is the case with respect to the earliest quartos of The Merry Wives of Windsor and Romeo and Juliet) we have Shakespeare's first conception of the play, though with a text mangled and corrupted throughout, and perhaps formed on the notes of some short-hand writer, who had imperfectly taken it down during representation. Not to dwell on other particulars, the names borne by Polonius and Reynaldo in the quarto of 1603, where they are called Corambis and Montano, are alone sufficient to show that the said quarto exhibits a form of the tragedy very different from that which it afterwards assumed in the quarto of 1604 and the folio of 1623. Mr. Collier (ubi supra) conjectures that Corambis and Montano " were names in the older play on the same story, or names which Shakespeare at first introduced, and subsequently thought fit to reject:" perhaps they were names which Shakespeare had originally retained from the earlier drama, and which, on revising and altering his tragedy, he changed to Polonius and Reynaldo. (Of the quarto of 1603 only two copies are known, one of them wanting the last leaf, and one without the title-page: but it is now procurable in more than one reprint.) The quarto of 1604 gives Hamlet" enlarged to almost as much againe as it was, according to the true and perfect coppie," and has a great deal which is omitted in the folio of 1623, though the folio has some passages which are omitted in the quarto of 1604, and which have their parallelisms in the quarto of 1603.—Mr. Albert Cohn's curious volume, entitled Shakespeare in Germany in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, &c. contains (both in German and English), p. 237, the "Tragedy of Fratricide punished, or Prince Hamlet of Denmark, acted in Germany, about the year 1603, by English Players:" but which "has been preserved to us only by a late and modernised copy of a much older manuscript." In this piece Polonius is called Corambus, which, with the variation of a single letter, is his name in the quarto of 1603; and to that form of the play the German version approaches more nearly than to that of the later editions; but, as it gives certain passages which are parallel to those in the received text of Hamlet, and of which there is no trace in the quarto of 1603, the translator must have employed some other edition of the original besides that of 1603. To the "Tragedy of Fratricide" is prefixed a Prologue, spoken by Night, Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megara, which in composition is superior to the play itself. The latter, indeed, is miserably bald, and its occasional absurdity may be judged of by a stage-direction in the First Act," Ghost gives to Sentinel a box on the ear from behind, and makes him drop his musket."-A novel entitled The Hystorie of Hamblet, translated most vilely from one of the Histoires Tragiques of Belleforest (who founded his tale on a portion of the chronicle of Saxo Grammaticus), has several incidents in common with our author's play; but whether he derived those incidents from The Hystorie, or from the older drama on the same subject, we are left to guess. (In Mr. Collier's Shakespeare's Library, vol. i., is a reprint of the Hystorie of Hamblet from the only entire copy known, which is dated 1608: the first edition was no doubt published many years before.)

DRAMATIS PERSONE.

CLAUDIUS, king of Denmark.

HAMLET, son to the former, and nephew to the present king.

GERTRUDE, queen of Demark, and mother to Hamlet.

OPHELIA, daughter to Polonius.

Lords, Ladies, Officers, Soldiers, Sailors, Messengers, and other Attendants.

Ghost of Hamlet's Father.

SCENE-Elsinore; except in the fourth scene of the fifth act, where it is a plain in Denmark,

HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK.

ACT I.

SCENE I. Elsinore. A platform before the castle.

FRANCISCO at his post. Enter to him BERNARDO.

Ber. Who's there?

Fran. Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself.
Ber. Long live the king!

Fran. Bernardo?

Ber. He.

Fran. You come most carefully upon your hour.

Ber. 'Tis now struck twelve ;(1) get thee to bed, Francisco.

Fran. For this relief much thanks: 'tis bitter cold,

And I am sick at heart.

Ber. Have you had quiet guard?
Fran.

Ber. Well, good night.

If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,

Not a mouse stirring.

The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.

Fran. I think I hear them.-Stand, ho! Who is there?

Ber. Welcome, Horatio:-welcome, good Marcellus.
Mar. What, has this thing appear'd again to-night?
Ber. I have seen nothing.

Mar. Horatio says 'tis but our fantasy,

And will not let belief take hold of him

Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us :

Therefore I have entreated him along

With us to watch the minutes of this night;
That, if again this apparition come,

He may approve our eyes, and speak to it.
Hor. Tush, tush, 'twill not appear.

When yond same star that's westward from the pole

Had made his course t' illume that part of heaven
Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,

The bell then beating one,—

Mar. Peace, break thee off; look, where it comes again!

Enter Ghost.

Ber. In the same figure, like the king that's dead.

Mar. Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.

Ber. Looks it not like the king? mark it, Horatio.
Hor. Most like :-it harrows me with fear and wonder.

Ber. It would be spoke to.

Mar.

Question it, Horatio.

Hor. What art thou, that usurp'st this time of night,

Together with that fair and warlike form

In which the majesty of buried Denmark

Did sometimes march? by heaven I charge thee, speak!
Mar. It is offended.

Ber.

See, it stalks away!

Hor. Stay! speak, speak! I charge thee, speak!

Mar. 'Tis gone, and will not answer.

[Exit Ghost.

Ber. How now, Horatio! you tremble, and look pale:

Is not this something more than fantasy?

What think you on't?

Hor. Before my God, I might not this believe

Without the sensible and true avouch

Of mine own eyes.

Mar.

Is it not like the king?

Hor. As thou art to thyself:

Such was

the very armour he had on

When he th' ambitious Norway combated;
So frown'd he once, when, in an angry parle,
He smote the sledded Polacks(2) on the ice.

'Tis strange.

Mar. Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour, With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.

Hor. In what particular thought to work I know not; But, in the gross and scope of my opinion,

This bodes some strange eruption to our state.

Mar. Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows, Why this same strict and most observant watch

So nightly toils the subject of the land;
And why such daily cast of brazen cannon,
And foreign mart for implements of war;
Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task
Does not divide the Sunday from the week;
What might be toward, that this sweaty haste
Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day:
Who is 't that can inform me?

Hor.

At least, the whisper goes so.

That can I

Our last king,

Whose image even but now appear'd to us,
Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
Thereto prick'd on by a most emulate pride,

Dar'd to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet