The Quarto of 1603, containing 2143 lines, is shorter by some seventeen or eighteen hundred lines than the play as we construct it from the second Quarto and the Folio; yet it gives substantially the whole action of the complete play. The names of two characters differ from those familiar to us—Polonius is here Corambis, and Reynaldo is Montano. Osric is here "a Bragart Gentleman"; Francisco is known only as first Centinel. The King and Queen of the "Mousetrap" tragedy are a duke and duchess; the duke's name is Albertus, not Gonzago; the duke and duchess have been forty years married, not thirty. Yorick's skull has been twelve years in the ground, not three-and-twenty. Laertes has come from Paris to the late King's funeral, not to the coronation of King Claudius. Hamlet's indignant "'Tis not alone my inky cloak is addressed to Claudius, not to the Queen. The soliloquy "To be or not to be" and the "nunnery" dialogue with Ophelia occur in the same scene with the reading of Hamlet's love-letter, and before the "fishmonger" dialogue with Polonius; lines spoken to Hamlet by the Ghost on the platform are here spoken by Hamlet to his mother in her closet; Hamlet's comparison of Rosencrantz to a sponge appears here in another connection. It is the King, not Laertes, who proposes to anoint the rapier-point with venom. Gertrude, in the Closet scene, expressly declares that she was ignorant of her husband's murder, and she promises to assist her son in his revenge. There is a scene in which Horatio and the Queen confer about Hamlet's return to Denmark from shipboard, the Queen appearing as a confederate on Hamlet's side.
