"Hamlet" After Q1

Author: Zachary Lesser
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812246616
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
In 1823, Sir Henry Bunbury discovered a badly bound volume of twelve Shakespeare plays in a closet of his manor house. Nearly all of the plays were first editions, but one stood out as extraordinary: a previously unknown text of Hamlet that predated all other versions. Suddenly, the world had to grapple with a radically new—or rather, old—Hamlet in which the characters, plot, and poetry of Shakespeare's most famous play were profoundly and strangely transformed. Q1, as the text is known, has been declared a rough draft, a shorthand piracy, a memorial reconstruction, and a pre-Shakespearean "ur-Hamlet," among other things. Flickering between two historical moments—its publication in Shakespeare's early seventeenth century and its rediscovery in Bunbury's early nineteenth—Q1 is both the first and last Hamlet. Because this text became widely known only after the familiar version of the play had reached the pinnacle of English literature, its reception has entirely depended on this uncanny temporal oscillation; so too has its ongoing influence on twentieth- and twenty-first-century ideas of the play. Zachary Lesser examines how the improbable discovery of Q1 has forced readers to reconsider accepted truths about Shakespeare as an author and about the nature of Shakespeare's texts. In telling the story of this mysterious quarto and tracing the debates in newspapers, London theaters, and scholarly journals that followed its discovery, Lesser offers brilliant new insights on what we think we mean by Hamlet.

"Hamlet" After Q1

Author: Zachary Lesser
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812246616
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book Here

Book Description
In 1823, Sir Henry Bunbury discovered a badly bound volume of twelve Shakespeare plays in a closet of his manor house. Nearly all of the plays were first editions, but one stood out as extraordinary: a previously unknown text of Hamlet that predated all other versions. Suddenly, the world had to grapple with a radically new—or rather, old—Hamlet in which the characters, plot, and poetry of Shakespeare's most famous play were profoundly and strangely transformed. Q1, as the text is known, has been declared a rough draft, a shorthand piracy, a memorial reconstruction, and a pre-Shakespearean "ur-Hamlet," among other things. Flickering between two historical moments—its publication in Shakespeare's early seventeenth century and its rediscovery in Bunbury's early nineteenth—Q1 is both the first and last Hamlet. Because this text became widely known only after the familiar version of the play had reached the pinnacle of English literature, its reception has entirely depended on this uncanny temporal oscillation; so too has its ongoing influence on twentieth- and twenty-first-century ideas of the play. Zachary Lesser examines how the improbable discovery of Q1 has forced readers to reconsider accepted truths about Shakespeare as an author and about the nature of Shakespeare's texts. In telling the story of this mysterious quarto and tracing the debates in newspapers, London theaters, and scholarly journals that followed its discovery, Lesser offers brilliant new insights on what we think we mean by Hamlet.

Shakespeare and the First Hamlet

Shakespeare and the First Hamlet PDF Author: Terri Bourus
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1800735553
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
The first edition of Hamlet – often called ‘Q1’, shorthand for ‘first quarto’ – was published in 1603, in what we might regard as the early modern equivalent of a cheap paperback. Yet this early version of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy is becoming increasingly canonical, not because there is universal agreement about what it is or what it means, but because more and more Shakespearians agree that it is worth arguing about. The essays in this collected volume explore the ways in which we might approach Q1’s Hamlet, from performance to book history, from Shakespeare’s relationships with his contemporaries to the shape of his whole career.

Renaissance Drama and the Politics of Publication

Renaissance Drama and the Politics of Publication PDF Author: Zachary Lesser
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521842525
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
A study of the practices and politics of early modern publishers of plays.

