The Badass Quarto

As explained in the paper and the Hamlet Birdseye summary, the theory — plus a bit of additional critical thinking — may well explain the chronology of the different versions of Hamlet. To review, the fact that the versions of Hamlet were published in the sequence First Quarto (1603), Second Quarto (1604), Folio (1623) tells us very little about which version was actually written first, and in fact most scholars seem to believe that the order was actually more likely F-Q2-Q1. And they have some reasons for that, but that doesn’t make the matter free from debate.

Recently, a scholar named Terri Bourus presented what she considers compelling evidence that the First Quarto was an early draft of Hamlet, written around 1589, in her 2014 book, Young Shakespeare’s Young Hamlet (Palgrave Macmillan) Her main points seem to be that the First Quarto bears more similarities to Belleforest’s Amleth (Shakespeare’s main source) than do the other ones, and thus was probably closer in time. Also, the Hamlet in Q1 seems younger and more of a badass, whereas the age of Hamlet in Q2 is clearly given as 30-ish, and he is more of a brooder; thus both versions might have been written for Richard Burbage, as he aged. Here’s an article by Ron Rosenbaum from the Chronicle of Higher Education that explains Bourus’s theory and the controversy.

Rosenbaum aptly explains the importance of the issue:

“But far more intriguing than a dusty canvas of dubious origin would be a document that could offer a portrait of Shakespeare’s mind. Of something that might illuminate the consciousness that gave rise to the astonishing language and thought.

“And that’s precisely what’s at stake in the latest controversy over Hamlet, what makes the dispute so intellectually seductive, and why it deserves examination outside the circle of textual adepts. It’s a controversy over the so-called Bad Quarto of Hamlet, the long-disparaged, though first-published (in 1603), text of the play. The provenance of the Bad Quarto has long been shrouded in mystery, but a clash of two new theories reopens questions about Hamlet as a play, Hamlet as a character, and Shakespeare as an artist.”

Credit Rosenbaum also with having named it the “badass” Quarto. It has often been called the “Bad Quarto”, because parts of it — e.g. the rendition of the to be or not to be speech — seem downright bad to the unitiated. A traditional explanation for the “badness” is that the First Quarto is a memorial reconstruction of a performance of the play (presumably of something like Q2) , patched together by one or two notetakers, perhaps assisted by someone with a small part in the play. That alone is not a completely satisfying explanation, because some things about the play are simply different in ways that can’t be explained by a bad memorial reconstruction.

If you’ve read my paper you know that I already “solved” this problem with a different result. My point was that some of the changes from Q1 to Q2 could be explained by the parallels between Hamlet and King James; like Hamlet, King James’s mother was thought by some to have had a role in the murder of his father, and King James had been a serial debaser of the Scottish coinage. I thus contended (and still contend) that Q1 was a revision of Q2 (with perhaps some sloppy memorial reconstruction slipped in) in which someone had made a point of making Hamlet less like King James and removing any debasement theme whatsoever.

Rather than re-write that up here, I will simply cut and paste a series of Shaksper posts I wrote on this. Nobody seriously engaged on it, so I probably won’t bother including anyone else’s posts.

From: Thomas Krause <tkrause637@gmail.com>

Date: July 3, 2018 at 7:52:53 PM EDT

Subject: Re: SHAKSPER: Young Hamlet

A few years ago, I looked at the question of Q1 from a very different perspective, but I seem to have reached the same conclusion as Ward Elliott’s computer program and the majority of contributors to this thread. My observation was that Q1 appears to have omitted, altered, or added various passages all with a view toward avoiding offense to King James, who had just ascended to the throne and had just become the company’s patron. Specifically, (1) King James had repeatedly debased the Scottish coinage, so references to coinage debasement were removed, and (2) there were well-recognized parallels between King James’s mother Mary Queen of Scots and Gertrude (and King James and Hamlet, for that matter), so Gertrude is portrayed in a somewhat kinder light. With footnotes omitted, here is what I wrote on the Gertrude modifications:

“Gertrude Queen of Scots?

“Independent support for the notion that the first quarto was meant above all not to give offense to King James comes from its benign treatment of Queen Gertrude (Gertred, in Q1). The parallels between Hamlet’s mother and King James’s mother—Mary, Queen of Scots—have been noticed before: Three months and six days after the murder of her husband (Lord Darnley, James’s father), Mary married the man who was roundly suspected of being the murderer, and within a few more months, the fallout from the event forced Mary to abdicate the throne of Scotland in favor of her then 13-month old son, James. An acting company seeking to curry favor with its new sponsor and King would understandably be concerned about the parallels between Gertrude and Mary.

“The easiest way to solve the problem would be to trim down and alter Gertrude’s role to remove ambiguities about her possible complicity in the murder and make her more sympathetic all around. That appears to be what was done. Among the many differences in Gertrude’s role between Q1 and the other texts are that (1) Claudius no longer refers to her as his “imperial jointress” and makes no other endearing references to her, (2) the ghost does not instruct Hamlet to leave her to heaven and her conscience, (3) in the closet scene, she categorically denies any involvement in the murder, (4) in the closet scene, the ghost asks Hamlet to “comfort” her, (5) she doesn’t call Laertes’s followers “false Danish dogs,” (6) she doesn’t refuse to see Ophelia, and, most significantly (7) a whole scene has been added in which Horatio tells her of Claudius’s attempt to have Hamlet killed, and in which she places herself firmly on Hamlet’s side against Claudius (15.1–34). The result in Q1 is a more sympathetic character, and one less likely to give offense to the new king.

“The seemingly methodical omission in Q1 of references which in Q2 and F refer to the debasement theme, together with the significant changes in the queen’s character, point to the conclusion that Q1 is a version of the play that was edited by someone intent on not offending King James. This does not answer the question whether Q1 was a memorial reconstruction or not, but it does suggest that the text on which Q1 was based comes later in time than those on which Q2 and F were based, and was probably prepared either shortly before or shortly after King James took the throne in March 1603.

