ffort of artistic
literary power yet given to the world. There is nothing to be found in
real competition with it excepting in the other works of Shakespeare,
but all are inferior to this great masterpiece. There is hardly a speech
in the whole play which may not fairly be made the subject of an
elaborate discourse, especially when viewed in connection with its
bearings, however occasionally remote, on the character of Hamlet, the
development of which appears to have been the chief object of the
author, not only in the management of the plot, but in the creation of
the other personages who are introduced. There is contemporary evidence
to this effect in the _Stationers' Register_ of 1602 in the title there
given--_The Revenge of Hamlet_.

There was an old English tragedy on the subject of Hamlet which was in
existence at least as early as the year 1589, in the representation of
which an exclamation of the Ghost--"Hamlet, revenge!"--was a striking
and well-remembered feature. This production is alluded to in some
prefatory matter by Nash in the edition of Greene's _Menaphon_, issued
in that year, here given: "I'le turne backe to my first text, of studies
of delight, and talke a little in friendship with a few of our triuiall
translators. It is a common practise now a daies amongst a sort of
shifting companions that run through euery arte and thriue by none, to
leaue the trade of _Nouerint_ whereto they were borne, and busie
themselues with the indeuors of art, that could scarcelie latinize their
necke-verse if they should haue neede; yet English _Seneca_ read by
candle light yeeldes manie good sentences, as _Bloud is a beggar_, and
so foorth: and if you intreate him faire in a frostie morning, he will
afoord you whole _Hamlets_, I should say hand-fulls of tragical
speeches."

Another allusion occurs in Lodge's _Wits' Miserie_, "and though this
fiend be begotten of his father's own blood, yet is he different from
his nature; and were he not sure that jealousie could not make him a
cuckold, he had long since published him for a bastard: you shall know
him by this, he is a foule lubber, his tongue tipt with lying, his heart
steeled against charity; he walks for the most part in black under color
of gravity, and looks as pale as the visard of the ghost which cried so
miserably at the theator like an oister-wife,' _Hamlet, revenge_'."
Again, in Decker's _Satiromastix_, 1602: "_Asini_. 'Wod I were hang'd,
if I can call you a