Commentary notes (CN):

1. SMALL CAPS Indicate editions. Notes for each commentator are divided into three parts:

In the 1st two lines of a record, when the name of the source text (the siglum) is printed in SMALL CAPS, the comment comes from an EDITION; when it is in normal font, it is derived from a book, article, ms. record or other source. We occasionally use small caps for ms. sources and for works related to editions. See bibliographies for complete information (in process).

2. How comments are related to predecessors' comments. In the second line of a record, a label "without attribution" indicates that a prior writer made the same or a similar point; such similarities do not usually indicate plagiarism because many writers do not, as a practice, indicate the sources of their glosses. We provide the designation ("standard") to indicate a gloss in common use. We use ≈ for "equivalent to" and = for "exactly alike."

3. Original comment. When the second line is blank after the writer's siglum, we are signaling that we have not seen that writer's gloss prior to that date. We welcome correction on this point.

4. Words from the play under discussion (lemmata). In the third line or lines of a record, the lemmata after the TLN (Through Line Number] are from Q2. When the difference between Q2 and the authors' lemma(ta) is significant, we include the writer's lemma(ta). When the gloss is for a whole line or lines, only the line number(s) appear. Through Line Numbers are numbers straight through a play and include stage directions. Most modern editions still use the system of starting line numbers afresh for every scene and do not assign line numbers to stage directions.

5. Bibliographic information. In the third line of the record, where we record the gloss, we provide concise bibliographic information, expanded in the bibliographies, several of which are in process.

6. References to other lines or other works. For a writer's reference to a passage elsewhere in Ham. we provide, in brackets, Through Line Numbers (TLN) from the Norton F1 (used by permission); we call these xref, i.e., cross references. We call references to Shakespearean plays other than Ham. “parallels” (//) and indicate Riverside act, scene and line number as well as TLN. We call references to non-Shakespearean works “analogues.”

7. Further information: See the Introduction for explanations of other abbreviations. Click here for more information about browsing the entries and here for more information about the special symbols used in Hamletworks. Click the question mark icon above to remove this help message.

1773 v1773

v1773

1446-7 Tragicall-Historicall... Patorall] Steevens (ed. 1773): “The words distinguished by Italicks [ie tragical-historical, tragical-comical, historical-pastoral] I have recovered from the folio, and see no reason why they were hitherto omitted. There are many plays of the age, if not of Shakespeare’s, that answer to the description.”

1774-79? capn

capn

1444-50 The best...only men.] Capell (1774-79?, p. 133): “The latter half of the distinctions that follow, seem accommodated to the speaker; who flies at all subjects, and betrays his wisdom in all of them; giving us, in his talk on the present, divisions which the drama knows nothing of. The remainder of his speech is more sensible: ‘law of writ, and the liberty,’ mean– pieces written in rule, and pieces out of rule; for these, he says, his players were fitted, as well as for the ‘too-light Plautus, and too-heavy Seneca:’ but in this the Poet forgets himself, and puts his own just opinion of the writings of those authors into a mouth it is not fit for.’ “

1778 v1778

v1778 = v1773

1785 v1785

v1785 = v1778

1793 v1793

v1793 = v1785

1803 v1803

v1803 = v1793

1813 v1813

v1813 = v1803

1821 v1821

v1821 = v1813

1872 cln1

cln1

1444-50 The best...only men] Clark & Wright (ed. 1872): “In the licence granted to the Globe Company, to which Shakespeare belonged, dated 17 May, 1603, he and his associates are allowed ’ freely to use exercise the Arte and and facultie of playing Comedies, Tragedies, Histories, Enterludes, Moralls, Pastoralls, Stage plaies, & such other like.’ "

1877 clns

clns

1444-48 Tragedie . . . . Poem vnlimited] Neil (ed. 1877): Agrees with Bishop Percy. “This early claim for his histories or historical plays to a distinct place as a legitimate species, sufficiently different from tragedies and comedies to be reckoned apart, is an important fact in Shakespeare’s biography.”

1934 cam3

cam3

1444-8 Tragedie . . . . Poem vnlimited] Wilson (ed. 1934): “The speech is characteristic of Pol.’s filing--cabinet tupe of mind, still found in some public officials. It was also intended, I suspect, as a satirical epitome of the repertory and perhaps even of the play--bills of the Admiral’s men. It may be taken as axiomatic that praise from Pol. implies criticism on Sh.’s part.”

1983 Zitner

Zitner: Aristotle

1444-7 Tragedie . . . vnlimited] Zitner (1983, p. 194): <p. 194> “For his part, Shakespeare wrote pastoral-comical in As You Like It, ’tragical-historical’ in Richard II, and was to write ’tragical-comical-historical-pastoral’ in Cymbeline, ’ scene individable’ in The Tempest and ’poem unlimited’ in The Winter’s Tale. It is hardly likely that he wrote his plays as he did out of concern for the theory of drama or because of a determination to defy the notion of generic purity, though he may well have been amusing himself with the incongruous ’unities’ of The Tempest. A pedant (here Polonius), repeating by rote a laborious taxonomy developed by grammarians, is indeed amusing. Yet the amusement need not be exclusively at the expense of the literary works it points to, which may be moving or sprightly for all the full complication of the taxonomy. Hence one can question Atkins’s comment that Polonius’s parade of adjectives is a ’satire on the numerous subdivisions of contemporary drama,’ [p. 248]. If there is amusement directed at anything other than the pedantic manner of Polonius, it is directed at the necessary incongruity between the fluid mingling of kinds in </p. 194> <p. 195> actual Elizabethan drama and the brittleness of any system attempting to classify them. But this is humor, not satire, and not demonstrative of an objection--or even a relevance--to genre theory. There is, in any case, no hard evidence that Shakespeare concerned himself with literary theory or knew any of the writings of Aristotle directly, let alone the Poetics, although, of course, Aristotelian ideas were ’in the air.’ ” </p. 195>

1993 Lupton & Reinhard

Lupton & Reinhard

1444-50 Lupton & Reinhard (1993, p. 113): <p. 113>“The staging of generic criticism here is clearly meant to be ridiculous; throughout the play, Polonius represents the arch misreader, and a weak misreader at that. The appearance of questions of genre in general and of Seneca in particular in the mouth of Polonius exemplifies Hamlet’s troubled relation to (post)classical aesthetics; the play identifies with the classical precisely in its mediocrity and excess, its ‘transitional historicism,’ an identification, like Hamlet’s with Claudius, institutes not a transgressive celebration of an alternate dramatic tradition, but rather a posture of masochistic self-criticism.” </p. 113>