most significant lines). I have shown in Note B that it is very unsafe to argue to Hamlet’s youth from the words about his going back to Wittenberg.
On the whole I agree with Prof. Dowden that, apart from the statements in V. I., one would naturally take Hamlet to be a man of about five and twenty.
It has been suggested that in the old play Hamlet was a mere lad; that Shakespeare, when he began to work on it[1] had not determined to make Hamlet older; that, as he went on, he did so determine; and that this is the reason why the earlier part of the play makes (if it does so) a different impression from the later. I see nothing very improbable in this idea, but I must point out that it is a mistake to appeal in support of it to the passage in V. i. as found in Q1; for that passage does not in the least show that the author (if correctly reported) imagined Hamlet as a lad. I set out the statements in Q2 and Q1.
Q2 says:
- (1) The grave-digger came to his business on the day when old Hamlet defeated Fortinbras:
- (2) On that day young Hamlet was born:
- (3) The grave-digger has, at the time of speaking, been sexton for thirty years:
- (4) Yorick’s skull has been in the earth twenty-three years:
- (5) Yorick used to carry young Hamlet on his back,
This is all explicit and connected, and yields the result that Hamlet is now thirty.
Q1 says:
- (1) Yorick’s skull has been in the ground a dozen years:
- (2) It has been in the ground ever since old Hamlet overcame Fortinbras:
- (3) Yorick used to carry young Hamlet on his back.
From this nothing whatever follows as to Hamlet’s age, except that he is more than twelve![2] Evidently the writer (if correctly reported) has no intention of telling us how old Hamlet is. That he did not imagine him as very young appears from his
