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Garrick's Long Lost Alteration of Hamlet

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

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Extract

One incident in the life of David Garrick—Shakespeare's Priest—has subsequently evoked the harshest kind of criticism even from his professed admirers, namely, his alteration of Hamlet. James Boaden, who prefaced an edition of the actor's letters in 1831 with a biographical sketch, wrote:

If there be any one act of his management which we should wish to blot out from these pages it is his rash violation of the whole scheme of Shakespeare's Hamlet … All the contrivances of Shakespeare by which he added absence from the scene to the melancholy irresolution of the character were rendered abortive. It became as much a monodrame as Timon; and the passive Hamlet was kept on the rack of perpetual exertion. His very speeches were trimmed up with startling exclamations and furious resolves: even Yoric himself was thrown out of the play to render the wit and pathos of Sterne inapplicable and unintelligible. It was an actor's mutilation of all parts but his own.

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PMLA , Volume 49 , Issue 3 , September 1934, pp. 890 - 905
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1934

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References

1 iii, 86.

2 Life of Kemble (1825), i, 110–113.

3 (London, 1782), ii, 144. Charles Dibdin repeated much of this condemnation in a paragraph of criticism in his Complete History of the English Stage (London, 1800), v, 240.

4 Life of Arthur Murphy (London, 1811), pp. 252–274.—It is worth noting that at the time Murphy wrote this he was suffering from a fit of spleen brought on by Garrick's refusal to produce his play Alzuma.

5 (London, 1821), ii, 691–695.

6 It is this version, too, that Boaden prints from in his life of Kemble.

7 (London, 1830), v, 343–350.

8 The complete letter is in Wilkinson's Memoirs, iv, 360.

9 Life of David Garrick, ii, 288.

10 New Series, ed. by Clement Scott (May, 1886), pp. 252 ff.

11 Note 6, above.

12 viii, Introduction, 12–13.

13 Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist (1901), pp. 161–173.

14 English translation (N. Y., 1912), pp. 77–78.

15 Professor G. C. D. Odell alone, in his Shakespeare from Betterton to Irving, i, 385–390, refrains from passing judgment on a text he has not seen.

16 Unpublished MS. is in Folger Library, Case ii, folder 4, 880.

17 I. Reed, Biographia Dramatica, ii, 144, gives a further note on Garrick's intention to publish the Alteration.

18 Boaden, Private Correspondence of David Garrick, i, 514, 573.

19 Ibid., 451.

20 Boaden, op. cit., ii, 126.—The date is January 10, 1773.

21 The original is in the Folger Library, Case i, folder 5, 786.

22 December 4, 1773. Unpublished. Folger Case i, folder 2, 1132.

23 King Lear alone that entire year brought in more receipts than Hamlet. Twice its amounts came to £286. The Drury Lane Record Books furnish a mine of reference material of this sort.

24 Records of performances, dates, and box receipts. Folger Library.

25 Printed in The Wandering Patentee (London, 1795), i, 166–173.—A comparison of the two will show, as Professor Odell suggests, that to Wilkinson's bombast Garrick's ending is simplicity itself.

26 It is my privilege here to acknowledge the aid I received from M. Seymour de Ricci, Mr. W. Roberts, Mr. W. Geoffrey Horsman, of Puttick and Simpson, and Mr. Van Sommer in tracing the location of this volume during the last one hundred and fifty-four years.

27 Printed in 1747, of 96 pages, bound in boards along with a copy of Beaumont and Fletcher's Humorous Lieutenant.

28 Hazelton Spencer, Shakespeare Improved (Cambridge, 1927), p. 175 ff.

29 I wish to thank Mr. Henry N. Paul for the use of this quoted material. It is from his unpublished article on the Hughs' Hamlet.

30 Fitzgerald, Life of Garrick, ii, 113.

31 This text was issued again by Haws and Company, n.d., and by T. Whitford, 1765 (wrongly dated 1755), by Woodfall in 1767 and 1768. Richardson is supposed to have reprinted it in 1768 and again in 1770.—I am indebted to Mr. Henry N. Paul for this information.

32 Folger Library, Case i, folder 10, 1009.—This letter is undated, but according to Hedgcock, op. cit., p. 344: “Madam Necker was amongst those who came to London in 1776 to witness the actor's last public appearances.” I take it that the letter was written at that time by way of explanation of one of his last performances of Hamlet.

33 Op. cit., p. 9.

34 This suggestion is often credited to Mrs. Montagu and to Dr. Johnson. It was given to Garrick, however, by the Reverend Peter Whalley in a letter, February 20, 1748. (Boaden i, 23, wrongly dated 1744.)

35 An example in point is the dialogue between Polonius and Ophelia, to which the King is also a party:

Pol. … 'tis too much proved that with Devotion's visage and pious action, we do sugar o'er the Devil himself.
King. O 'tis too true. How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience …

This part, which immediately precedes the soliloquy “To be or not to be,” had been cut since the time of Betterton.

36 Unpublished, Folger Library, Correspondence iv, 34.

37 Œuvres Complètes, xlix, 316 (1785).

38 J. Q. Adams, A Life of William Shakespeare (New York, 1923), p. 13.

39 Quoted in an article by Dr. W. J. Lawrence, The Stage (June 5, 1924).—The origina letter is in the Folger Library.

40 Adolphus, John, Esq., Memoirs of John Bannister (London, 1839), i, 55–59.

41 August 25, 1776.

42 An Essay on the Genius and Writings of Shakespeare, compared with the Greek and French dramatic poets, with some remarks on the misrepresentations of Voltaire, L., 1769.

43 In this table the first column of act numerals refers to the acts as divided in the versions preceding the Alteration; the second column to act divisions in the Alteration.