“Accordingly, the proposed debasement not only resolves ambiguities in the picture in little, two pictures, and inhibition/innovation passages, but it also suggests that (1) of the three extant versions, the second quarto’s handling of the picture in little line was closest to Hamlet’s original source, and (2) that the first quarto—edited as it was for the sake of King James—could aptly be renamed the King James Hamlet.”

In the footnotes I observed that the omission of “false Danish dogs” would also have avoided offense to King James’s wife, Anne of Denmark.

I don’t offer this as conclusive proof that Q1 came after Q2 and/or F – coincidences happen – but I do think it is good evidence in support of that hypothesis. If anyone else is aware of other ways in which the differences between Q1 and the other versions might be seen as trying to avoid offense to King James, I’d be interested to hear them.

Tom Krause (www.wmshakespeare.com)

From: Thomas Krause <tkrause637@gmail.com>

Date: July 6, 2018 at 9:08 PM EDT

Subject: Re: SHAKSPER: Young Hamlet

Steve Roth, in response to my suggestion that the differences between Q1 and the other versions might be seen as trying to avoid offense to King James:

“I’ve only spent a bit of time with the argument in this paper, so I’m agnostic. But will say that I’ve seen many similar suggestions about different Hamlet versions vis-a-vis James and Anne over the years.”

Thanks Steve–would you mind providing a listing of some of the similar suggestions? If there are others out there that have used the differences as a basis for fixing the sequence of the versions (i.e., the topic of this thread) I for one would be interested in seeing them.

Like others, I haven’t had a chance to read Bourus’s book yet, but I’ve read Ron Rosenbaum’s article and all of the posts here, some of which shed some light on her argument. The basic structure of her argument is quite similar to mine–we both propose a logical reason for the differences. Hers is that a play that is chronologically closer to Belleforest will be more similar to Belleforest, and mine is that one consideration in publishing in 1603 would have been to avoid offense to King James. She says the differences between Q1 and Q2/F support her hypothesis–and certainly they do–but as shown in my post, they support mine as well, and (at least from what I have heard so far) I don’t see any reason to prefer hers over mine.

So, I’m just providing one more reason (in addition to those of others on this list), employing reasoning similar to Bourus’s own, for disagreeing with Bourus’s conclusion. And again, my theory explains some changes that Bourus’s does not; e.g., the new scene, not in Belleforest, Q2, or F, between Horatio and Gertrude in which the Queen’s learns of Claudius’s misdeeds and allies herself with Hamlet.

My previous work focused only on the differences involving Gertrude and debasement, and I haven’t had time to systematically review all the differences between Q1 and Q2/F, but thanks to Rosenbaum’s piece and some earlier posts on this thread I’ve stumbled on three additional differences that all tend to support the “avoid offense to King James” theory.

1) The “alluring” business of the missing pirates in Q1. Even before King James took the English throne, the Scots were complaining about depredations by English pirates, and James at one point proclaimed that he would “hang the pirates with my own hands.” See, e.g., Mark G. Hanna, Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, 1570-1740 (2015), p. 54. He followed this up with “A Proclamation to repress all Piracies and Depredations upon the Sea. [Winchester 30 September 1603]). If you’re trying to curry favor with a sworn enemy of pirates, it only makes sense to remove references to pirates being helpful.

2) The fact that Q1’s Hamlet is more resolute than the Hamlet of Q2/F. This is likewise a sensible edit when you are worried about offending a king who has been plagued by criticism for not being sufficiently resolute. See Lilian Winstanley, Hamlet and the Scottish Succession (1921), pp. 76-87 (discussing similarities between the irresolute Hamlet and James, through letters from Queen Elizabeth to James).

3) The alteration of the prayer speech to “No King on earth is safe if God[’]s his foe.” This more overt reference to the relationship between kings and God could well have been a nod to King James’s Basilikon Doron, the first part of which concerns that relationship.

It is true that both (1) and (2) above support Borous’s theory as well–there were no pirates in Belleforest and Belleforest’s Amleth was quite resolute. But once again, I think I’ve offered an at least equally plausible explanation for these differences.

If I’m wrong, it should be pretty easy for someone else to prove it–all you have to do is find a way that Q1 differs from Q2/F in a way that would offend King James. So, if you can find that, I might have to take it all back.

As a final note, and because nobody has said it yet, I don’t see the change in Hamlet’s age to be nearly as supportive of Bourus’s position as she reportedly thinks it is. Even apart from this debate, I had thought it was generally agreed that the age given in the gravedigger scene is inconsistent with the impression of a “young” Hamlet given by most of the rest of the play. If someone was editing the play anyway to remove references that might offend King James, it doesn’t seem far-fetched to believe that the same editor might have seen fit to “fix” the problem of Hamlet’s age.

Tom Krause

From: Thomas Krause <tkrause637@gmail.com>

Date: September 10, 2018 at 9:55:23 AM EDT

Subject: Young Hamlet

Before pedaling off on his week-long Weary Wheelers tour, Steve Urkowitz offers up what he seems to think is a new line of thought – that we should look not just for “single-word variants and odd repetitions,” but also at the way the plots differ between the texts, something he thinks none of the disputants on the too-long-for-Tony-Burton-so-let’s-call-it-a-draw Young Hamlet thread have done.

Steve has overlooked my posts of July 5 and July 9.

Before reminding the rest of you of those posts, I’d be curious to know if anyone on this list disagrees with Steve’s conclusion that “The thing underlying Q1 was NOT the thing underlying Q2 which was NOT the thing underlying F.” To me that’s always been self-evident. Does anyone disagree?

My own contribution here is to point out the many ways that Q1 would have been less offensive to King James than Q2, and to posit that Q1 – which was published the same year King James took the English throne – is based on a performance that had been modified to avoid offense to King James.

