E X T E N S I O N COMPOSITION AND TEXTS Hamlet was presumably written around 1598. Mention of The Revenge of Hamlett, Prince Denmarke appeared for the first time in the Stationers Register1 on July 26, 1602, when the work was authorized for publication. A note informed that the play had already been performed by the Lord Chamberlain s Men2 (later the King s Men and Shakespeare s company) in the City of London and in the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge between 1599 and 1601. A pirated text of Shakespeare s play, known as the First Quarto3, was published in 1603. Still in Shakespeare s lifetime (1604) appeared the Second Quarto, which is considered Shakespeare s definitive version. This text is almost twice as long as the First Quarto and presents curious changes (the names of some characters, for example) and a different line of action for some characters (the Queen repents and helps her son to avenge the crime). The Second Quarto served for the First Folio4 edition of 1623, by Heminges and Condell, which contains minor additions and corrections, and accepts the changes made in the text in the course of years. The main source5 of Shakespeare s play seems to have been UrHamlet, a text written in the 1580 s and attributed to Thomas Kyd. Kyd was a very popular dramatist, the author of The Spanish Tragedy (printed in 1594), which is full of sensational incidents, with a ghost and a father who kills his son s murderer. The story of Hamlet belongs to the Scandinavian tradition and, not by chance, it is set in Denmark, in the castle of Elsinore, the modern Helsing r, on the strait of resund. 1. Stationer s Register: a register with the names of the authors and their works authorized to be printed for sale. 2. Lord Chamberlain s Men: name of the company of actors protected by the Lord Chamberlain. 3. Quarto: (from Latin) name given to a volume where each page is a quarter of a sheet. 4. Folio: (from Latin) name given to a volume where each page is half a sheet. 5. source: original document. 21