Hamlet's Moment

Hamlet's Moment PDF Author: András Kiséry
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198746202
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
Although we take for granted that drama was crucial to the political culture of Renaissance England, we rarely consider one of its most basic functions, namely, that it helped large audiences to understand what politics was. This book suggests that in this moment before newspapers, drama as a form of popular entertainment familiarized its audience with the profession of politics, with kinds of knowledge that were necessary for survival and advancement in politicalcareers. Shakespeare's Hamlet is particularly interested in these issues: in the coming and going of ambassadors, and in the question of the succession and of the conflict with Norway. Plays writtenby Ben Jonson, John Marston, George Chapman, and others in the following years shared a similar focus, inviting the public to imagine what it meant to have a political career. In doing so, they turned politics into a topic of sociable conversation, which people could use to impress others.

Hamlet: The Undiscovered Country

Hamlet: The Undiscovered Country PDF Author: Stephen F. Roth
Publisher: Open House
ISBN: 0970470207
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
This book reads like a cross between a literary detective novel and a personal conversation with a passionate Shakespeare scholar, unpacking the play that Roth calls the seminal text of the humanist religion. It unveils new realities about the playsome of which have have lain hidden since Shakespeares dayuntangles centuries of commentary and criticism, and delivers the punch lines for a whole raft of Shakespeares remarkably involved in-jokes. Roths scholarship tackles old arguments like Hamlets age (hes sixteen), lays out the intricate time structure thats embedded in the play, and unravels several of the plays endless allusions that so puzzle the will. He depicts a dense, ironic, and multivalent web of political and dramatic tension in Elsinore (plus a great deal of humor), and delivers one ahamoment after another for lovers of the Bards greatest tragedy.

The 'bad' Quarto of Hamlet

The 'bad' Quarto of Hamlet PDF Author: George Ian Duthie
Publisher: CUP Archive
ISBN:
Category : Hamlet
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description


Hamlet - The First Quarto (Sos)

Hamlet - The First Quarto (Sos) PDF Author: William Shakespeare
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317867130
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
The first in a series on Shakespeare's original texts, including facsimile pages, this version of "Hamlet" is claimed to be, in some ways, the most authentic version of the play that we have. Included are an introduction, notes, and a theoretical, historical and contextual critique. This text has been rejected by scholars as a "bad Quarto" - corrupt and pirated text printed without the permission of the playwright or his company. Nonetheless, it was the first version of the play to be published and it has been produced in the modern theatre with success. This new edition of that Quarto seeks to acknowledge the play's distinctive poetic and dramatic qualities, instead of comparing them unfavourably to one of the other versions.

Hamlet

Hamlet PDF Author: William Shakespeare
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474273882
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 689

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Book Description
This Arden edition of Hamlet, arguably Shakespeare's greatest tragedy, presents an authoritative, modernized text based on the Second Quarto text with a new introductory essay covering key productions and criticism in the decade since its first publication. A timely up-date in the 400th anniversary year of Shakespeare's death which will ensure the Arden edition continues to offer students a comprehensive and current critical account of the play, alongside the most reliable and fully-annotated text available.

Varia on the Text of Hamlet

Varia on the Text of Hamlet PDF Author: Aura Maud Miller
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Dissertations, Academic
Languages : en
Pages : 78

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Book Description


Performing the Unstageable

Performing the Unstageable PDF Author: Karen Quigley
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350055468
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
From the gouging out of eyes in Shakespeare's King Lear or Sarah Kane's Cleansed, to the adaptation of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, theatre has long been intrigued by the staging of challenging plays and impossible texts, images or ideas. Performing the Unstageable: Success, Imagination, Failure examines this phenomenon of what the theatre cannot do or has not been able to do at various points in its history. The book explores four principal areas to which unstageability most frequently pertains: stage directions, adaptations, violence and ghosts. Karen Quigley incorporates a wide range of case studies of both historical and contemporary theatrical productions including the Wooster Group's exploration of Hamlet via the structural frame of John Gielgud's 1964 filmed production, Elevator Repair Service's eight-hour staging of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and a selection of impossible stage directions drawn from works by such playwrights as Eugene O'Neill, Philip Glass, Caryl Churchill, Sarah Kane and Alistair McDowall. Placing theatre history and performance analysis in such a context, Performing the Unstageable values what is not possible, and investigates the tricky underside of theatre's most fundamental function to bring things to the place of showing: the stage.