The ''Ur-Hamlet'' (the German prefix ''
Ur-'' means "original") is a play by an unknown author, thought to be either
Thomas Kyd
Thomas Kyd (baptised 6 November 1558; buried 15 August 1594) was an English playwright, the author of ''The Spanish Tragedy'', and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama.
Although well known in his own time, ...
or
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
. No copy of the play, dated by scholars to the second half of 1587, survives today. The play was staged in London, more specifically at
The Theatre
The Theatre was an Elizabethan playhouse in Shoreditch (in Curtain Road, part of the modern London Borough of Hackney), just outside the City of London. It was the first permanent theatre ever built in England. It was built in 1576 after the ...
in
Shoreditch
Shoreditch is a district in the East End of London in England, and forms the southern part of the London Borough of Hackney. Neighbouring parts of Tower Hamlets are also perceived as part of the area.
In the 16th century, Shoreditch was an impor ...
as recalled by Elizabethan author
Thomas Lodge
Thomas Lodge (c. 1558September 1625) was an English writer and medical practitioner whose life spanned the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods.
Biography
Thomas Lodge was born about 1558 in West Ham, the second son of Sir Thomas Lodge, Lo ...
. It includes a character named Hamlet; the only other known character from the play is a ghost who, according to Thomas Lodge in his 1596 publication ''Wits Misery and the Worlds Madnesse'', cries, "Hamlet, revenge!"
[Reference to early Hamlet play in Lodge’s Wit’s Misery, 1596]
British Library: Lodge, Thomas. ''Wits Miserie and the Worlds Madnesse: Discovering the Devils Incarnat of this Age''. Printed by Adam Islip in London (1596)
Related writings
What relation the ''Ur-Hamlet'' bears to Shakespeare's more commonly known play ''
Hamlet
''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...
'' is unclear: it may contain events supposed to have occurred before Shakespeare's tragedy or it may be an early version of that play; the
First Quarto
The earliest texts of William Shakespeare's works were published during the 16th and 17th centuries in quarto or folio format. Folios are large, tall volumes; quartos are smaller, roughly half the size. The publications of the latter are usually a ...
in particular is thought perhaps to have been influenced by the ''Ur-Hamlet''.
Authorship theories
Thomas Nashe
Thomas Nashe (baptised November 1567 – c. 1601; also Nash) was an Elizabethan playwright, poet, satirist and a significant pamphleteer. He is known for his novel ''The Unfortunate Traveller'', his pamphlets including ''Pierce Penniless,'' a ...
, in his introduction to
Robert Greene’s ''Menaphon'' (1589), writes in a riddling way that seems to leave clues regarding the identity of playwrights who have left the trade of noverint (lawyer’s clerk) to turn to writing, and who are being influenced by the Roman playwright
Seneca
Seneca may refer to:
People and language
* Seneca (name), a list of people with either the given name or surname
* Seneca people, one of the six Iroquois tribes of North America
** Seneca language, the language of the Seneca people
Places Extrat ...
, who "if you entreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets…" Nashe then writes that his followers are like the "kid" in Aesop. The reference to "Hamlets" vouches for the idea that a Hamlet-play existed as early as 1589. These references and similarities between
Thomas Kyd
Thomas Kyd (baptised 6 November 1558; buried 15 August 1594) was an English playwright, the author of ''The Spanish Tragedy'', and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama.
Although well known in his own time, ...
's ''
The Spanish Tragedy
''The Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronimo is Mad Again'' is an Elizabethan tragedy written by Thomas Kyd between 1582 and 1592. Highly popular and influential in its time, ''The Spanish Tragedy'' established a new genre in English theatre, the reveng ...
'' and Shakespeare's ''Hamlet'' are interpreted by many scholars as an indication that Kyd, who was a noverint, a Seneca-influenced playwright, and whose name is a homophone of Aesop’s "kid", might be the author of the ''Hamlet'' that Nashe mentions.
[
Some suggest that the ''Ur-Hamlet'' is an early version of Shakespeare's own play, pointing to the survival of Shakespeare's version in three quite different early texts, Q1 (1603), Q2 (1604) and F (1623), and offer the possibility that the play was revised by the author over a period of many years. While the exact relationship of the short and apparently primitive text of Q1 to the later published texts is not resolved, ]Hardin Craig
Hardin Craig (29 June 1875 – 13 October 1968) was an American Renaissance scholar and professor of English. In his 65-year academic career, he served on the faculties of eight different colleges and universities, published more than 20 books as ...
has suggested that it may represent an earlier draft of the play and hence would confirm that the ''Ur-Hamlet'' is in fact merely an earlier draft of Shakespeare's play. This view is held in some form or another by Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was described as "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking wor ...
, Peter Alexander Peter Alexander may refer to:
* Pete Alexander (born Grover Cleveland Alexander; 1887–1950), American baseball player
* Peter Alexander (Shakespearean scholar) (1893–1969), professor of English language and literature at the University of Glasgo ...
