Everything about The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is problematic. Gritical uncertainty concerning the character of the Prince, his attitudes, and the tragic quality of his highly dramatic situation is matched by a corresponding diversity of scholarly opinion regarding such matters as the date of the play, its precise relation to its sources, and its textual authority. An editor approaches his task with a proper awe that is the more profound from his steady realization that he is, after all, dealing with the most celebrated work in English literature.

The revised Norton Critical Edition of Shakespeare's masterpiece again bases its text on the second quarto (1604-5). When necessary, the editor has also drawn upon the folio, recording all departures from the quarto in the Textual Notes.Punctuation and stage directions for the play have been refined, and the textual annotations have been both revised and expanded.

The "Intellectual Backgrounds" and "Extracts from the Sources" sections remain as germane as ever and are, therefore, unchanged. In order to help the reader place Hamlet in the proper historical context, "Intellectual Backgrounds"includes important readings on melancholy, demonology, the nature of man, and death. Represented are works by Peter de la Primaudaye, Timothy Bright, Lewes Lavater, G. Gifford, Michel de Montaigne, and Hieronymous Cardanus. "Extracts from the Sources" offers pre-Shakespearean accounts of the story of Hamlet with substantiai extracts from Saxo Grammaticus's Historia Danica and Belleforest's Histoires Tragiques.

The editor has carefully revised the "Criticism" section in order to accommodate the most significant recent interpretations, while continuing to retain the seminal essays of the First Edition. Twenty-three criticaI analyses are featured,six of them new. Included in this wide selection are essays by Samuel Johnson,Johann Wolfgang yon Goethe, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Hazlitt, D. H.Lawrence, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, Harry Levin, Peter J. Seng, Rebecca West,Arnold Kettle, Margaret W. Ferguson, Jacqueline Rose, and William Empson.

A thoroughly updated Selected Bibliography is also included.

Preface

Preface to the Second Edition

The Text of Hamlet

Hamlet

TEXTUAL COMMENTARY

 Textual Notes

Intellectual Backgrounds

  MELANCHOLY

 Peter de la Primaudayc · The French Academy

 Timothy Bright · A Treatise of Melancholy

  DEMONOLOGY

 Lewes Lavater · Of Ghosts and Spirits Walking by Night

 G. Gifford · A Discourse of the Subtle Practices of

    Devils by Witches and Sorcerers

  THE NATURE OF MAN

 Peter de la Primaudayc · The French Academy

 Michel de Montaigne · An Apology of Raymond Sebond

  DEATH

 Hieronymous Cardanus · Comfort

Michel de Montaigne · An Apology of Raymond Sebond

Michel de Montaigne · Of Physiognomy

Extracts from the Sources

Saxo Grammaticus · Amleth

Belleforest · The Hystorie of Hamblet, Prince of Denmarke

Essays in Criticism

John Dennis · From All Essay on the Genius and Writings of

  Shakespeare

  Anonymous · Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet

 Prince of Denmark

  Samuel Johnson · [The Praise of Variety]

  William Richardson · The Gharacter of Hamlet

  Henry Mackenzie · Griticism oil the Gharacter and

 Tragedy of Hamlet

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · [A Soul Unfit]

  Augustus William Schlegel · Griticisms on Shakespeare's

 Tragedies: Hamlet

Samuel Taylor Goleridge · Notes on the Tragedies:

 Hamlet

William Hazlitt · Gharacters of Shakespear's Plays:

  Hamlet

A. G. Bradley · [What Actually Happens in the Play]

D. H. Lawrence · [An Aversion from Hamlet]

T. S. Eliot · Hamlet and His Problems

G. Wilson Knight · The Embassy of Death: An Essay

  on Hamlet

Harley Granville-Barker · The Five Acts of the Editors

C. S. Lewis · Hamlet: The Prince or the Poem?

Ernest Jones · Tragedy and the Mind of the Infant

Harry Levin - An Explication of the Player's Speech

Peter J. Seng · [Dramatic Function of the Songs in Hamlet]

Rebecca West · The Nature of Will

Arnold Kettle · [Hamlet in a Ghanging World]

Margaret W. Ferguson · Hamlet: Letters and Spirits

Jaequeline Rose · Sexuality in the Reading of Shakespeare:

   Hamlet and Measure for Measure

William Empson · [Up-dating Revenge Tragedy]

Selected Bibliography