2023 Thirlby (1733-), commenting on Theobald’s SD Enter Duke, and Duchess, Players, says: “No need of that [Players] here for there is neither Duke or Duchess in the general play.”

2023-2135 Stubbs (1736, pp. 31-2): <p.31> “The Scene represented by the Players is in wretched Verse. This we </ p.31><p.32> may, without incurring the Denomination of an ill natur’d Critick, venture to pronounce, that in almost every Place where Shakespeare has attempted Rhime, either in the Body of his Plays, or at the Ends of Acts or Scenes, he falls far short of the Beauty and Force of his Blank Verse: One would think they were written by two different Persons. I believe we may justly take Notice, that Rhime never arrived at its true Beauty, never to its Perfection in England, until long since Shakespeare’s Time.” </p.32>

2023-2135 Gentleman (ed. 1773): “This scene of the mock play is properly much shortened.”

2023 Strachey (1848, p. 66): <p.66> “The introduction of the Interlude (here as in other plays,) heightens our feeling of the main Play being a real action of men and women, while the rhyme, &c., and the whole structure of the Interlude, distinguish it from the real dialogue, in a way corresponding with that which has been pointed out in reference to the player’s recital of the speech of Æneas.” </p.66>

2023 King and Queene] Tschischwitz (ed. 1869): “Act 2.2.563 hatte H. bereits gefragt: Könnt ihr die Ermordung des G o n z a g o spielen? Und Act 3.2.249, erklärt er doch: Gonzago is the d u k e ’ s name; im Dumb show ist jedoch von einem K ö n i g und einer K ö n i g e n die Rede. Dagegen kennt die Q1 im kleinen Schauspiel nur Duke und Duchess, die Albertus und Baptista geheissen haben, wogegen auch hier wiederum Lucianus als nephew to the K i n g eingeführt wird. Der Ort der Handlung ist in Q1 nicht Vienna sondern Guyana. Die Verse der Q1 sind zum grossen Theil ganz abweichend von denen der Q2 und der F1. Dabei ist auffallend, dass Q1 im Dumb-show ebenfalls einen König und eine Königin erwähnt, und den Lucianus ausdrücklich als den bezeichnet, welcher den K ö n i g vergiftet; dagegen fragt an der betreffenden Stelle Hamlet auch in Q1 den Schauspieler: can you not play the murder of Gonzago? also nicht: the murder of Albertus. In dies Gewirr kommt nur dadurch einiges Licht, dass Hamlet ausdrücklich erklärt: this play is the i m a g e of a murder done in Vienna. Er bezieht sich hier also auf eine gleichviel ob fingirte oder historische Thatsache, wobei er die Namen der historischen Personen -- nicht die des Stücks, die unbenannt bleiben -- angiebt. So konnte es auch nur kommen, dass in Q1 ein Albertus als der historisch Vergiftete angegeben wird, weil im Stück Herzog (Gonzago) und Herzogin (Baptista) spielen. In Q2 u. F.1. dagegen wird der Herzog Gonzago in Vienna angeführt, weil im Stück ein unbenannter König und eine Königin auftreten. Wenn es dann in allen drei Editionen heisst: Lucianus nephew to the k i n g , so bezieht sich das auf den König in dem Dumb-show, das, wie ich schon erwähnte, nach meiner Vermuthung häufig allein mag aufgeführt worden sein. Jedenfalls überliess man es bei den Aufführungen dem Regisseur, die Abänderungen nach dem Bedürfniss zu machen und vergass beim Druck die Uebereinstimmung herzustellen..” [In [2.2.563 (1603)], Hamlet had already asked: Could you play the murder of Gonzago? And in [3.2.249 (2116)], he yet explains: Gonzago is the duke’s name, but in the Dumb-show they speak of a King and a Queen. On the other hand, Q1 only knows a Duke and Duchess in the little play, called Albertus and Baptista, whereas here too Lucianus is again introduced as nephew to the king. The location of the action is in Q1 not Vienna, but Guyana. The verses of Q1 are for the most part different from those of Q2 and F1. In this connection it is striking that Q1 in the Dumb-show also mentions a king and a queen, and explicitly names Lucianus as the one who poisons the King. On the other hand, also in the passage in question in Q1 , Hamlet asks the players, can you not play the murder of Gonzago? thus not the murder of Albertus. Into this confusion a little light comes only in that Hamlet explicitly states: this play is the image of a murder done in Vienna. It is here thus a question of an event, no matter whether fictional or historical, for which he gives the names of the historic persons -- not those of the play, who remain unknown. So it could happen that in Q1 an Albertus is mentioned as the poisoned historical figure, while in the play appear Duke (Gonzago) and Duchess (Baptista). In Q2 and F1, however, Duke Gonzago is introduced in Vienna, while an unknown King and a Queen appear in the play. So when it says in all three editions Lucianus nephew to the king, that refers to the king in the Dumb-show, that I suspect, as I have already mentioned, often may have been performed alone. In any case they left it to the director to make changes as necessary and forgot to restore consistency for printing.]

