The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
by George MacDonald

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Title: The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623

Author: George MacDonald

Release Date: January 5, 2004 [EBook #10606]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A STUDY OF HAMLET ***

Produced by Jonathan Ingram, David King, and the Online Distributed
proofreading Team

THE TRAGEDIE OF
HAMLET,
PRINCE OF DENMARKE

A STUDY WITH THE TEXT
OF
THE FOLIO OF 1623

BY
GEORGE MACDONALD

"What would you gracious figure?"

TO

MY HONOURED RELATIVE

ALEXANDER STEWART MACCOLL

A LITTLE _LESS_ THAN KIN, AND _MORE_ THAN KIND

TO WHOM I OWE IN ESPECIAL THE TRUE UNDERSTANDING OF

THE GREAT SOLILOQUY

I DEDICATE

WITH LOVE AND GRATITUDE

THIS EFFORT TO GIVE HAMLET AND SHAKSPERE THEIR DUE

GEORGE MAC DONALD

BORDIGHERA

_Christmas_, 1884

Summary:

The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark:
a study of the text of the folio of 1623
By George MacDonald
[Motto]: "What would you, gracious figure?"

Dr. Greville MacDonald looks on his father's commentary as the "most
important interpretation of the play ever written... It is his intuitive
understanding ... rather than learned analysis--of which there is yet
overwhelming evidence--that makes it so splendid."

Reading Level: Mature youth and adults.

PREFACE

By this edition of HAMLET I hope to help the student of Shakspere to
understand the play--and first of all Hamlet himself, whose spiritual
and moral nature are the real material of the tragedy, to which every
other interest of the play is subservient. But while mainly attempting,
from the words and behaviour Shakspere has given him, to explain the
man, I have cast what light I could upon everything in the play,
including the perplexities arising from extreme condensation of meaning,
figure, and expression.

As it is more than desirable that the student should know when he is
reading the most approximate presentation accessible of what Shakspere
uttered, and when that which modern editors have, with