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HAMLET AND ORESTES

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1

THE BRITISH ACADEMY
THE ANNUAL SHAKESPEARE LECTURE
1914

Hamlet and Orestes
A

Study

in Traditional

Types

By
Gilbert Murray, LL.D., D.Litt.
Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford
Fellow of the

Academy

New York
Oxford University Press American Branch
35 West 32nd Street

London

:

Humphrey Milford

THE BRITISH ACADEMY
THE ANNUAL SHAKESPEARE LECTURE
1914

Hamlet and Orestes
A

Study

in Traditional

Types

By
Gilbert Murray, LL.D., D.Litt.
Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford
Fellow of the Academy

New York
Oxford University Press American Branch
35 West 32nd Street

London

:

Humphrey Milford

Copyright in the United States of …show more content…

As for Hamlet, I note in passing the well-known fragments of evidence which indicate the existence of a Hamlet-tragedy before the publication of Shakespeare 's Second Quarto in 1604.
These are, counting backwards a phrase in Dekker 's Satiromastix, 1602, 'My name 's Hamlet: Revenge! '
1598. Gabriel Harvey 's remarks about Shakespeare 's Hamlet.
:

The

true date of this entry

is

disputed.

Lodge, Wifs Miserie and the World 's Madness: 'he looks as pale as the ghost which cried so miserally at the theator like an oysterwife, Hamlet, revenge. '
1594. Henslowe 's Diary records a play called Hamlet as acted at Newington Butts Theatre on June 9.
The earliest reference seems to be in Nash 's Epistle prefixed to
Greene 's Menaphon: it is dated 1589, but was perhaps printed in
1587.
Yet English Seneca read by candle light yeeldes many good sentences, as Bloud is a beggar, and so foorth: and if you intreate him f aire in a frosty morning, he will affoord you whole
1596.

'

Hamlets, I should say handfulls of tragicall speeches. '
The play of Hamlet is extant in three main forms
The First Quarto, dated 1603 but perhaps printed in 1602. It is entitled ' The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet Prince of Denmark

by William Shake-speare, As

it

hath been at divers times acted

;

:

:

HAMLET AND ORESTES

5

by his Highnesse servants in the Cittie of London as also in the two Vniversities of Cambridge and Oxford and

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