Nash and the Earlier Hamlet

Extract

The sceptical reconsideration of accepted theories is often of advantage in revealing weak points and establishing strong ones; Professor Jack's paper on Thomas Kyd and the Ur-Hamlet in the last issue of the Publications will no doubt be of service in both these ways; but it does not seem likely that his interpretation of the well known passage from Nash's prefatory epistle to Greene's Menaphon will displace that “all but universally accepted by scholars.” It is, however, ingenious enough to merit careful examination from the conservative point of view. On the broader issue Mr. Jack has raised, it is to be remembered, in the first place, that this passage is by no means the only evidence of an earlier Hamlet. The entry in Henslowe's Diary under date June 9, 1594, and the reference in Lodge's Wit's Miserie (1596) to “the ghost, which cried so miserally at the theator, like an oisterwife, Hamlet revenge” prove conclusively the existence of a play on the subject of Hamlet at a date when Shakspere's tragedy was unknown, if we are to be guided by its omission from the Meres list and the unanimous opinion of Shaksperean critics. The general resemblance of the earlier Hamlet, so far as it can be divined, to the type of revenge-play of which The Spanish Tragedy is the most conspicuous example, must also be borne in mind; but these are considerations familiar to students of the Elizabethan drama, and need not be urged here. Let us turn to the new interpretation of Nash's reference to contemporary literature, and see how far it is borne out by the text.