As I explained before, the problem for the new King’s Men was that King James’s mother had over-hastily married the man who had murdered his father. While King James’s relationship with his mother was doubtless complex, the King’s Men would likely have erred on the side of caution and done their best to make it clear that the Queen was not involved in the murder of old Hamlet, for instance, by adding the scene with Horatio in which Gertrude pledges to help Hamlet against Claudius.

Likewise, Q1 Hamlet’s youth and decisiveness – apparently the best text-based evidence Bourus has for Q1 as the Ur Hamlet – might just have been an attempt to recast Hamlet in a way that didn’t call King James (who had been rebuked for indecisiveness by Queen Elizabeth) to mind quite so much. And the absence of helpful pirates in Q1 might stem from the fact that James was very anti-pirate.

In the meantime, I’ve read Margarethe Jolly’s “Hamlet and the French Connection,” and find that it supports my theory far better than it does Bourus’s. Jolly finds seven clear verbal echoes between Q2 and Belleforest that do not appear in Q1, which, standing alone, would suggest that Q2 is closer, not farther, from Belleforest, in stark contrast to Bourus’s conclusion. Jolly does find Q1’s Hamlet’s youth to be an echo of Belleforest, although that’s easily explained, as I just did. Apart from that, Jolly finds only two arguable verbal echoes that appear in Q1 but not in Q2, but those seem more likely to be coincidence than the seven verbal echoes she finds in Q2.

Interestingly, in order to explain the verbal echoes, Jolly observes that Shakespeare might have been looking at Belleforest when writing Q2, more than a decade after having used it to write Q1. But the Belleforest-fresh-at-hand theory actually cuts the other way – under the hypothesis that Q1 was roughly contemporaneous with Q2, any similarities of Q1 to Belleforest can be explained by the fact that Shakespeare had only recently used Belleforest in composing Q2.

Under this theory, one could even stipulate (counterfactually) that Q1 borrowed more from Belleforest than did Q2, but the explanation is not necessarily that Q1 came first; it could equally (or, I would argue, even more plausibly) be that moving back toward Belleforest was a smart and simple way to avoid offending King James.

I didn’t mention this before, but I note now that the name change from Polonius to Corambis could have its roots in international diplomacy. King James had a good relationship with Poland that he wanted to maintain and he probably would not have appreciated his acting company naming an insufferable bumbler “Polonius.” This could also have been to avoid charges of hypocrisy – James once complained to Polish authorities about a Polish man who had criticized Scotland in print, and the Polish authorities had the man executed.

Tom Krause

From: Thomas Krause <tkrause637@gmail.com>

Date: November 8, 2018 at 2:55:35 PM EST

Subject: Reflections Between Hamlet and King James’s Familial History

Aaron Azlant asks:

“I know that a lot has been written about Hamlet’s connection to the Essex conspiracy, but has there been a lot written about what King James’s familial history, being the son of a murdered father whose mother possibly remarried the murderer, and its connection to the plot of the play?”

Yes, the seminal work on this is Hamlet and the Scottish Succession by Lilian Winstanley (1921).

I’ve made the point here a few times recently, in support of the idea that (whatever else it was) the First Quarto of Hamlet was a version that had been edited to avoid offense to King James, which seems relevant to the longstanding timing question in current Young Hamlet thread.

https://www.shaksper.net/archive/2018/825-july/32477-young-shakespeare-s-young-hamlet-3

https://www.shaksper.net/archive/2018/825-july/32484-re-shaksper-young-hamlet-3

https://www.shaksper.net/archive/2018/827-september/32585-young-hamlet-and-shorthand-6

So far, no one has deigned to respond substantively to those posts. Maybe everyone just agrees with them.

Tom Krause

From: Thomas Krause <tkrause637@gmail.com>

Date: March 9, 2019 at 6:28:50 PM EST

Subject: Q1 Hamlet

Brian Vickers’ analysis seems to remove all doubt that Q1 is some sort of a memorial reconstruction and can’t possibly date to 1587, given all the “borrowings” from post-1587 Shakespeare plays. Just two questions for Professor Vickers:

1) Why do you believe that the Stationers’ Register entry for July 26, 1602 is for the First Quarto? The entry was made by James Roberts, the printer of Q2, whose name does not appear in connection with Q1. And the title given in the Register (“The Revenge of Hamlett Prince Denmarke as yt was latelie Acted by the Lord Chamberleyne his servantes”) is very different from that of Q1.

2) How sure are you of the three borrowings from Measure for Measure? If they are indeed borrowings, and if you’re right that the reconstruction occurred before July 26, 1602, then that’s an unusually early date for Measure for Measure.

Perhaps this points to a 1603 date for the work underlying Q1. That would likewise clear up the problem that you and Alfred Hart have observed with respect to the thirteen borrowings from Othello, which likewise is generally not dated prior to 1603.

Tom Krause

From: Thomas Krause <tkrause637@gmail.com>

Date: March 13, 2019 at 6:31:25 AM EDT

Subject: Q1 Hamlet

Jim Carroll writes:

So let me get this straight. If a phrase appears in multiple Shakespearean plays, such as

Gentlemen and friends, I thank you for your pains. Shrew 3.2.184

I thank you for your pains: Cym 1.6.203

that we are now supposed to view this as evidence of some other author “borrowing” a phrase from the later Cymbeline, and that therefore Shrew was written by someone else other than Shakespeare, and written after Cymbeline?

OH MY GOD WHAT AM I DOING GIVING THIS GUY IDEAS?????

I’m not sure if the “guy” Jim is talking about is me or Brian Vickers, but Jim can rest assured neither of us will be looking to him for ideas. Jim might be trying to be funny, but his post would only be funny if it had some bearing on Brian’s actual methodology. The bottom line is that if Brian is right that these are borrowings, then that means Q1 came later. I look forward to hearing Brian’s further responses to the more serious questioners.

