SOURCE: “Hamlet's Account of the Pirates,” in Review of English Studies, Vol. 50, No. 199, August, 1999, pp. 320-31.

In the following essay, Farley-Hills defends George Miles's linguistic argument (from 1870) that Hamlet planned his meeting with the pirates before he left for England. His defense involves some comparison of the Q2 and F versions of the play.

The view that Hamlet had been planning, before he leaves Denmark, to be rescued by pirates on the journey to England has received short shrift from most Shakespeare commentators and editors since it was first given lengthy and forceful promulgation by the American scholar and author George Miles in his monograph of 1870, A Review of Hamlet. Miles made his suggestion provisional on the possibility of a pun on the word ‘craft’ at Q2 III. iv. 199: ‘If the word crafts had its present maritime significance in Shakespeare's time, the pun alone is conclusive of a...