections, and similar small elaborations show the way in which Shakespeare would have gone about revision. They never add to the sense nor introduce any significant word which the surrounding context does not supply. Many of them will no doubt seem harmless: perhaps we need not grieve if some continue in performance. A producer will do small damage to the play if he permits the grave-digger to make an extra reference to the skull or Polonius to shriek for help three times instead of once. But their cumulative effect is to modify the dialogue in a direction which is not towards subtlety. If they sometimes make a moment more dramatic, at others they cheapen or corrupt it. We should not have a messenger who lets his cat out of its bag. Hamlet should not tear a legitimate passion to tatters by a melodramatic cry for vengeance nor be held up for a retort because the Clown insists on singing more than is set down for him. All these things, no less than the dying groans, should be recognised for the stage accretions that they are. As such they have no claim to be admitted into an edition of Hamlet which aims at fidelity to its author.

It is true that by the time F was printed some of its additions had already a tradition behind them. For, as was observed by Dover Wilson and Parrott and Craig, many of them are present in the text of the Bad Quarto (Q1). But I do not understand why Parrott and Craig should have thought the concurrence of Q1 somehow authenticated F. It means of course no more than that the words and phrases added in F, or some of them, were already being spoken on the stage in 1603. The only difficulty that arises here is that in 1603 Shakespeare was still active in the theatrical company that performed his plays. Is it possible, even though we discount any suggestion of a literary revision, that F's additions to the dialogue were suggested by Shakespeare in rehearsal? Did he at least acquiesce in what the players did? An editor who

thought so might have a pretty problem on his hands, though it would still be possible to hold that acquiescence is not equivalent to composition. But since, as I have tried to show, the tendency of the additions in F is to distort or weaken the effect of Q, a text printed as is now believed from Shakespeare's own manuscript, one cannot reasonably conclude that Shakespeare had any responsibility for them. And that being so, they should in my judgment be eliminated from future editions.

So far I have proceeded by a comparison and analysis of the two main Hamlet texts, with reference to what editors have made of them. But the argument for spurious additions in F finds corroboration in other texts which are agreed to show contamination by the players. In this matter of interpolation the memorially reconstructed text Q1, far from authenticating the readings of F, serves to confirm the verdict against them. For besides including some of the words and phrases which F has and Q2 has not, it has other examples of precisely the same kind. In this observation, as in others, I am anticipated by Dover Wilson; to the four examples of reduplicated phrases which he cites (MSH, p.81) I need only add the following:

• I.v.110 Q2 So Vncle, there you are
• Q1 So vncle, there you are, there you are.
• II.ii.452 Q2 come a passionate speech.
• Q1 a speech, a passionate speech.
• 543 Q2 prethee no more.
• Q1 no more good heart, no more.
• 545 Q2 Tis well
• Q1 T'is well, t'is very well
• III.i.157 Q2 to a Nunry go.
• Q1 to a Nunnery goe, To a Nunnery goe.

Similarly, with the expletive 'Pox' which occurs in F in Hamlet's speech to the player-murderer we may compare from Q1, 'A pox, t'is scuruy, Ile no more of it' (III.i.153), and 'A pox, hee's for a Iigge, or a tale of bawdry' (II.ii.522). It is clear that the actors made additions to the dialogue on the stage, which sometimes got into F and sometimes did not.

The Folio version of Hamlet has, therefore, some of the characteristics of a reported text. Nor need one stop at an examination of the Hamlet texts to show this. Other touchstones are available and a convenient one is provided by the quarto text of Richard III. That this is a memorial reconstruction by the actors has been generally acknowledged

since the demonstration by D. L. Patrick,[14] whose classification of its features facilitates comparison. Particularly relevant is his list of 'exclamations and interjections added . . . by the actors', which often 'add extra syllables to regular blank-verse lines' (pp 91-92). He shows, too, that many tags for which the corresponding Folio text offers no equivalent can be explained only as actors' additions (pp.137-142). Among them are some phrasal repetitions and some intrusive 'sirs' resembling those in the F Hamlet:

• Richard III IV.iii.456 F My minde is chang'd:
• Q My mind is changd sir, my minde is changd.
• 467 F Well, as you guesse.
• Q Well sir, as you guesse, as you guesse.

There is also an interesting example of the practice of supplying dialogue to emphasize or clarify what is already indicated by a stage-direction. In the scene (III.iii) where Ratcliff enters 'carrying the Nobles to death' the reported text, as though to make sure that the import of this shall not be missed, begins 'Come bring foorth the prisoners'. We may perhaps compare in Hamlet the F addition of 'Alacke, what noyse is this?' or the dialogue which accompanies the entry of the messenger with Hamlet's letters.

A text derived from acting will be likely to vary from the authentic dialogue not only in what an actor adds but also in what he substitutes for his original. An article on interpolations can touch on substitutions only briefly. And in general they present in Hamlet a smaller obstacle: for with Q accepted as the more authoritative text, even editors who retain F's additions may be expected to discard its equal and inferior variants. Actors' substitutions, therefore, whether recognised as such or not, have a natural tendency to disappear from modern editions. Difficulty will arise when a reading in F which may very well be due to the actor is taken to be superior. A case occurs in Hamlet's outburst on the player's tears.

Q is perfectly satisfactory, but F of course substitutes 'Hecuba' for 'her', and the threefold repetition of the name is usually held powerful. So Dover Wilson, maintaining on the one hand that Q followed Shakespeare's manuscript and determined on the other to preserve F's three Hecubas intact, supposed that Shakespeare wrote the third one in the abbreviated form 'hec', which the printer misread as 'her' (MSH, p. 107). This also implies that he wrote a line a foot too long, which the printer fortuitously made regular. The 'her', though Dover Wilson calls it 'curious', is surely less so than the explanation. Once the presence of stage corruptions in F is recognised, it is more natural to attribute the third 'Hecuba' to an actor's rhetorical emphasis.

