ssor as
surreptitious and unauthentic. But it is clear that the Second Quarto
was not a perfect version of the play. It was itself printed from a copy
which had been curtailed for acting purposes.

The Folio Version.

A third version (long the _textus receptus_) figured in the Folio of
1623. Here many passages, not to be found in the quartos, appear for the
first time, but a few others that appear in the quartos are omitted. The
Folio text probably came nearest to the original manuscript; but it, too,
followed an acting copy which had been abbreviated somewhat less
drastically than the Second Quarto and in a different fashion. {224}
Theobald in his 'Shakespeare Restored' (1726) made the first scholarly
attempt to form a text from a collation of the First Folio with the
Second Quarto, and Theobald's text with further embellishments by Sir
Thomas Hanmer, Edward Capell, and the Cambridge editors of 1866, is now
generally adopted.

Popularity of 'Hamlet.'

'Hamlet' was the only drama by Shakespeare that was acted in his lifetime
at the two Universities. It has since attracted more attention from
actors, playgoers, and readers of all capacities than any other of
Shakespeare's plays. Its world-wide popularity from its author's day to
our own, when it is as warmly welcomed in the theatres of France and
Germany as in those of England and America, is the most striking of the
many testimonies to the eminence of Shakespeare's dramatic instinct. At
a first glance there seems little in the play to attract the uneducated
or the unreflecting. 'Hamlet' is mainly a psychological effort, a study
of the reflective temperament in excess. The action develops slowly; at
times there is no movement at all. The piece is the longest of
Shakespeare's plays, reaching a total of over 3,900 lines. It is thus
some nine hundred lines longer than 'Antony and Cleopatra'--the play by
Shakespeare that approaches 'Hamlet' more closely in numerical strength
of lines. At the same time the total length of Hamlet's speeches far
exceeds that of those allotted by Shakespeare to any other of his
characters. Humorous relief is, it is true, effectively supplied to the
tragic theme by Polonius and the grave-diggers, and if the topical
references to contemporary theatrical history (II. ii. 350-89) could only
count on an appreciative reception from an Elizabethan audience, the
pungent censure of actors' perennial defects is calculated to c