A Synoptic Hamlet: a Critical-Synoptic Edition of the Second Quarto and First Folio Texts of Hamlet

Download or read book A Synoptic Hamlet: a Critical-Synoptic Edition of the Second Quarto and First Folio Texts of Hamlet written by Jesús Tronch-Pérez and published by Universitat de València. This book was released on 2002 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Synoptic Hamlet is an alternative response to the editorial problems of this multiple-text play. Like most critical editions, it presents the early texts in a manner helpful to the general reader by modernizing spelling and punctuation, and emending non-sensical readings. However, it does not hide the text’s diversity by exclusively selecting readings from either the Second Quarto or the First Folio in order to reconstruct a single-reading version corresponding to the authentic Hamlet. Rather, it makes their significant variants immediately available in the line itself (offering alternative editorial interpretations of identical or similar readings at certain points). Thus the reader can have a direct appreciation of the divergence and similarity between these early texts from which the Hamlet of today is known.