184 
entirety fits the facts of no other period than at the close of 1601 
and opening of 1602.* 
CHILDREN OF THE CHAPEL AT BLACKFRIARS 
No farther documents touching the status or popularity of the | 
Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars are known. The evidences 
adduced give us the “gelegenheit” or state of affairs through a 
brilliant career from 1597 to September 18, 1602. We know from — 
subsequent events that the same condition continued to the close 
of Elizabeth’s reign—March 24, 1603. 
*The facts on the above Hamlet 
passage are established on a purely 
historical basis with reference to 
the Children of the Chapel as act- 
ors at Blackfriars——Which has hith- 
erto not been possible. The larger 
significance to certain Hamlet prob- 
lems must be taken up elsewhere. 
I add here only a word. 
The certainty that this impor- 
tant passage was written and acted 
‘in its entirety in late 1601 to early 
1602 is established. (See supra, 
174-75'). The logical acceptance of 
it aS a representative example of 
“the true and perfect copy” as orig- 
inally written and acted is unavoid- 
able;—just as in similar cases in 
certain other Shakespearean and 
contemporary plays. It stands 
thus for the first time as an incon- 
trovertible fact among the proofs 
that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet in 
1601 just as he wrote his other 
great dramas.before and after,— 
once and for all. The later stage- 
changes are unimportant. It is cor- 
respondingly disproof of the theory, 
comfortable to some, that between 
the quartos of 1603 and 1604 Shake- 
speare’s mind and art underwent a 
century-long Homeric development. 
(See commentators cited supra, 
182°. Also, among later theorists, 
see J. Schick, Die Entstehung des 
Hamlet. Festvortrag, gehalten auf 
der General-Versammlung der 
Deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft 
am 23. April 1902; in Shakespeare- 
Jahrbuch, 1902, XXXVIII,  xiii- 
xl viii.) 
With the play in final form in 
1601, there is no longer need of 
supposing, with some, an earlier 
‘of theories. 
What occurred there- — 
form, or with others an intermedi- 
ate form, from which the pirated 
1603 quarto and Der Bestrafte Bru- 
_dermord were derived, nor with 
others that the latter is derived 
from the former. (See W. Crei- 
zenach, Der Bestrafte Brudermord 
and its Relations to Shakespeare’s 
Hamlet, in Modern Philology (1904- 
5), II, 249-60. This is in the main 
a defense of the author’s views on 
the same subject in Berichte der 
philol.-histor." Classe der Kénigl. 
Sachs. Gesellschaft der Wéissen- 
schaften, 1887, 1ff., and in Schau- 
Spiele der Englischen Komédianten 
in Ktrschner’s Deutsche National- 
Litteratur, 1889, XXIII. At the 
same time it is an answer to the 
review of Creizenach’s views by Dr. 
Gustav Tanger, Der Bestrafte Bru- 
dermord oder Prinz Hamlet aus 
Déannemark und sein Verhaltniss zu 
Shakespeare’s Hamlet, in Shake- 
speare-Jahrbuch, 1888, XXIII, 224ff. 
To Creizenach’s article in Modern 
Philology, u. s., M. B. Evans, “Der 
Bestrafte Brudermord” and Shake- 
Speare’s “Hamlet,” in eod., 433-49, 
makes reply. This is mainly a de- 
fense of Evans’s Der Bestrafte Bru- 
dermord sein Verhdltniss zu Shake- 
speare’s Hamlet. Diss. Bonn, 
1902.) 
Both versions were written from 
the original play as presented on 
the Globe stage from ca. late 1601 
to early 1602 on. Who wrote them 
and why they have certain simi- 
larities and differences requires in- 
vestigation on wholly new lines 
that are not bounded by the defense 
Known facts concern- 
ing certain actors long in Germany. 
298 
