In a recent post I mentioned that the written description of Hamlet as fat was a mistake in scanning and that it should have been hot, as was spoken in the performance that I saw. As he was involved in a swordfight at the time, and didn’t look particularly tubby anyway, this seemed a reasonable assumption.
A friend kindly put me right, but this has set me wondering. I don’t know Hamlet that well and the fact that he is described as fat in the canonical text had completely passed me by. What was Shakespeare thinking of? I find in a print edition that this fat is glossed as hot but can find no other occasion when these two words are regarded as synonyms. The New York Times published a theory on 17 May 1896 (sic) that it might have been intended to be faint or hot, and that it was changed because a fat actor was playing the part, but in the end it falls back on the sacred nature of the text to stick with fat.
I am no expert at all on the textual history of Shakespeare’s plays but I think that I am right in saying that some at least were compiled from performances rather than being the authorised autograph text of the author. I find it very plausible that an actor in such a case might substitute a word that scans perfectly and is close to the original in pronunciation, so close in fact that it might even pass unnoticed by most of the audience – unless of course it was emphasised deliberately – as a joke about a fellow actor. Given that fat makes no kind of sense but that faint or hot would fit exactly in the circumstance, surely the sensible conclusion is that fat is a mistake that has somehow crept into the text and should be eliminated. Editors do that sort of thing all the time. However, in the case of Shakespeare the text is held in such veneration that even an obvious error has to remain and be justified and explained.
In Spanish, Hamlet is sweating: Está sudando y sin aliento.
