Kyd, Johnson, and the Problem of an Early Date for Q1 Hamlet

Abstract

Recent developments in the field of textual studies indicate that Q1 Hamlet represents Shakespeare’s first draft of the play as it was first performed in 1588–9.1 However, this position is potentially undermined by evidence recently provided in Wiggins’s Catalogue of British Drama. Wiggins believes Q1 Hamlet is a bad quarto derived from Q2, so his assumptions about the play are grounded in a history that begins in 1600 (his best guess for the composition of Q2). This date justifies the inclusion of thirty-three verbal links (i.e. sources) in the form of quotations, including names, imitations, and parodies often ‘at the level of short passages’ between Q2 Hamlet and other early modern texts.2 Of the fifteen verbal links Wiggins associates with Q1 Hamlet, at least three would not have been materially accessible to Shakespeare in the form of a printed book in 1588–9: Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy (first printed in 1592), Marlowe and Nashe’s Dido Queen of Carthage (first printed in 1594), and Ben Jonson’s Every Man in His Humor (first printed in 1601). I have discussed the problem of Dido elsewhere3 and would like to now address the other two sources noted by Wiggins that could destabilize arguments for the play’s early date.