Terri Bourus - Shakespeare and the First Hamlet

Shakespeare the First Hamlet

Shakespeare
Series Editor:
Graham Holderness, University of Hertfordshire

Volume 9
Shakespeare & the First Hamlet
Edited by Terri Bourus

Volume 8
Shakespeare & Biography
Edited by Katherine Scheil and Graham Holderness

Volume 7
Shakespeare & Money
Edited by Graham Holderness

Volume 6
Shakespeare & His Biographical Afterlives
Edited by Paul Franssen and Paul Edmondson

Volume 5
Shakespeare & the Ethics of War
Edited by Patrick Gray

Volume 4
Shakespeare & Creative Criticism
Edited by Rob Conkie and Scott Maisano

Volume 3
Shakespeare & the Arab World
Edited by Katherine Hennessey and Margaret Litvin

Volume 2
Shakespeare & Commemoration
Edited by Clara Calvo and Ton Hoenselaars

Volume 1
Shakespeare & Stratford
Edited by Katherine Scheil

Shakespeare the First Hamlet

Edited by
Terri Bourus

First published in 2022 by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com

2022 Berghahn Books

Originally published as a special issue of Critical Survey, volume 31, numbers 1 and 2, unless otherwise noted.

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A C.I.P. cataloging record is available from the Library of Congress

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Control Number: 2022012980

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-80073-553-8 hardback
ISBN 978-1-80073-554-5 paperback
ISBN 978-1-80073-555-2 ebook

https://doi.org/10.3167/9781800735538

Introduction
Is Q1 Hamlet the First Hamlet?

Terri Bourus

Chapter 1
Shakespeares Early Gothic Hamlet

Gary Taylor

Chapter 2
The Hybrid Hamlet

Christopher Marino

Chapter 3
Ofelias Interruption of Ophelia in Hamlet

Michael M. Wagoner

Chapter 4
Beautified Q1 Hamlet

Douglas Bruster

Chapter 5
The Good Enough Quarto

Terri Bourus

Chapter 6
Harveys 1593 To Be and Not To Be

Dennis McCarthy

Chapter 7
To Be, or Not To Be

Saul Frampton

Chapter 8
Shakespeare, Virgil and the First Hamlet

John. V. Nance

Chapter 9
Unique Lines and the Ambient Heart of Q1 Hamlet

Laurie Johnson

Chapter 10
Brief Let Me Be

Tommaso Continisio

Chapter 11
Q1 Hamlet

Charles Adams Kelly and Dayna Leigh Plehn

Chapter 12
What Doesnt Happen in Hamlet

Rory Loughnane

Afterword
Q1 Hamlet

Graham Holderness and Bryan Loughrey

Terri Bourus

Many of the questions that we ask about Shakespeares Hamlet depend on what we mean by first. In a book published in 1589, Thomas Nashe refers to a play about Hamlet.

The answers to all those questions depend on our interpretation of another first. The first known printed edition of Hamlet was published in 1603. The title page of the 1603 Tragicall Historie of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke explicitly attributes the play to William Shake-speare and claims that it was performed by the company of actors to which Shakespeare belonged. That edition is often called Q1, shorthand for first quarto (referring to the bibliographical format most often used for early editions of plays, a quarto). It was followed by an expanded second edition, also a quarto, also attributed to William Shakespeare (Q2). After Shakespeares death, another distinct version of the play was included in the big, expensive, hardbound 1623 folio collection of thirty-six of Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (F, F1 or the Folio). Q1 is the rarest of these three important early editions of Shakespeares most famous play; it survives in only two known copies. It has had less influence on critical and theatre history than the other two early versions. In fact, all three early versions have been eclipsed by a fourth version, created by eighteenth-century editors, which combined material from both Q2 and F. That conflated editorial version is the text that almost all readers and performers think about when they think about Hamlet. In the overwhelming majority of editions of Shakespeare from the last three centuries, that omnibus, conflated edition of the tragedy, the last version to appear in any surviving printed or manuscript text, is assumed to be the first Hamlet. As a result, the three editions printed between 1603 and 1623 are all dismissed on the assumption that, in different ways and to different degrees, each is a defective derivative from Shakespeares hypothetical first manuscript of the play.

The foundations of modern Shakespeare scholarship were established before editors and critics were even aware of the existence of Q1. In 1823, a defective copy of the first edition was discovered, These two books were conceived and written independently of each other; they address different issues in different styles; they have tended to appeal to different readers. But they both challenged the orthodox assumption, which had dominated Shakespeare scholarship for a century, that Q1 could simply be ignored.

What the editions and monographs of the last thirty years have done, collectively, is to begin to canonize Q1 Hamlet. No one can claim that there is now a universal consensus about what Q1 is, or what it means, or how it came to be. In fact, the canonicity of works of art is usually accompanied by intense disagreements about how to interpret them. For most of the twentieth century, Shakespearians who agreed about nothing else agreed that they didnt need to worry much about the first edition of Shakespeares most famous play. Q1