I’m also still curious to hear Brian’s answer to my question as to why believes that the reconstruction, if that’s what it was, occurred in 1602, when a 1603 date seems equally if not more likely in view of the borrowings from Othello and Measure for Measure, not to mention the printing date of Q1 itself.

Careful readers of this list will understand my interest – I continue to look for reasons to doubt my theory that the text underlying Q1 was edited or rewritten by someone (maybe even Shakespeare himself) to avoid offense to King James, soon after James took the throne in 1603. As noted elsewhere, this theory is based on methods similar to those used by Terri Bourus – drawing conclusions based on plot differences – but has the advantage of not being so improbable, not to say “crackpot” (as does John Briggs).

Viewed in light of the no-offense-to-King-James theory, the plot differences identified by Bourus and others, along with reconstruction arguments advanced by Brian and others, present a plausible explanation of how Q1 came about. If it was Shakespeare who did the rewrite, then the reconstruction theory explains why it’s not as good as Q2; if it was someone else who did the rewrite, then that in and of itself might provide the explanation, and the reconstruction theory may not even be needed.

Of course, if the date of Q1 is as early as 1602, when Queen Elizabeth was still alive, then the theory loses a lot of its force.

My last post on this subject, which responded to a post by Steve Urkowitz suggesting that nobody except him was looking at plot differences, is here:

https://www.shaksper.net/archive/2018/827-september/32585-young-hamlet-and-shorthand-6

Tom Krause

From: Thomas Krause <tkrause637@gmail.com>

Date: May 5, 2019 at 9:38 AM EDT

Subject: Re: Q1 Hamlet

Abraham Shiff says:

Not yet discussed in the ongoing the Hamlet Q1/Q2 precedence debate is the chamberlain’s name change.

Actually, Tad Davis mentioned it on March 12:

It seems to me Q1 must represent an earlier stage of revision than Q2; how else to explain the shift from Corambis to Polonius?

To which John Briggs responded:

I have already suggested that the names (but little else) of Q1 were a recollection of the Ur-Hamlet. And that the Ur-Hamlet was an old Queen’s Men’s play.

And of course, I myself have pointed to the name change as support for the opposite proposition:

(from https://shaksper.net/archive/2018/827-september/32585-young-hamlet-and-shorthand-6)

In other words, Shiff, Davis, and I look to the same “fact” but they both think it supports an earlier Q1, whereas I think it supports a later Q1. I think Briggs is on my side of the which-came-first line, but he unnecessarily feels a need to find support for Corambis in an earlier work.

As I explained in a series of posts last summer, all of the differences in meaning (as opposed to mere differences in expression) that anyone has pointed out between Q1 and Q2 can be explained by the hypothesis that the manuscript underlying Q1 was a version of the play that had been edited to avoid offending the King’s Men’s new patron, i.e., the king. The dig at the Polish ambassador that Shiff sees might well have been the naming of the clownish counselor “Polonius” in the first place. The change to Corambis was merely self-censorship that occurred later.

It is worth noting that my theory fits with something most other supporters of the Q2-came-first theory ignore: the fact that–as Terry Bourus points out and Steve Urkowitz repeats–James Roberts and the others associated with Q1’s publication probably had the King’s Men’s authority to print it. If that’s the case, then perhaps Q1 was simply a version that had not just been self-censored to avoid offense, but also edited in various ways that made it significantly worse than Q2, so as not to disturb–and perhaps to increase–the market for the “true” version, either in performance, or in a later publication. If so, Q1 is not just the King James Hamlet; it’s also the New Coke Hamlet.

I’ll note in passing (as Steve Urkowitz has noted before) that none of the other supporters of the Q2-came-first theory spend a lot of effort in considering the substantive differences in the plays. Instead, they explain the differences with sheer speculation:

Someone who has seen a performance but does not have access to MSQ2 or MSF reconstructs the play from memory. In doing this, he might be helped by one or more actors who can recall some of their lines. He might also rely on recollections of the old Hamlet play, e.g. for the Gertrude/Horatio scene; he might even have access to some lost manuscript of the old play. The reconstructed play is printed as Q1.

This is Darren Freebury-Jones, quoting Pervez Rizvi and finding this version of events “eminently plausible.” John Briggs adds to this by further speculating that the earlier play was performed by the Queen’s Men. This sort of speculation is no better than Margarethe Jolly’s speculation (in support of the opposite conclusion) that Shakespeare had Belleforest in front of him when (according to her and Terry Bourus’s theory) he built on Q1 to produce Q2.

It may be plausible (even eminently so) that an “old” and conveniently no longer existing Hamlet play differed from Q2 in the same ways that Q1 does. But it’s unnecessary to speculate on what the older play might have contained, when there is a preeminently plausible explanation for the differences, rooted in the history of the times–specifically the actual time of publication of Q1 in 1603.

From: Thomas Krause <tkrause637@gmail.com>

Date: May 12, 2019 at 8:35 AM EDT

Subject: Re: NOS and Mathematics

Ron Rosenbaum writes:

I have been reading recent posts attentively and while I enjoy the back and forth over attribution, I am left wondering: is there no member of the list who finds the thematic differences in versions worthy of comment?

This was pretty much Steve Urkowitz’s complaint last September, specific to the debate about Hamlet Q1 and Q2:

. . . whoever was transcribing those variant versions before they were set into print was seeing radically distinct “works” or “versions” or “texts.” The thing underlying Q1 was NOT the thing underlying Q2 which was NOT the thing underlying F. Terri Bourus attends to those differences in ways that other critics here in our debate do not.

The on-and-off discussion of Hamlet Q1/Q2 kicked off with a post about Terry Bourus’s use of the thematic differences to support her Q1-is-the-Ur-Hamlet argument. Urkowitz seems to find the differences important, but then doesn’t engage in any discussion about them. Both he and Rosenbaum may have missed my various posts on this subject.