, and Andrew Cairncross
Andrew Scott Cairncross (25 March 1901 – 17 December 1975) was a Scottish-American scholar of Shakespeare and the English literary renaissance.
Cairncross is best known for his 1936 book ''The Problem of Hamlet'' (London: MacMillan), which make ...
, who stated, "It may be assumed, until a new case can be shown to the contrary, that Shakespeare's ''Hamlet'' and no other is the play mentioned by Nashe in 1589 and Henslowe
Philip Henslowe (c. 1550 – 6 January 1616) was an Elizabethan era, Elizabethan theatrical entrepreneur and impresario. Henslowe's modern reputation rests on the survival of his diary, a primary source for information about the theatrical worl ...
in 1594". Harold Jenkins, in his 1982 Arden edition, disagrees with this position.
Eric Sams
Eric Sams (3 May 1926 – 13 September 2004) was a British musicologist and Shakespeare scholar.
Life
Born in London, Sams was raised in Essex. His early brilliance in school ( Westcliff High School for Boys) earned him a scholarship to Cor ...
’s ''The Real Shakespeare'' argues that Shakespeare might steal phrases and rarely whole lines from other playwrights, but not entire theatrical treatments; and would not, at such length, have “plagiarized a known and named colleague .e. Kyd least of all without a word of comment, let alone censure, from any of his critics.” Sams analyzes the most detailed account of the ''Ur-Hamlet'', by Nashe in ''Menaphon'' in 1589, and sees Nashe’s remarks as part of a pattern of jealous attacks upon Shakespeare (and Kyd) by their university-educated rivals. Citing Nashe’s reference to “if you entreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls, of tragical speeches,” Sams argues that this “manifestly defines the first scene of ''Hamlet'' ('tis bitter cold I.i.8),” and evokes the touchy yet voluble Ghost of Hamlet Senior (a role that Shakespeare himself is said to have played). Similarly, Lodge’s 1596 reference to the ''Ur-Hamlet''s ghost “who cried so miserably at the Theatre, like an oyster-wife, Hamlet, revenge!” was “surely intended as an affront to the author and actor of that role”. Summing up, Sams offers a list of 18 reasons for his belief that the ''Ur-Hamlet'' was Shakespeare’s earliest version of ''Hamlet''.
In questions regarding Shakespeare as a possible revisor of an earlier version (or versions) of the Hamlet myth — such as the French version of Belleforest, or the Latin version of Saxo Grammaticus
Saxo Grammaticus (c. 1150 – c. 1220), also known as Saxo cognomine Longus, was a Danish historian, theologian and author. He is thought to have been a clerk or secretary to Absalon, Archbishop of Lund, the main advisor to Valdemar I of Denmark. ...
— the idea of Shakespeare as translator is often neglected. In Margrethe Jolly's 2014 book ''The First Two Quartos of Hamlet'', speaking of the first three printed texts of ''Hamlet'', argued that "the sequence and evidence that the three texts provide suggests that Shakespeare had access to the French source and Q1 when he redrafted".
In 2016, Professor Terri Bourus, one of three general editors of the New Oxford Shakespeare, in her paper "Enter Shakespeare’s Young Hamlet, 1589" suggests that Shakespeare was "interested in sixteenth-century French literature, from the very beginning of his career" and therefore "did not need Thomas Kyd to pre-digest Belleforest’s histoire of Amleth and spoon-feed it to him". She considers that the hypothesized ''Ur-Hamlet'' is Shakespeare’s Q1 text, and that this derived directly from Belleforest’s French version. Elsewhere Bourus, after referring to Goethe's ''UrFaust'' or original version of ''Faust
Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend based on the historical Johann Georg Faust ( 1480–1540).
The erudite Faust is highly successful yet dissatisfied with his life, which leads him to make a pact with the Devil at a crossroads ...
'', argues that, "Like ''Faust''…''Hamlet'' was repeatedly revised by its author. As ''Faust'' matured with Goethe, ''Hamlet'' matured with Shakespeare. It matters so much to us, in part, because it mattered so much to him."
In 2019, Jennifer E. Nicholson in her University of Sydney
The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's si ...
PhD thesis, reinforced this view, offering independent evidence from each of the three printed ''Hamlet''s, that Shakespeare was responding creatively to subtle hints in Belleforest's French text, and deriving some of his more famous lines, including perhaps the famous "arras" in the stage directions of Act 3 Scene 4, from them. She too contends that, "There is no need for a 'middle man' author for ''Ur-Hamlet'', and no need for an ''Ur-Hamlet'' separate from Shakespeare’s own play text."[Nicholson, p. 32.]
References and Notes
References
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{{Hamlet
1587 plays
English Renaissance plays
Lost plays
Plays by Thomas Kyd
Hamlet
Works of unknown authorship