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A. L. Rowse Of all the Shakespeare editions on the V market I confess to a prejudice in favour of the New Arden (along with the New Penguin in paperback). It is remarkable what progress has been made in the last generation or so in editing Shakespeare's text, from the days when so many academics (and a Liberal politician like J. M. Robertson) thought that much of Shakespeare's early work was written by other people.
This latest volume, one of the most im- Portant in the series, is also one of the best, and I shall always keep it by me for future use. The blurb tells us truthfully that this is the most fully annotated edition of Hamlet. The usual Arden commentary at the foot of the text is supplemented by over 170 longer Notes, which include discussions of all the famous cruxes, the major textual variants and many problems of interpreta- tion'. But do we need all these? Altogether It makes the volume the fattest in the series, and the most expensive. It could all have been slimmed by one-half, or one-third, and the volume thereby much improved. It Would also have left room to consider some Most illuminating matters from the time, the background to Shakespeare's writing, Which the editor as usual, quite impercep- tibly, excludes.
On the textual side Mr Jenkins is ad- mirable; I much appreciate his common sense and agree with his middle-of-the-road interpretations. But a little more perception as to how writers really write, as Dover Wilson had, would have told him that writers write out of their experience of life and also of the time they live in. It cannot be excluded if we are to understand their work — as Louis MacNeice, who knew well, says: 'Poetry cannot be assessed pure- ly in terms of itself.' But this is precisely what the Shakespeare industry does, and is oddly unwilling to learn. True, imaginative scholarship is willing to learn from every quarter, just as Shakespeare was willing to' pick up tips all round — and the greatest of his critics, Dr Johnson, being a real writer himself (as most critics are not), realised that if only we knew more about the age in which Shakespeare wrote we should find much more that reflects it, both topical and illuminating. This is only common sense.
Mr Jenkins realises, as everybody does, that much of Hamlet's scene with the Players reflects what was going on in the theatre at the time, 1599-1601, the rivalry between the Boys' Companies and the Men's. And we all know that Shakespeare here tells us a great deal of what he thought about acting at the time. Then why should Dover Wilson be ticked off for realising, perfectly correctly, that the whole passage about the costly struggle 'to gain a little patch of ground', two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats, Will not debate the question of this straw', etc, refers precisely to what was going on at this very time, 1599-1601, in the siege of Ostend? The ding-dong struggle for this little patch of ground made an enormous impression at the time; it was immensely costly in lives and money, and hardly worth it. Contem- porary evidence, the state papers, are full of it, and Shakespeare as usual was reflecting the event.
Mr Jenkins comments: 'Even if dates permitted, we could not, with Dover Wilson, suppose an allusion to the siege of Ostend.' But that is precisely what the dates do permit: Dover Wilson was right, Mr Jenkins wrong.
Similarly, though we do not have to sup- pose that Hamlet's character was 'modelled on' that of Essex, Dover Wilson was again right to see flecks of it and something of Essex's critical situation at the end of his tether in just these years. Still more, of course, with Polonius, who recognisably caricatures old Burghley: safe to do so — he had just died, in 1598. It is not simply a question of the famous Precepts, delivered to his son, Robert Cecil, but the whole situation and personality — the rheumy eyes and weak hams, senility coming on, etc. Mr Jenkins does not allow for how much the Essex-Southampton circle detested the old man, who yet remained chief councillor, doddering as he was and Shakespeare was closely affiliated to just this circle.
These passages are perfectly recognisable to anyone who knows the life of the time, as
we all recognise Shakespeare's salute to Essex in Ireland (1599) in Henry V. Mr Jenkins should learn from contemporary life at the time, as we are ready to learn from him about textual matters.
But too much should not be made of these — only what is necessary, convenient and relevant. Mr Jenkins himself admits, with regard to the printing of the Quartos, `any confident pronouncement of what happened appears impossible'. Then why go on and on about it? I do not find it il- luminating of Shakespeare's work to reconstruct the lives, or the punctuation, of the various compositors who printed it, compared with the life of the time that went into the work, still more Shakespeare's own life.
Mr Jenkins himself sees how silly so much fuss about punctuation is: 'the rival hyperboles of Dover Wilson ("a thing of sheer beauty") and the recent Penguin ("the punctuation is chaotic") may be allowed to cancel one another out'. QED. The same may be said of much Hamlet 'criticism', or indeed Shakespeare criticism in general: Mr Jenkins has an apt phrase about 'critical weariness with it as intrin- sically less important than it has been made to seem'. 'Critical weariness' — I should think so! We really do not need the views, often cancelling each other out, of people not up to the subject — as Dr Johnson was, and he is rather missing, while pages are loaded with the names of mere professors, who are evidently not. And why devote a whole section, to a German play, Der Bestrafte Brudermord, which, Mr Jenkins tells us, 'turns out to be a version of Hamlet in a very degenerate form'? What is the point of it? Mere academicism, throwing no light on the subject.
Mr Jenkins goes in very sensibly for modern spelling and punctuation. Then why not go further and get rid of archaic forms like `swoopstake' for sweepstake; 'God buy ye' for goodbye; 'good dild you' for 'God yield you'; `yond' for yon; `corse' for corpse, etc? Perhaps a score of times we are given 'a' for he, 'a thought', and so on. There really is no point in it, and I am all in favour of modernising further for the modern reader.
Similarly with the footnotes, many of them unnecessary, let alone the 170 Long Notes at the end. As for 'criticism', Mr Jenkins could have been more critical. Of Ophelia's bawdy sons, 'Young men will do it, if they come to it, by Cock they are to blame', he explains to us the Cock is a cor- ruption of 'God' but that it also may be a reference to the male sexual organ. Fancy
that! `Do it' he tells us is a euphemism, while 'tumbled' means tousled (does it?). Vinegar, a footnote informs us, is 'a drink of supreme bitterness'; when we come to the word `fellies', and want to know what that means, we are not informed. And so on.
Nevertheless, I am grateful to Mr Jenkins for all the work he has put into his edition. if some of it is beside the mark and he neglects matters that are right on the target — in that, like the Shakespeare Industry as a whole.
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