Does Sixeteene mean Sexton or Sixteen?
As discussed in Chapter One, the crucial line setting Hamlets age at thirty is printed in the First Folio as follows:
Why heere in Denmarke: I have bin sixeteene heere, man and Boy thirty yeares.
Every modern editor has rendered this "sixteeene" as "sexton" or (as in Q2) "sexten." But in fact "sixeteene" was a very common spelling for "sixteen" in Shakespeare's day (and an unheard-of spelling for "sexton"). Here are examples:
White, John. His journals of the Virginia colony (1587)
...being strayed two miles from his companie, shotte at him in the water, where they gaue him sixeteene wounds with their arrowes...
Nash, Thomas. Lenten Stuffe (1599)
...the wall to sixe, though sixeteene moath-eaten burgesse townes that haue...
Porter, Henry. The two angry women of Abington (1599)
...for handsome men, Fifteene past, sixeteene, and seuenteene too, What, thought...
Sharpham, Edward. Cvpid's whirligig (1607)
...Then I am lighter by sixeteene pound now then I was,...
Healey, John. The Discovery of a New World (1609?). The third Booke. The Discouerie of Fooliana. Chap. 6, Fooliana the fond.
...circumference of the walles iust sixeteene gates, wherein (according to the...
Ravenscroft, Thomas. Pammelia. (1609)
...vs to spend there our sixeteen pence all out...
Coryat, Thomas. Coryats Crudities. (1611)
...Sometimes there sung sixeteene or twenty men together, having their master or moderator to keepe them in order...
Wroth, Mary, Lady. The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania (1621)
...and when I came to sixeteene yeeres of age to tell...