Where F's substitutions are important is in illuminating for the editor the kind of text he is faced with. F tends to inaccuracy in prepositions: it gives (Ioyntresse) of for to (I.ii.9), (flushing) of for in (I.ii. 155), in for of (the afternoone) (I.v.60), at for in (graue-making) (V.i. 74), and several more. Similarly, the unaccented ending of a word may show a commonplace approximation: Eastward becomes Easterne (I.i. 167), nighted nightly (I.ii.68), grissl'd grisly (I.ii.240), knotted knotty (I.v.18), and so on. The conjunctions and and but are interchanged; pronouns are often substituted for one another, the definite article or a possessive for a demonstrative, singulars for plurals and vice versa. Tenses are altered; and there are many inversions of the will I for I will type. These are of course all features that could arise through scribes' and compositors' carelessness, but their prevalence suggests that something more may be involved and they correspond to what is found in the memorial text of Richard III. One of Patrick's categories concerns forms of address (pp.88-90). These can often be varied without loss and the evidence shows that actors' memories tended to hold them loosely. An example from Richard III defines the type — My gracious for Most mightie (Soueraigne) (IV.iv.433). The F Hamlet gives us among others my sweet Queene for my deere Gertrard (II.ii.54), my good Lord for mine owne Lord (IV.i.5), Dread my Lord for My dread Lord (I.ii.50), and in similar manner in good faith for good my Lord (V.ii.108). With these variants may be linked another common kind of memorial error, the replacement of a word by its synonym (cf. Patrick, pp.84-88). The F Hamlet has ground for earth (I.v.162), Chamber for closset (II.i.77), buriall for funerall (IV.v.213), and so on. Sometimes the synonym is weaker, as in tunes for laudes (IV.vii. 178), or less apt to the context, as when all the court is said to waile instead of mourne for Hamlet's madness (II.ii.151). Such synonyms cannot be explained as misreading or mishearing; not eye nor ear but memory is at fault. And though this kind of error can be perpetrated by copyists who carry too much in their heads, a kindred category strongly suggests the actor. This is that in which a failure of memory has been made good by a word of different meaning (cf. Patrick, pp. 96-104). In Hamlet F corrupts their Lords murther to their vilde

Murthers (II.ii.483), his owne conceit to his whole conceit (II.ii.579), the proude mans contumely to the poore mans Contumely (III.i.71), this madde knaue to this rude knaue (V.i.109). In these and other cases a gap is hastily filled by a word which satisfies the rhythm but gives inferior or even defective sense. Though Dover Wilson and Sisson take madde to be a mere misreading of the manuscript, the almost universal preference among editors for the trite word rude I find incomprehensible.

Substitution by anticipation is a well-known phenomenon in memorial texts (cf. Patrick, pp.46-68), and is found in the F Hamlet in one of the examples just cited. In 'his whole conceit' the stop-gap word was evidently suggested by what was to come three lines later: 'his whole function suting With formes to his conceit'. Similarly, the Folio cock became 'Trumpet to the day' instead of 'the morne' (I.i.150) no doubt through a confusion with 'the God of day' that it was to awake two lines below. Such local confusions are not beyond a scribe. But a further agent has to be postulated when a word seems to have been suggested by a distant context. When in F Hamlet speaks of a satirical 'slaue' instead of 'rogue' (II.ii.198), this is perhaps because he has to say 'a rogue and pesant slaue' nearly 400 lines farther on (II.ii.576); and when Fortinbras 'claimes' instead of 'craues' a passage over the kingdom (IV.iv.3), this may be because he will 'clame' the kingdom at the end of the play (V.ii.401). These instances are discussed by Dover Wilson in a notable passage of textual analysis (MSH, p.59), and if his explanation of a confusion of memory is accepted, the confusion must, as he observes, have arisen in a mind which had an 'active memory' of other parts of the play. But whereas Dover Wilson thought this 'active memory' belonged to a scribe who was familiar with the whole play, it now seems more likely that the source of the confusion lay in the memory of an actor and that the variants in F represent what was actually spoken on the stage.[15]

In F, then, we may find parallels for many characteristics of texts which are recognized as deriving from actors. This confirms, what is of immediate concern, that many of the little words and phrases which F has in excess of Q are in fact actors' additions. It also goes to show, what of course we should expect, that the textual corruptions of the players are not confined to interpolations.

One further point should be added. In showing signs of corruption through performance the F Hamlet is not unique, except possibly in degree, among substantially 'good' Shakespearean texts, and these may

be mutually illuminating. Interpolations and other marks of the actor have recently been pointed to in the first quarto of Richard II,[16] and several scholars have remarked them in the quarto of Othello. Among Q additions in Othello the repetition in Othello's 'false to me, to me?' (III.iii.333) corresponds to the repetitions in the F Hamlet, and Desdemona's cry 'O Lord, Lord, Lord' when Othello stifles her is comparable to the fourfold 'O' when Hamlet dies. Granville-Barker noted the first of these examples as a possible 'actor's interpolation' and suspected there were others.[17] Alice Walker has particularly stigmatized that dialogue fragment, again in Q only, in which Desdemona asks 'To night my Lord?' and the Duke replies 'This night' (I.iii.279). Holding further that many variants are 'memorial perversions', she concludes that the Q Othello 'was a memorially contaminated text . . . based on the play as acted' and she duly notes its resemblance to the FHamlet.[18]

A complete history of the Folio text of Hamlet, which is not here attempted,[19] would have of course to explain how additions and deviations of the players came to be incorporated in it. But the difficulty of explaining how this happened should not prevent the recognition that it did.

Notes