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Ann Thompson is Professor of English Language and Literature and Head of the School of Humanities at King's College London. She has edited The Taming of the Shrew, and her other publications include Shakespeare's Chaucer, Shakespeare, Meaning and Metaphor (with John O. Thompson), and Women Reading Shakespeare, 1660-1900 (with Sasha Roberts). She has also published widely on editing Shakespe... More

Ann Thompson is Professor of English Language and Literature and Head of the School of Humanities at King's College London. She has edited The Taming of the Shrew, and her other publications include Shakespeare's Chaucer, Shakespeare, Meaning and Metaphor (with John O. Thompson), and Women Reading Shakespeare, 1660-1900 (with Sasha Roberts). She has also published widely on editing Shakespeare and Shakespeare's language. She is one of the general editors of the Arden Shakespeare.

Neil Taylor is Dean of Research and Dean of the Graduate School at Roehampton University. He has edited Henry IV, Part 2 and (with Brian Loughrey) Thomas Middleton: Five Plays. He has also published widely on editing Shakespeare, Shakespeare on film, and other aspects of Renaissance and modern drama. This self-contained, free-standing volume gives readers the Second Quarto text. In his illustrated introduction to the play's historical, cultural, and performance contexts, Neil Taylor presents a thorough survey of critical approaches to the play. He addresses the challenges faced in reading, editing, or acting a play with the depth of content and tradition that Hamlet possesses. He also establishes the historical and cultural context in which the play was written and explains the arguments about the merits and deficiencies of the First and Second Quarto and the First Folio. Taylor points to the many novelists, both men and women, whose work refers to or bears commonalities with Hamlet, to suggest an ongoing to need to resolve "the continuing mystery of Hamlet" in print and on stage. An appendix contains the additional passages found only in the 1623 text, and other appendices on the editorial process, the traditions regarding the act division at 3.4/4.1, casting, and music are also included. "A pathbreaking edition, one that promises to change irrevocably our understanding of Shakespeare's greatest play."-Professor James Shapiro, author of 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare "Hamlet's latest editors have undertaken a heroic task with great skill and thoroughness."-Stanley Wells, The Observer (UK) "Quite simply the most comprehensive edition of the play currently available, a status I suspect it will enjoy for many years to come."-The British Theatre Guide "Stunning! There is absolutely no doubt about this being the text to buy . . . for those students who will be studying the play at university. This critical edition gives the reader the Second Quarto Text (1604-1605), annotated with intelligence and care, a wealth of historical and cultural references and a survey of different critical approaches to the play."-The Use of English

Table of Contents

List of illustrations
General editors' preface
Preface

INTRODUCTION
The challenges of Hamlet
The challenge of acting Hamlet
The challenge of editing Hamlet
The challenge to the greatness of Hamlet: Hamlet versus Lear
Hamlet in our time
The soliloquies and the modernity of Hamlet
Hamlet and Freud
Reading against the Hamlet tradition
Hamlet in Shakespeare's time
Hamlet at the turn of the century
The challenge of dating Hamlet
Was there an earlier Hamlet play?
Are there any early references to Shakespeare's play?
Can we date Hamlet in relation to other contemporary plays?
Hamlet's first performances
The story of Hamlet
Murder most foul
An antic disposition
`Sentences', speeches and thoughts
The composition of Hamlet
The quartos and the Folio
The quartos
The First Folio
The relationship of Q2 to Q1
The relationship of F to Q2
What, then, of Q1?
Editorial practice
Why a three-text edition?
Hamlet on stage and screen
Hamlet and his points
Enter the director
Hamlet and politics
Novel Hamlets
Hamlet meets Fielding, Goethe, Dickens and others
Hamlet and women novelists
Prequels and sequels
The continuing mystery of Hamlet

THE TRAGICAL HISTORY OF HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK (The Second Quarto, 1604-5)

APPENDICES
Appendix 1: Folio-only passages
Appendix 2: Textual discussion
Appendix 3: Editorial conventions, sample edited passages and a comparison of scenes across the three texts
Appendix 4: The act division at 3.4/4.1
Appendix 5: Casting
Appendix 6: Music

Abbreviations and references
Abbreviations used in notes
Works by and partly by Shakespeare
Editions of Shakespeare collated
Other works cited

Index

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