2023 MacDonald (ed. 1885): “Very little blank verse of any kind was written before Shakspere’s; the usual form of dramatic verse was long irregular, rimed, lines; the Poet here uses the heroic couplet, which gives the resemblance to the older plays by its rimes, while also by its stately and monotonous movements the play-play is differenced from the play into which it is introduced, and caused to look intrinsically like a play in relation to the rest of the play of which it is part. In other words, it stands off form the surrounding play, slightly elevated both by form and formality.” See n. 1494.

2023-2135 Symons (apud Irving & Marshall, ed. 1890): “Strachey observes in reference to the interlude, that its introduction as in other plays, ‘heightens our feeling of the main Play being a real action of men and women, while the rhyme, &c., and the whole structure of the Interlude, distinguish it from the real dialogue, in a way corresponding with that which has been pointed out in reference to the player’s recital of the speech of Æneas’ (p. 66).”

2024-2135 Verity (ed. 1904): “This Play-scene – an ‘interlude’ in the strictest sense – is cast in the manner of the earlier Elizabethan tragedy modelled on Seneca (see p. 299). Cf. the stilted style, the classical allusions, and the thoroughly Senecan sententiousness and moralising. Its Senecan character is its essential feature.

“The picturesque machinery of the play within a play may be noted as an Italian device which had already been used by Kyd (in The Spanish Tragedie) and other writers”—The Age of Shakespeare (1903‚ II. 89}. Ward says that the device, a ‘play within a play,’ seems to have been a brief Masque, especially in the later Jacobean period when the Masque was at its height. Thus we have a Masque of Madmen in Webster’s Duchess of Malfi (1623) and a “Masque of Melancholy” in Ford’s The Lover’s Melancholy (1628). Cf. also the Wedding-Masque in AYL [5.4.108-146 (2681-2721)] and Tmp. [4.1.60-138 (1718-1808)].

“The rhyme serves the same purpose as the epic style in 2.2.433-498 [1478-1537]; that is, to mark off the ‘interlude’ from the play.”

2023-2039+2 Evans (ed. 1974): “See the Textual Notes for the corresponding lines in Q1.”

2023 ff. Beckerman (1977, pp. 307-8): <p. 307> "The third and last telling [of the murder] is . . . deliberately archaic. At least the language is. Not only in comparison to the surrounding verse but in contrast to the verse used in the Pyrrhus speeches [1509 ff.], the poetry of the play-within-the-play is ostentatiously patterned and ceremonial. No longer is the main intent of the recital the provision of informa- </p. 307> <p. 308> tion, either to the on-stage or the off-stage audience. Instead, the performance is a testing. . . . [T]he Player King and Player Queen . . . are consecrated as an icon of professed devotion. By adopting this [archaic] style, Shakespeare deliberately shifts our attention from the interplay between the Player King and Queen to the impact these two have upon the real King and Queen. In this telling, the event that was so much in the forefront of the Ghost’s story, the murder itself, is hurriedly enacted as Hamlet propels it with his insistent commentary until he forces Claudius to lose control." </p. 308>