To summarize, I’ve looked at all the thematic differences that Bourus and others have pointed to, and have found that they all are consistent with the hypothesis that whatever else Q1 was, it had its roots in an authorized version that erred on the side of keeping the King’s Men on their new patron’s good side, by removing or editing parts that might remind King James of himself. The hypothesis explains – at least as well as Bourus’s – why the Q1 Hamlet is younger and more decisive, why the Q1 Queen is more sympathetic, and why Q1 has no pirates and no Polack jokes.

But I’ve heard next-to-nothing back; indeed, the people who should be looking for theories like mine – e.g. the Q2-came-first adherents who have to explain the fact that Q1 may well have been an authorized version – either don’t address the thematic differences, or attempt to explain them with unOccamesque hypotheticals about yet other versions of the play that no longer exist.

There was once a time when one could write a post here that attempted to tie something in Shakespeare’s plays to contemporaneous events, and ignite a debate that would bring new and interesting facts to light. Where did everybody go?

Tom Krause

From: Thomas Krause <tkrause637@gmail.com>

Date: September 9, 2019 at 7:24:37 AM EDT

Subject: Re: Corambis

John Briggs is “disappointed that no-one has commented on [his] post scuppering the ‘early draft’ hypothesis.”

I assume he is referring to his July 2 post, in which he pointed out that Q1’s reference to Polonius’s having played Julius Caesar almost certainly places Q1 after Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

John, I saw your post and apologize for withholding my praise, both for your specific point and your methodology.

The same methodology (looking for text that alludes to something that happened significantly after the Ur-Hamlet) suggests looking at all the lines in Hamlet that have been identified as “contemporary” references. The one that pops into my mind is the reference to the child actors (in F but not in Q2), which I believe is widely understood to be an allusion to the resurgence of child acting companies around 1600, and in particular the performances of the Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars, a private playhouse.

If that’s the case, the following passage from Q1 is further evidence that Q1 was not written before 1600:

For the principall publicke audience that

Came to them, are turned to private plays

And to the humour of children.

While one might dismiss these points as mere coincidence (yes there were child acting companies in the 1580s and certainly Shakespeare could have imagined a play about Julius Caesar in the 1580s), at a certain point “coincidence” is no longer the most logical explanation.

The same can be said, by the way, of my other approach to the matter—the observation that Q1 can be seen as a version of Hamlet that has been purged of material that might have given offense to Shakespeare’s company’s new patron, King James, and whatever else Q1 is, it reflects the hand of (self-?) censorship.

In view of John’s experience, I continue to take the lack of any substantive comment on my various posts on this theory as an indication that nobody here sees anything wrong with it, and that some readers may actually find it persuasive.

Tom Krause

From: Brian Vickers <vickersbw@gmail.com>

Date: September 11, 2019 at 6:43 AM EDT

Subject: Q1

Gentle SHAKSPERians,

I apologise to John Briggs for not having expressed my approval of his point that the reference to Corambis / Polonius having acted the role of Julius Caesar—which is in Q2, F, and Q1—alludes to Julius Caesar and is strong evidence that Q1 derives from Shakespeare’s authentic text and can be dated after 1599. My researches into Q1’s recollection of over 100 plays dating between 1588 and 1602 certainly agrees with this evidence. Egan makes what seems to him “an obvious objection”, that this is not the only way to understand Corambis’s remark. Corambis confirms that his was an amateur performance at university (not a professional one on the public stage)

….

Egan’s use of the word “confirms” sounds as if he takes Corambis to be a real-life witness, not a fictional character. It is perhaps this passage that emboldened the reporters of Q1 to claim that their text had been “diuerse times acted by his Highnesse seruants in the Cittie of London: as also in the two Vniuersities of Cambridge and Oxford …”. The manuscript as entered by James Roberts merely referred to “a booke called the Revenge of Hamlet Prince [of] Denmarke as yt was latelie Acted by the Lord Chamberleyne his servantes.” It is worth noting that England’s two universities were small, self-contained places so remote from London that such claims could be made with impunity.

Thomas Krause cites other evidence that supports the accepted dating of Q1 to around 1600, namely the reference to the child actors (in F but not in Q2), which I believe is widely understood to be an allusion to the resurgence of child acting companies around 1600, and in particular the performances of the Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars, a private playhouse. If that’s the case, the following passage from Q1 is further evidence that Q1 was not written before 1600: For the principall publicke audience that Came to them, are turned to private plays And to the humour of children. (7.272-3; Arden 3 prints as prose.) While one might dismiss these points as mere coincidence (yes there were child acting companies in the 1580s and certainly Shakespeare could have imagined a play about Julius Caesar in the 1580s), at a certain point “coincidence” is no longer the most logical explanation. The Q1 reporter(s) failed to reproduce the explanation given in the Folio, that the company has been forced to tour: “their inhibition comes by means of the late innovation” (2.2.330-1). Malone was the first to understand this as a reference to the rise of the children’s companies, and this seems to be how the Q1 reporter took it. In one of the ‘Longer Notes’ to his 1982 Arden 2 edition (470-2) Harold Jenkins argued—I think, rightly—that this passage was cut from Q2 rather than added to F, and recorded the claim by Chambers and Dover Wilson that the word “innovation” referred not to the so-called “War of the Theatres” but to the Essex rebellion of February 1601. Historians will argue this point but, either way, it is strong evidence Q1 dates from 1601-2. Thus, the Bourus-Taylor thesis that—as Egan puts it, “the manuscript copy from which Q1 ‘Hamlet’ was typeset was written by Shakespeare in the 1580s”—is looking more and more improbable day by day.

Cordial greetings,

Brian Vickers

From: Brian Vickers <vickersbw@gmail.com>

Date: October 2, 2019 at 7:04 AM EDT

Subject: Re: Q1 Reconciliation

Gentle Shaksperians,

The fact that Chaucer also referred to Caesar being assassinated in the Capitol shows that, as Robert Applebaum suggests, this was widely dispersed knowledge in the European Renaissance, a fact that can no doubt be further documented.

