User:DionysosProteus/Hamlet article working

Date and texts

The "textual problem" of Hamlet involves three crucial early versions of the play:

• In 1603, the booksellers Nicholas Ling and John Trundell published the so-called "bad" first quarto (referred to as Q1); Valentine Simmes printed this edition. Q1 contains just over half of the text of the later second quarto.
• In 1604, Nicholas Ling published the second quarto (referred to as Q2); James Roberts printed this edition. Some copies of Q2 are dated 1605, which may indicate a second impression; consequently, Q2 is often dated "1604/5". Q2 is the longest of the three editions, although it omits 85 lines that are found in F1 (these passages were most likely left out to avoid offending the queen of James I, who was from Denmark).
• In 1623, Edward Blount and William and Isaac Jaggard published the First Folio (referred to as F1), the first edition of Shakespeare's Complete Works.

Subsequent folios and quartos (John Smethwick's Q3, Q4, and Q5, 1611–37) are considered derivatives of these first three editions. Q1 itself has been viewed with scepticism; in practice, editors tend to rely upon Q2 and F1.

The first quarto's rendering of the "To be or not to be" soliloquy

Early editors of Shakespeare's works, starting with Nicholas Rowe (1709) and Lewis Theobald (1733), combined material from the two earliest sources of Hamlet then known, Q2 and F1. Each text contains some material the other lacks, and there are many minor differences in wording, so that only a little more than 200 lines are identical between them. Typically, editors have taken an approach of combining, "conflating," the texts of Q2 and F1, in an effort to create an inclusive text as close as possible to the ideal Shakespeare original. Theobald's version became standard for a long time. Certainly, the "full text" philosophy that he established has influenced editors to the current day. Although many modern editors have done essentially the same thing Theobald did, also using, for the most part, the 1604/5 quarto and the 1623 folio texts, two recent editions edit separate versions, adding the additional lines in an appendix.

The discovery of Q1 in 1823, when its existence had not even been suspected earlier, caused considerable interest and excitement, while also raising questions. The deficiencies of the text were recognized immediately—Q1 was instrumental in the development of the concept of a Shakespeare "bad quarto." Yet Q1 also has its value: it contains stage directions which reveal actual stage performance in a way that Q2 and F1 do not, and it contains an entire scene (usually labeled IV,vi) that is not in either Q2 or F1. Also, Q1 is useful simply for comparison to the later publications. At least 28 different productions of the Q1 text since 1881 have shown it eminently fit for the stage. Q1 is generally thought to be a "memorial reconstruction" of the play as it may have been performed by Shakespeare's own company, although there is disagreement whether the reconstruction was pirated, or authorized. It is considerably shorter than Q2 or F1, apparently because of significant cuts for stage performance. It is thought that one of the actors playing a minor role (Marcellus, certainly, perhaps Voltemand as well) in the legitimate production was the source of this version.

Another theory is that the Q1 text is an abridged version of the full length play intended especially for traveling productions (the aforementioned university productions, in particular.) Kathleen Irace espouses this theory in her New Cambridge edition, "The First Quarto of Hamlet." The idea that the Q1 text is not riddled with error, but is in fact a totally viable version of the play has led to several recent Q1 productions (perhaps most notably, Tim Sheridan and Andrew Borba's 2003 production at the Theatre of NOTE in Los Angeles, for which Ms. Irace herself served as dramaturge).

Some contemporary scholarship is moving away from the ideal of the "full text," supposing its inapplicability to the case of Hamlet. The Arden Shakespeare's 2006 publication of different texts of Hamlet in different volumes is perhaps the best evidence of this shifting focus and emphasis.