alteration in the former being the substitution of 1605 for 1604.

_Hamlet_ is not mentioned by Meres in 1598, and it could not have been
written before 1599, in which year the Globe was erected, there being a
clear allusion to that theatre in act ii, sc. 2. The tragedy continued to
be acted after Shakespeare's company commenced playing at the Blackfriars
Theatre, it being alluded to in a manuscript list, written in 1660,
of "some of the most ancient plays that were played at Blackfriars."
According to Downes, Sir William Davenant, "having seen Mr. Taylor of the
Black-Fryars Company act it, who, being instructed by the author, Mr.
Shaksepeur, taught Mr. Betterton in every particle of it."--_Roscius
Anglicanus_, 1708. Roberts, in his answer to Mr. Pope's _Preface on
Shakespeare_, 1729, thinks that Lowin was the original Hamlet.

The date of 1601 for the production of _Hamlet_ appears to suit the
internal evidence very well. That evidence decidedly leads to the
conclusion that it could not have been written long before that time,
and, without placing too much reliance on the general opinion that
Shakespeare entirely laid aside his earlier style of composition at some
particular era, that year is probably about the latest in which he would
have written in the strain of the following lines, which, taken by
themselves, might be assigned to the period of the _Two Gentlemen of
Verona_:

"Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister;
And keep you in the rear of your affection
Out of the shot and danger of desire.
The dearest maid is prodigal enough
If she unmask her beauty to the moon:
Virtue itself scapes not calumnious strokes:
The canker galls the infants of the spring,
Too oft before their buttons be disclos'd;
And in the morn and liquid dew of youth
Contagious blastments are most imminent.
Be wary, then; best safety lies in fear;
Youth to itself rebels, though none else near."

Were it not that the elder play of _Hamlet_ did not belong to Shakespeare's
company, these lines might lead to the conjecture that he had made some
additions to it long before he wrote his own complete tragedy.

There was once in existence a copy of Speght's edition of Chaucer, 1598,
with manuscript notes by Gabriel Harvey, one of those notes being in the
following terms: "The younger sort take much delight in Shakespeare's
_Venus and Adonis_, but his _Lucrece_ and his tragedy of _Hamlet, Prince