However, I fail to see the point of Gabriel Egan’s objection that “at least one other writer located the assassination of Caesar in the Capitol weakens the claim that Corambis/Polonius must be alluding specifically to Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar…” Does Egan think that Shakespeare was alluding to The Monk’s Tale?

The point made by John Briggs that the presence of this allusion in all three versions of Hamlet proves that Q1 post-dates the Roman play still stands. As Egan says, “it would require the play underlying Q1 Hamlet (which contains the allusion) to postdate Julius Caesar.” – Where’s the problem? Martin Wiggins dates Caesar to 1599 (#1198 in his chronological numbering), Q2 Hamlet to between 1600 and 1602, settling on the earlier date (#1259). Thomas Krause instanced the reference in Q1 that the “publicke audience that | Came to them, are turned to private plays | And to the humour of children” suggests a dating of post-1600. I have presented abundant evidence to this forum that Q1 Hamlet contains verbally precise quotations from plays performed between 1586 and 1602, so a firm genealogy is in place. What evidence does Egan have to question it?

Cordial greetings,

Brian Vickers

From: Thomas Krause <tkrause637@gmail.com>

Date: October 6, 2019 at 6:59 PM EDT

Subject: Re: Claudius in Q1 Hamlet

Brian Vickers observes in passing:

In Q1, for whatever reason, [Claudius] is only referred to as ‘the King’.

I haven’t mentioned it specifically in any of these posts, but my article about coinage debasement in Hamlet and Measure for Measure (https://web.archive.org/web/20140118225803/http:/wmshakespeare.com/) provides the only “reason” I’ve ever heard proposed for why Q1 does not refer to the King as Claudius.

Very briefly, the idea is that when Hamlet shows his mother a “counterfeit presentment” of two brothers, he is actually showing her coins, one a pure gold coin with Old Hamlet’s image, and the other a “mildewed ear” of a coin bearing Claudius’s image. The debasement theme is reinforced when Hamlet calls Claudius a “blowt” king, invoking an inflationary metaphor also used by Dante in connection with Adamo, the false coiner. And the fact that Hamlet was showing the Queen coins in the first place is reinforced by the Queen’s exclamation that Hamlet’s vision of his father’s ghost is “the very coinage of your brain,” one of the earliest metaphorical uses of “coinage” on record. The coinage debasement theme is reinforced all the more by the use of the name “Claudius” since the most common association most of Shakespeare’s audience would have had with Claudius was as a debaser of coinage, due to the abundance in Elizabethan England of seemingly debased Claudius coins that had been illegally stamped during Claudius’s conquest of Britain.

Which is yet another reason, based on the textual differences between them, that we can be pretty sure that Q1 came after Q2. All of coinage and debasement references in Q2 – including the name Claudius – are simply missing from Q1. This makes sense, when viewed in conjunction with the absence in Q1 of all the other references from Q2 that might have been offensive to King James (as described in my various other posts on this theory), since King James had notoriously debased the coinage of Scotland several times during the course of his reign there.

Since there has also been some discussion of the origin of Polonius’s name (most recently perhaps Larry Weiss’s odd suggestion that it’s an agnomen along the lines of Coriolanus), I might note that the name Polonius (and its absence from Q1) fits the debasement/Q2-came-first theory, since Poland had been associated with debasement ever since Copernicus had written an essay about it in 1519. Sigismund III’s issuance of a 100 ducat coin in 1621 likewise suggests the Poland’s ducats were debased compared to others during this general time frame.

Just to be clear, I find Sir Brian’s and Gerald Downs’s proofs that Q1 is a memorial reconstruction very persuasive. I’m just pointing out that what was reconstructed was likely a version that had already been edited in a way to make it palatable to King James, and that if I’m right, this helps date Q1 to 1603 – not the 1580s.

Tom Krause

From: Gerald E. Downs <jerrydowns@aol.com>

Date: October 8, 2019 at 2:22 AM EDT

Subject: Re: Claudius Q1 Hamlet

Tom Krause cites Brian Vickers: “In Q1, for whatever reason, [Claudius] is only referred to as ‘the King’.”

[M]y article about coinage debasement . . . provides the only “reason” I’ve ever heard proposed for why Q1 does not refer to the King as Claudius.

Here is another reason (hypothetical, but proved elsewhere): If Q1 is a shorthand report, there is no ‘Claudius’ in the dialogue to provide the King’s name, which isn’t really a problem. For what it’s worth, neither Q2 nor the F reprint have the name in dialogue. The only speech prefix is Q2’s (not F’s) ‘Claud.’ following its initial set direction. (There’s Horatio’s saylor’s mailman Claudio, however.) Because these texts are suspiciously derivative, we cannot know (or properly assume) who named the King. Though other characters are named, sometimes speech assignments are wrong.

And the fact[?] that Hamlet was showing the Queen coins . . . is reinforced by the Queen’s exclamation that Hamlet’s vision of his father’s ghost is “the very coinage of your brain,” . . . . The coinage debasement theme is reinforced all the more by the use of the name “Claudius.”

Q1 has ‘weakenesse’ instead of ‘coinage’; playgoers would have no reference to “Claudius” if extant texts are representative. Q1 seems to get a lot more from the “pictures”: ‘A looke fit for a murder and a rape.’ Tom’s Q2 theory is interesting.

Gerald E. Downs

From: Thomas Krause <tkrause637@gmail.com>

Date: October 9, 2019 at 5:59 AM EDT

Subject: Re: Claudius in Q1 Hamlet

Both Peter Holland and Gerald Downs gently point out that the name Claudius is not spoken in Q2 or F, a point which I acknowledge in my article, endnote 83 (https://web.archive.org/web/20150322010116/http:/wmshakespeare.com/PictureinLittleArticle.pdf), but momentarily lost sight of in my last post. My original point remains that the name Claudius would not have appeared in Q1 because the use of that name in Q2/F is one of several indicia that Hamlet’s uncle has debased the Danish coinage, none of which appear in Q1. But I have to acknowledge that if Q1 is a memorial reconstruction of a play in which “Claudius” was never spoken, that’s another good reason why “Claudius” does not appear in Q1.

