Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

In 1991, Paul Bertram and Bernice Kliman edited a Three-Text Hamlet, in which they printed the First Quarto, the Second Quarto, and the First Folio of Hamlet side by side. The most striking difference between the three texts is between the First Quarto and the other two texts, since it is little more than half their length. In other words, a lot of the First Quarto in this edition is blank space. Few people apart from scholars read the First Quarto today. So why publish it? The first reason is historical. When modern editors publish a “best” text, whether supposedly corresponding to what Shakespeare first wrote or to the theatrical version that was first staged, they are creating something that had no previous existence. Any historical work that takes such a text as its starting point is a form of science fiction, in which the modern edition travels back in time to take its place beside Renaissance manuscript records and printed books, as if the “best” Shakespeare that the editor has just produced was already exerting its influence four hundred years earlier. There are, of course, many reasons for modern editions, two of the most important being for modern stagings of Shakespeare and for various kinds of educational use from primary schools to universities. But a modern edition is just that: an artifact of our own culture (see de Grazia 1991a).Reading the early printed texts reminds ... log in or subscribe to read full text