“From the purpose of playing”: Determining a text of Hamlet

Type :

Term papers

Pages :

14 pages

Format :

.doc

Published date :

03/05/2009

Category :

Philosophy & literature

Sub category :

Literature

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Summary :

Introduction.
A brief explanation of the past and current textual controversies of Hamlet.
1. The book The Shakespeare Wars by Ron Rosenbaum.
2. Three recognized substantive texts of Hamlet.
An audience-centered study of the changes.
1. The opening line to Hamlet's first soliloquy.
2. One of Hamlet's most famous utterances.
3. The series of questions posed.
A bloodthirsty Hamlet all too willing to take revenge.
Hamlet as a revenge play and the Prince as a man on a mission.
1. The dramatic focus of the play.
2. The retention of the scene: Affect on the playing of Hamlet's final words.
The instance of Hamlet-as-state-tragedy.
The Norton edition.
A look at Hamlet's dying breath.
The ramifications of the changes made to Hamlet.
The relative brevity of substantive texts of Hamlet.
Conclusion.
Works consulted.

Abstract

In the introduction for hamlet in William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion, Gary Taylor writes that "of all the two-text plays, hamlet comes closest to Lear in the scale and complexity of the textual variation apparently resulting from authorial revision" (401). Indeed, hamlet's three earliest texts each offer distinct glimpses into history; although they have been more or less combined over the course of the twentieth century (and earlier), separately, they each have a different story to tell.

My main interest in the field of textual editing is this: I intend to explore the history of textual differences in hamlet and how those differences inform various understandings of the play via both reading and performance. As New Cambridge editor Philip Edwards notes in The Shakespeare Wars, "Everyone who wants to understand hamlet as reader, actor or director, needs to understand the nature of the play's textual questions and to have his or her own view of the questions in order to approach the ambiguities in the meaning" (qtd. Rosenbaum 30). This will naturally result in some conclusions about how the play can be best illuminated through its text; as an actor myself, I am fully aware that many of these conclusions are somewhat subjective.

My intention is not necessarily to crown one edition or textual theory over another. Gary Taylor, Stanley Wells, John Dover Wilson and numerous other scholars have spent countless pages discussing how the texts could have possibly changed from edition to edition; I am only interested in "how" if it helps to illuminate the effect of these changes.