Tom Krause

From: Gerald E. Downs <jerrydowns@aol.com>

Date: October 16, 2019 at 2:43 AM

Subject: Re: Polonius and Debasement

On 10/11 Larry Weiss noted:

Tom Krause—who has spent years here contending, but convincing no one, that Hamlet and Measure for Measure are really polemics for the gold standard . . . demands further evidence for my point that Hamlet is a richer play if we understand “Polonius” as an agnomen awarded to Corambis for material assistance in defeating Poland.

Larry asks (10/14): who are the “plenty of people” who find Krause’s contentions to be meritorious?

Tom had responded (10/13):

. . . I’ll briefly state that (1) he’s completely mischaracterized my work as to both plays; and (2) plenty of people on Shaksper, and many more off, have found significant merit in many aspects (and in some cases all aspects) of my proposals.

First, I’ve not read the MM part of Tom’s article; second, polemic always sounds like polemic to me. I missed the earlier years’ discussions and had no correspondence with Tom until I asked for a pdf last week. I believe Larry does somewhat misstate the case, which Tom himself perhaps overstates. I count myself as one who finds “significant merit in many aspects” of Tom’s article.

We all know how difficult it can be to wring conviction out of Shakespearians. But some inferences on a particular track may be seen as worthy and heading in the right direction even if final conclusions can’t be agreed on. I’ve long accepted that for Shakespeare and Hamlet “wordplay” may be their theme, the sum of its parts outweighing all else. That is, any “theme” discovered through recognition of ambiguity and related imagery won’t be the “whole story,” specially intended, or any reflection of authorial opinion. Some of the wordplay will never be deciphered. (Thanks to Julia, I spent last evening beginning an analysis of ‘good kissing carrion’ with Furness’s five dense pages).

These themes nevertheless exist, to complicate the texts. For example, I credit the conjecture that ‘the rest is silence’ was meant to be spoken by Horatio: announcing silence wasn’t Hamlet’s style. I had not noticed the many images that Tom promotes as relevant to monetary debasement. To me, a significant number are identified as such. Shakespeare, then, was interested in the gold standard and its dynamic opportunity for tricky lingo.

Further, the topic was of immense importance to Europe, its monarchs, and society. It matters less now: we have derivative bundled debt insurance (and whatnot) to create somebody else’s money. Tom states:

In Hamlet, debasement yields . . . interpretation of three passages . . . . When Hamlet says that Claudius’s “picture in little” is selling for up to one hundred ducats, he is alluding to Claudius’s picture . . . on debased coins that people must accept for value. When Hamlet demands that his mother look upon the “pictures” of old Hamlet and Claudius in a “counterfeit presentment,” he is showing her two coins, one of which is debased.

I find merit in these readings and others. Larry asks,

Where is the textual support? How does that notion enrich the dramas? Doesn’t such a political and technical dispute, rather, distract from the themes of those plays and their entertainment value? . . . Julia Griffin . . . already weighed in on my side, and others have endorsed my theory off-line, including Stephen Booth, no slouch when it comes to literary criticism.

As I recall, Booth endorsed Don Foster’s Elegy. Though I trust no one will appeal to my authority, here’s part of what I wrote to Tom on recent occasions:

1) Tom, I tried to get your article . . . . I think it’s important to follow up such connections as you notice. I’m thinking of posting a comment or two but can’t until I get a clear view of your ideas. Offhand, the pictures as coins would work quite well, and your citations are intriguing. It’s too bad the texts don’t come with original set directions.

2) I’ve not read the MM part yet. Your “debasement” theme in Hamlet is very convincing. I’ve always been impressed with overlooked wordplay that jumps out once we catch on . . . . But first we have to catch on, which I didn’t on coining.

My assumption is that Shakespeare didn’t fall to wordplay accidentally; all is on purpose—if overdone . . . . One may carry any conviction to unfortunate extremes, but Hamlet lives on wordplay; in this case you are right . . . . The R&G friendship was certainly debased and Hamlet speaks to them only in riddles.

I am too skeptical of Q1 origins to be easily convinced that the players involved would alter the theme on James’s account. I have taken them (whoever they were) to have understood virtually none of the wordplay (just as Hamlet would expect of all but Horatio). As centuries have not yielded it all up, one needn’t condemn the “reconstructors” as dummies; but they were surely not coached by the author or explicit stage directions—at any ‘stage’ of the play.

Yesterday I wondered if ‘coinage of your brain’ might actually be meant to be spoken by Hamlet. . . . [t]he dialogue seems corrupt—not that I’ve figured it out. Q2 reads:

Ger. This is the very coynage of your braine,

This bodilesse creation extacie is very cunning in.

Ham. My pulse as yours . . .

The phrase, ‘is very cunning in’ doesn’t make sense to me . . . ‘very cunning’ could be a first crack at reading ‘very coinage’; and This, repeated, could have caused both eyeskip omission and miscorrection. Her second line is too long and may indicate proofing.

One would expect ‘coinage’ to be Hamlet’s word, debasement-wise; Her first line could possibly belong to him. However, I can’t say how, and probably not.

. . . . I’ll be interested in your MM observations. Your topic is far from talked out . . . . On the other hand, it’s hard to keep up. . . . You did a good job.

3) Patterns are easy to imagine. Take Hamlet’s . . . “redemption,” for example. . . . [I]n reference to numerous characters: ‘Leave her to heaven’. It’s a continuing obsession for Shakespeare, but incidental in the sense that he and Hamlet share pet topics . . . . It appears that debasement, a Royal problem until Spain donated some gold to Liz’s pirates, was on their minds.

Q1 misremembers just about everything. With Shakespeare far removed, players were forced to interpret dialogue on their own, with dismal results. Some Q1 remnants are helpful . . . .

