"False Dating: The Case of the “1676” Hamlet Quartos,"

Two quarto editions of Hamlet bear the date 1676.1 These are Wing S2950 and S2951, known as Q6 and Q7.2 The imprints to both editions state that Andrew Clark printed them for John Martyn and Henry Herringman. Thus far, the existence of two “1676” Hamlets has (understandably) led scholars to believe that Shakespeare’s play was relatively popular at the time, with two editions within twelve months suggesting that the first edition sold out within a year. This essay builds on W. W. Greg’s hunch concerning false dating and uses paper evidence to demonstrate that S2951 in fact dates from 1683-84, approximately eight years after its purported date.3 I suggest that Richard Bentley probably financed the edition with the
false date in collaboration with Jacob Tonson and the printer Robert Everingham, and offer a hypothesis as to why these men published Hamlet with a false date and imprint in 1683-84.