Whither Hamlet's “Words, Words, Words”? Notes on Dialogue and Designs in Hamlet

Abstract

Four Hamlets and Hamlets have evolved from recent text-editorial practice, corresponding with, respectively, Q1 1603, Q2 1604–05, F 1623, and the composite received text combining Q2 and F. Q2 is the fullest and most authoritative text, F is a slightly shorter, cut revision containing passages omitted in Q2. At present, Q1—half the length of Q2—is either young Shakespeare's first version or, more likely, a later derivative of F1's ancestor (c. 1601–03). Although the most recent editors (of Arden 3 and the New Oxford Shakespeare) favor individual editions of Q1, Q2, and F, there remains much to be said for the received composite text that intercuts longer passages omitted in Q2 and F as a reader's text of the whole literary Hamlet. This Hamlet benefits from full dialogue by and about the Prince, including his important speeches cut in F and in most productions, 1.4.17–38 (notably “So oft it chances”), and his last soliloquy, 4.4.32–66 (“How all occasions do inform against me”). The whole Hamlet is a salutary corrective to the post-Romantic Hamlet-as-Coleridge and Olivier's voice-overed “man who could not make up his mind.” Not mad, he feigns well in prose that serves as easily in genial conversation with those of lower social station—guards, players, gravediggers—and like much else shows him something of a mensh. Hamlet was every inch a king-in-waiting (not much longer: “This is I, Hamlet the Dane”), and he dies, politically responsible, casting his vote for Fortinbras. In the perspective of our own time, “His greatest operational weapon is his humanity.”