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A View of the Views About Hamlet

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Albert H. Tolman
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Extract

“Verily, given a printing-press upon German soil,” says Dr. Furness, “and lo! an essay on Hamlet.” England and the United States, as might be expected, vie with Germany in contributing to the literature of this play. All the sister-nations of Europe, too, have their own essays on Hamlet. Numberless are those who confidently take up the task enjoined on Horatio by the dying Prince:—

“Report me and my cause aright.”

It behooves one therefore who would put forth another paper upon Hamlet to show cause at the outset why he should not be looked upon as a public enemy.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , 1898, pp. 155 - 184
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1898

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References

Note 1 in page 155 I wish to acknowledge my constant indebtedness in preparing this paper to the great Variorum edition of Hamlet by Dr. H. H. Furness. Each criticism quoted or alluded to in the following pages can be found in that work unless some other specific reference is given.

The important work by Professor Loening of Jena, Die Hamlet-Tragödie Shakespeares, was not known to me until after this essay had reached what I supposed to be its completed form. Since reading that most penetrating, thorough, and judicious discussion of the play, I have used the new light thus obtained in revising my own more condensed treatment, but I have not changed in any way my fundamental plan. I first learned the significance of Loening's book from Professor W. H. Hulme's careful review in the Modern Language Notes for December, 1896.

Note 1 in page 159 I have not yet been able to read with care Kuno Fischer's Shakespeare's Hamlet, Heidelberg, 1896. F. A. Leo, in the Shakespeare Jahrbuch for 1897, expresses the opinion that the book is on the whole a presentation of the view of Goethe.

Note 1 in page 163 “ Hamlet. From a Student's Notebook.” The Westminster Review. Reprinted in the Eclectic Magazine for August, 1897.

Note 2 in page 163 Shakspere and His Predecessors, N. Y., 1896, p. 398.

Note 1 in page 164 Shakspere, Berlin, 1894, pp. 151, 154.

Note 1 in page 165 Introduction to Shakespeare, p. 218.

Note 1 in page 168 Furness, ii, p. 95.

Note 1 in page 169 The first edition of Richardson's Essays appeared in 1775. Furness cites the edition of 1797.

Note 1 in page 171 School edition of Hamlet, p. 21.

Note 1 in page 177 Thomas Kyd und sein Kreis, Berlin, 1892.

Note 2 in page 177 Vietor's parallel edition of the three texts of the play is heartily commended (Marburg, 1891).

Note 1 in page 178 Lippincott's Magazine, vol. 45.

Note 2 in page 178 The writer of this article is responsible for the passages in brackets: these bring out more explicitly what I suppose to be the thought of Dr. Furnivall.

Note 3 in page 178 Furness, Hamlet, I, p. 391.

Note 1 in page 179 The Elizabethan Hamlet. Scribners, 1895, pp. 49, 84.

Note 1 in page 181 Poems and Essays, p. 62.