Hamlet in the Prison of Arden
Graham Bradshaw, 2 September 1982
New Arden English is a specialised, hybrid language – Elizabethan in some features, modern in others, but essentially unlike any English written in any period. That doesn’t disturb most people, including critics who would never dream of quoting Donne or Jonson from modernised texts: but it does mean that only the naive will suppose that the editorial aim is to give us, as nearly as possible, what Shakespeare wrote. The author of Hamlet wrote margent at 5.2.152, but in the New Arden text this is changed without comment to margin. Both the second Quarto of Hamlet and the Folio agree on impitious at 4.5.100, but this is changed to impetuous. Here there is a note, in which Professor Jenkins explains that the ‘secondary connotations’ of impitious were sacrificed in order to make clear the ‘primary meaning’ of the word which has gone. Given the context, that primary meaning could never have been unclear; moreover, the elimination of ‘connotations’ leaves us with a weaker idea, uncomfortably close to tautology. Jenkins should have left Shakespeare’s word in the text, and added a footnote on its ‘connotations’.
