No copy of this date is known to exist, but a surreptitious and imperfect transcript of portions of the tragedy appeared in the following year under the title of "_The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke_. By William Shakespeare. As it hath been diuerse times acted by his Highnesse seruants in the Cittie of London: as also in the two Vniuersities of Cambridge and Oxford, and elsewhere. At London, printed for N. L. and Iohn Trundell, 1603." In the next year, 1604, N. L., who was Nicholas Ling, obtained by some means a playhouse copy of the tragedy, not a copy in the state in which it left the hands of the author, but representing in the main the genuine words of Shakespeare. It was published under the following title: "_The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke_. By William Shakespeare. Newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much againe as it was, according to the true and perfect coppie. At London, Printed by I. R. for N. L., and are to be sold at his shoppe under Saint Dunston's Church in Fleetstreet, 1604." This impression was reissued in the following year, the title-page and a few leaves at the end, sigs. N. and O., being fresh-printed, the sole 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_: