A number of plays dealing with "revenge for a father" followed. In 1602
"The Revenge of Hamlet" was entered in the Stationers' Register; and the
first quarto, a pirated and very corrupt edition, appeared in the following
year. This quarto, in the opinion of a majority of critics, represents
Shakespeare's partial revision of the old play, which was put on the stage
by Burbage's company in 1601-02. In the same years Ben Jonson was receiving
pay from Henslowe of the rival company for two sets of additions to "The
Spanish Tragedy," and these were published in 1602. In that year Henslowe
also paid Chettle for a tragedy, "Hoffman" (1631); and in 1602-03
Tourneur's "Atheist's Tragedy" (1611) was probably acted.[18] By 1603
Shakespeare had given "Hamlet" its final form as represented by the second
quarto (1604). The almost simultaneous appearance of these various plays is
sufficient testimony to the popularity of the old revenge story with both
audiences and authors. Dealing with similar plots, they naturally have many
elements in common, but they exhibit few or no signs of servile imitation
of one another. They represent independent developments of the type that
Kyd had introduced a dozen years before and that Marston had revived, each
retaining many of the old conventions, and each adding much that was new.
Jonson's additions to "The Spanish Tragedy" are distinct from the rest of
the play and affect the proportion and movement of the action rather for
the worse. They deal in the main with Hieronimo; his irony is increased and
made more effective; his reflections become more elaborate and pregnant;
above all, his madness gains enormously in reality and intensity. His
madness, indeed, receives a disproportionate development. Throughout the
additions Jonson is picturing a mind diseased by grief, sometimes conscious
of life's unrelaxing pain and again lost in frenzied delirium. Thus, the
imaginative impulses that responded to the demand for revenge plays here
stirred a great poet to a rehabilitation of the crude ravings of the old
Hieronimo in a form more intellectual, more vitally human, and of immensely
greater imaginative range.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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