For my MFA in Dramaturgy, I chose to create a website that contains three annotated early printings of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. These printings are known as the First and Second Quarto, and the First Folio. My goal was to make a site useful in both high school and college classrooms and as a research tool for performance, working on the principal that understanding context can create confidence. The comparison of three original texts of Hamlet demonstrates that there is no such a thing as a “definitive” Hamlet because, as these texts show, Hamlet is not a singular story. There are, in fact, three substantially different stories we refer to as Shakespeare’s Hamlet, each with their own unique origins and distinctive characteristics. The website contains each of these three texts and allows theater practitioners, students and scholars to explore each of Shakespeare’s texts singularly and in comparison.

Each text is available as an autonomous text, but the texts may also be compared and read side-by-side. For greater detail in while comparing, I have also created a line-by-line comparison option.

In creating this project, I have essentially done the job of a dramaturge without a specific production to tailor my research to—I included materials useful in both the study and the performance of Hamlet, from production history to historical context. My research comes from a desire to ensure that the site is true to the idea of the play(s) in performance, as opposed to on the page, and this is the main thrust of the project. As a dramaturge with a specialization in Shakespeare and Renaissance English literature, I not only want to do justice to Hamlet’s illustrious stage history, but also to provide a sense of the play in its original historic and social context, which aids both performance and research. For example, Anne of Denmark was Queen of England when the first two texts were printed, and this may be why no line claiming that Denmark is a “prison” appears in these plays. Readers may well detect a personal bias in my research and annotation decisions, as I did have an agenda and a goal at the outset: to paint a picture of the play in its original context and in performance.     

Notes and other resource material appear as highlighted links in the text and, when you select them, appear in the right hand pane of the page.  Images within the text range from production photos from the American Shakespeare Center’s recent productions of Hamlet in 2005 and of Q1 in 2007, to classical paintings and sculpture.

Sound files will both give a sense of performance, and provide opportunities to demonstrate rhetoric, meter, and experiments in Original Pronunciation (an attempt to approximate the way English was spoken in Shakespeare’s day). Many production history notes, from costuming to staging, give readers a broad concept of the many times and ways this story has been presented, but without showing a particular bias on my part. If there is one thing I have learned about these plays and this project, it is that people feel drawn to it for a variety of ways, and desire to stage it for as many reasons. I would encourage everyone who comes to the play(s) to feel uninhibited in their exploration of and thinking about these texts.


Editing Notes

Each of the annotated scripts on the site are faithful transcriptions from original copies of each printing. I have, however, added line numbers and spacing in an attempt to make the texts more reader-friendly. In the line-by-line comparisons, I have reset extra-lineal words to their original line for the sake of comparison.

For example:

                   Ghost Yea he, that incestuous wretch, wonne to his will
                   O wicked will, and gifts! that haue the power           (with gifts,

 Becomes:

                   Ghost Yea he, that incestuous wretch, wonne to his will with gifts,
                   O wicked will, and gifts! that haue the power          
                  
Also in the line-by-line comparisons, I have placed stage directions in single cells regardless of length and in some cases have slightly changed the length of individual lines of text for spacing concerns.

Navigation

From anywhere in the site it is possible to navigate to any of the three texts,  from which you can access the comparison pages. Each text has a color scheme assigned to it to help provide a visual distinction: the First Quarto is red, the Second Quarto is green, and the Folio is blue. If readers find the color distracting or confusing, each may be converted into a gray scale display.

The texts are available only in transcriptions of the original spelling currently, but modernized spelling options are next on my to-do list. The navigation bar at the bottom of the page is where you will find the gray scale options, and links to the Homepage and Comparison pages.

Navigation through the texts is available act by act, scene by scene, and page by page.

List of Productions Mentioned in the Notes