. . . . I’ve always liked Charles D. Stewart’s small “Crux” book. He suggests that ‘the body is with the King’ means the King conceives of the dead body—it exists to him. But the King doesn’t exist to the dead body. Sh. Uses with every way imaginable. Perhaps no debasement link.

I do believe this evidence meaningfully helps to understand the play, as does any wordplay explication. Tom sent me a link to Eric C. Graf’s “Juan de Mariana and the Modern American Politics of Money: Salamanca, Cervantes, Jefferson, and the Austrian School,” a very informative article about a Spanish contemporary that not only goes a long way toward explaining Shakespeare’s interest but shows how historical thinking helps out-of-touch moderns to understand still-important topics.

Gerald E. Downs

From: Thomas Krause <tkrause637@gmail.com>

Date: October 16, 2019 at 9:23 AM EDT

Subject: Re: Polonius

Using noticeably different phrasing from his past posts on the subject, Larry Weiss now writes:

“I have long conjectured that the name Polonius was expected by Shakespeare to be understood as an agnomen awarded for meritorious service as a soldier or statesman in the wars King Hamlet waged against Poland. I make no argument about what Shakespeare “intended”; I cannot read the minds of people who have been dead for 403 years.”

I feel like my work here is nearly done. My previous posts were reacting what to what Mr. Weiss had described as a “view” he had “held” for a long time. I was simply trying to point out that his “view” was most likely wrong. Now that it’s just a conjecture, debating it seems pointless. Yes, Tony Burton, it’s possible that pre-Polonius was there on the ice when Old Hamlet smote the Polacks or the poleaxe, and it’s even possible that this “smoting” was done against an unarmed peace delegation at his suggestion (although the premeditation in this scenario does seem inconsistent with the focus on Old Hamlet’s frown and his anger). And yes, Julia Griffin (who might be offended on the character’s behalf by Tony Burton’s speculation), it’s possible that after leaving the university the character went on to achieve honorable military acclaim in Poland. And yes, Mr. Weiss, given that Polonius does show some signs of cleverness and courage even now, it’s not unreasonable to speculate that he was clever and courageous in the past, but we don’t have to have him implicitly conquering Poland (diplomatically or otherwise) to get the audience to realize that.

As mentioned before, among other objections, I just don’t think Shakespeare would have had Polonius brag about having played Julius Caesar in his younger days if he wanted the “judicious” (Larry Weiss’s word) members of the audience to think that Polonius was a military hero. And I still haven’t heard of an example of an agnomen being awarded for a political triumph (much less for the sort of treachery described by Tony Burton), or even that there was a political triumph over Poland.

As Pervez Rizvi points out, given the contemporaneous usages of Polonius disclosed by EEBO, it’s most likely that the name was just a name, possibly meant to signify a character with Polish roots. A blog I just found makes the interesting point that the word “Polonian” is used in other plays from Shakespeare’s time “to express something flashy, flamboyant and excessive[, b]ut most importantly — foreign.” Knowing all of this, if Shakespeare had wanted to give Polonius an impressive backstory, it seems unlikely that he would have tried to communicate it solely – and solely to Larry Weiss’s “judicious” – through Polonius’s name, which was already weighed down by all that other baggage, of which the “judicious” would also have been aware.

Changing topics, Larry Weiss challenges me to identify anyone who agrees with my theory about Hamlet and Measure for Measure. Well, I presented the paper at a reasonably well-attended Shakespeare conference, where it was well received and selected for publication in the conference journal. If Mr. Weiss were to read the old Shaksper posts, he’d probably find that as many people expressed support for my theories as skepticism over them, and of course, I’ve had off-list support as well, both from Shaksper and from my website. At my suggestion, the Director of the Illinois Shakespeare Festival staged Hamlet with coins in the “counterfeit presentment” scene one year, and he said it worked very well. Oh, and soon after publication of the article a very prominent Shakespeare scholar wrote me to say:

“I’m convinced, for example, that your suggestion that Hamlet shows Gertrude two coins is far more powerful a stage image than his confronting her with two Hilliard-like miniatures, and will say as much (and acknowledge) when I teach the play again.”

And literally everybody that I’ve told the theories to in person – where there is an opportunity for immediate back and forth discussion – has concluded that there is something there.

As one might expect, I join Mr. Weiss in urging SHAKSPERIANS to contrast his “analysis” of the agnomen conjecture with my analyses of Hamlet and Measure for Measure. Contrary to Mr. Weiss’s repeated mischaracterizations, I am not saying that either play is a “polemic” for or against the gold standard, or even that they are “really about coinage debasement.” As anyone who has read my article or even any of the discussion about it would realize, I’m just suggesting that there are a few more references to coinage and debasement in those plays than most critics and annotators realize.

The Measure for Measure argument was thoroughly discussed over about 150 pages of posts on Shaksper back in 2004, so we don’t need to repeat all that here, although I’d be happy to engage anyone off-list on it. The Hamlet theory did not get nearly as much treatment, so I think we could fruitfully explore that here a bit more. As I mentioned in a relatively recent post, the argument is that “picture in little” and “king’s countenance” have a double-meaning that includes coins, and that when Hamlet shows his mother two “pictures” in a “counterfeit presentment”, and describes the “pictures” in ways that evoke a comparison between pure and debased coins, he is actually showing her coins, as the queen herself alludes to when she later in the scene calls the ghost the “coinage” of Hamlet’s brain. I’m not sure why Mr. Weiss thinks that none of that is “text-based,” but I look forward to hearing from him and others.

For those who’ve missed my past links, you can access a .pdf of the article from this archived version of my website (https://web.archive.org/web/20141218123948/http:/wmshakespeare.com/), where you’ll also find other materials relating to the theories, including an annotated version of our previous discussion of the matter. If you have any trouble accessing the article from the link, let me know and I’ll send you a .pdf.

Tom Krause