2. The Pyrrhus-Priam-Hecuba story furnishes a kind of parallel to the Hamlet-Claudius-Gertrude story. As Mr. Trench well puts it: "Around the slaying of a king all Hamlet's thoughts ever revolve; so in this half-dramatized epic the most attractive passage of all is that about the death of Priam." (p. 104)

These are rather trivial and incidental purposes. By themselves they would hardly justify the intrusion of some seventy lines of melodramatic bombast, irrelevant to the actual story of Hamlet.

3. There is, however, an aspect in which the declamation has very decided relevance to Hamlet's case. Let us assume with Mr. Bradley that Shakespeare understands Hamlet to be suffering from melancholic depression, and then ask what effect upon his hero the dramatist would look for from such an exciting bit of dramatic entertainment. Clearly, a salutary effect. We all know how wonderfully fits of "blues" caused by disappointment or excessive introspection are alleviated by a play, particularly a wild farce or lurid melodrama. The mists of self-absorption are cleared from our brains; we see our own troubles in proper focus and perspective.

So it is with Hamlet. It is no accident, I think, that the announcement of the players' coming finds him in the lowest spirits he has shown, complaining of his "bad dreams," confessing that "Denmark's a prison" and that man delights not him; no, nor woman neither. He brightens up at once when the actors are announced and becomes more normal and gayer in their presence. He thirsts for dramatic distraction. "We'll e'en to 't like French falconers," he cries; "we'll have a speech straight. . . . Come, a passionate speech." Perhaps the bad dramatic taste for which he is blamed in his praise of "Æneas's tale to Dido" is to be ascribed to his momentary craving for strong excitement. He listens avidly to the declamation and snubs Polonius savagely for finding it too long. When the entertainment is over and Hamlet is left alone, the Aristotelian purgation by tragic pity and terror has been effected. He is in the position of a mountain climber long held inactive by befogging mist, when suddenly the cloud is dispelled and instantaneously he sees his course before him.

The great soliloquy which follows has two parts, quite logically connected. In the first part, as the mists are blown from his brain, Hamlet feels a natural wonder and disgust that he has been inactive so long. The cause of delay, being entirely psychological, is quite inconceivable when it is momentarily removed. He contrasts him

self with the actor and proposes three hypothetical reasons for his failure to perform the duty of vengeance: (1) he is "a dull and muddymettled rascal"; (2) he is a coward; (3) he is an ass that unpacks his heart with words. At this point he contemptuously drops the vain search for causes, and like the keen and efficient thinker he naturally is, turns his attention to the matter before him:

Fie upon't! foh! About, my brain!

In the second part of the soliloquy, Hamlet looks to the future and apprehends no more difficulty than when the vengeance was first asked of him. He sees nothing to stop him. However, weeks have passed-perhaps two months-since he heard the Ghost's words, and the impression of the interview is inevitably less vivid than it was. The facts of the revelation are perfectly clear, but naturallyhow could it be otherwise?-he no longer feels that ardent conviction. of the trustworthiness of his supernatural visitant which had enabled him to cry out to Horatio and Marcellus on the night of the meeting: Touching this vision here,

It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you.

Hamlet now realizes what Horatio and Marcellus then realizedwhat the people of Shakespeare's time generally understood-that there are ghosts honest and ghosts dishonest. In the actual presence of the spirit he had no doubts, but could he conscientiously trust that feeling now? There is no effort to evade any responsibility or shield himself behind any supposititious or ungenuine doubt. He asks only what any scrupulous man must have demanded"grounds more relative" than his two-months' old recollection of his impression of the spirit's sincerity.

