Twentieth-century editors made the decision about which version to prefer according to their theories about the origins of the three early printed texts. It is impossible in any edition to combine the whole of these two forms of the play, because they often provide alternative readings that are mutually exclusive for example, when the Second Quarto has Hamlet wish that his “too too sallied flesh would melt,” the Folio prints “solid” for “sallied.” In such cases (and there are a great many such cases) editors must choose whether to be guided by the Second Quarto, by the Folio, or perhaps even by the First Quarto in selecting what to print.Įxplore the Hamlet Second Quarto (1604) in Miranda. Most modern editions offer various combinations of the Second Quarto and Folio versions. These two versions also differ from each other in their readings of hundreds of words. Entitled The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke, the Folio play has some eighty-five or so lines not found in the Second Quarto but the Folio lacks about two hundred of the Second Quarto’s lines. The third version to see print is found in the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays, published in 1623. Although it has exactly the same title as the First Quarto, the Second Quarto’s title page goes on to represent it as “Newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much againe as it was, according to the true and perfect Coppie.” The Second Quarto, often called the “good quarto,” is dated in some copies 1604, in others 1605. This First Quarto has therefore been dubbed a “bad quarto.” Most scholars have found many passages in this version extremely difficult to read and have concluded that it is so full of errors that it is generally unreliable as a witness to what was written for the stage. The action of the play also varies considerably. Some of the characters have different names for example, Polonius is called Corambis and his servant Reynaldo appears as Montano. This version is little more than half as long as the others. In 1603 appeared The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet Prince of Denmark by William Shake-speare, a quarto or pocket-size book that provides a version of the play markedly different from the two subsequent printings and from the play most readers know. The play we call Hamlet was printed in three different versions in the first quarter of the seventeenth century.
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