Hamlet is never more normal than at the end of this long and carefully prepared soliloquy. But the natural reaction follows. He sleeps the next night well, and when he awakes on the morning before the play the fog has again settled over his brain-the thicker doubtless for its temporary dispersal. The relapse after artificial relief such as has been offered to him is wont to be serious, and the "To be or not to be" soliloquy shows him indeed in the blankest despair. The performance of the play rouses him, but insufficiently. A dozen distractions press upon him. The speech beginning" "Tis now the very witching time of night" and still more that which commences "Now might I do it pat" show how uncertain of his

course he is, and he ends by venting irresponsibly on Polonius the energy which in the third soliloquy he meant to direct against Claudius. Oblivion and fatalistic indifference follow. Then, as if to enforce the point of the third soliloquy, Shakespeare shows in the seventh how like causes produce like results in Hamlet's mind, when the cheap melodrama of Fortinbras's expedition again unclouds his brain and effects another brief moment of clear vision.

Yale University.

CUTS AND INSERTIONS IN SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS*

BY JOHN MATTHEWS MANLY.

Such a meeting as this is, in general, I well believe, no place for detailed technical discussion. Therefore, if I have dared to base my whole paper on certain features of Shakespeare's versification, it is only because the technique involved is very simple and the results --if established-are important not only to the special student of metrics but to everyone who is interested in Shakespeare's plays as plays and in his double attitude towards his work, as craftsman and as poet.

It is well-known that several of Shakespeare's plays exist in more than one version and that many passages which appear in one of these versions do not appear in another. For example, in Hamlet, the famous passage on drunkenness, beginning:

This heavy-headed revel east and west

· Makes us traduced and taxed of other nations

is in the second Quarto-the first decently printed copy of the playbut not in the Folio. Why this difference? Was it cut out of the Folio version or added in the Quarto version? Can we find out? I think that in this and many other cases we can.

There are several kinds of possible evidence. For the sake of simplicity I wish at present to discuss only one kind, using the others, if at all, only as corroborative. For this purpose I shall ask you to grant me one assumption, to be used not as a hard and fast rule but as a working hypothesis. This is that Shakespeare's normal dramatic line was the so-called ten-syllabled line and that where one version has a normal line and the other an imperfect one, the normal line probably represents his original intention and the imperfect one the accidental result of cutting or inserting, as the case may be. To suppose that he wrote a poor line by first intention and obtained a good one by accident seems absurd. Let us illustrate what I mean. In Hamlet IV, vii, 69-82, Q2 contains a passage not contained in the Folio. The first line of the passage reads:

And call it accident.

The last line reads

My Lord, I will be ruled;

Imparting health and graveness. Two months since.

*Read at the meeting of the American Philological Society, St. Louis, Dec. 29,

The Folio has of course only one line at the joint, which is:

And call it accident. Some two months since.

Which result is the more likely to be accidental: that the Folio got a good ten-syllabled line by cutting or that the Quarto got a twelvesyllabled line as the result of an insertion?

There are twelve passages of more or less importance that appear in the Folio edition of Hamlet but not in the Second Quarto and sixteen that appear in the Quarto but not in the Folio. Other plays which exist in more than one version show similar differences. I do not maintain that this simple verse test always enables us to determine whether we have to do with a cut or with an insertion; sometimes the verse is perfect in both versions, sometimes it is defective in both, and sometimes there are other factors which render a decision difficult or doubtful. But there are some passages in each of the plays in question that seem capable of definite classification by this method. As time is lacking for a discussion of all the passages, we shall discuss only a few examples, illustrating the method.

Let us first take a cut in the Folio. In III, iv, 160 ff., Hamlet, addressing his mother, says:

And that shall lend a kind of easiness

To the next abstinence; the next more easy;
For use almost can change the stamp of nature
And either [rout] the devil, or throw him out
With wondrous potency. Once more goodnight.

So the Quarto. The folio has only

Assume a virtue, if you have it not.

Refrain tonight,

And that shall lend a kind of easiness

To the next abstinence. Once more goodnight.

Were the two missing passages cut out in the Folio or inserted in the Quarto? In the Quarto, the meter is perfect throughout. The lines of the Folio can be made up into respectable verse thus:

Refrain tonight and that shall lend a kind

Of easiness to the next abstinence.