Hamlet (Arden Shakespeare: Third Series) [Paperback]

William Shakespeare (Author), Neil Taylor (Editor), Ann Thompson (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 20, 2006

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

Editorial Reviews

Review

"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

About the Author

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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 640 pages
• Publisher: Arden Shakespeare; 3rd edition (March 20, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1904271332
• ISBN-13: 978-1904271338
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #35,397 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #52 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Drama > British & Irish

More About the Author

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in April 1564, and his birth is traditionally celebrated on April 23. The facts of his life, known from surviving documents, are sparse. He was one of eight children born to John Shakespeare, a merchant of some standing in his community. William probably went to the King's New School in Stratford, but he had no university education. In November 1582, at the age of eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway, eight years his senior, who was pregnant with their first child, Susanna. She was born on May 26, 1583. Twins, a boy, Hamnet ( who would die at age eleven), and a girl, Judith, were born in 1585. By 1592 Shakespeare had gone to London working as an actor and already known as a playwright. A rival dramatist, Robert Greene, referred to him as "an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers." Shakespeare became a principal shareholder and playwright of the successful acting troupe, the Lord Chamberlain's Men (later under James I, called the King's Men). In 1599 the Lord Chamberlain's Men built and occupied the Globe Theater in Southwark near the Thames River. Here many of Shakespeare's plays were performed by the most famous actors of his time, including Richard Burbage, Will Kempe, and Robert Armin. In addition to his 37 plays, Shakespeare had a hand in others, including Sir Thomas More and The Two Noble Kinsmen, and he wrote poems, including Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. His 154 sonnets were published, probably without his authorization, in 1609. In 1611 or 1612 he gave up his lodgings in London and devoted more and more time to retirement in Stratford, though he continued writing such plays as The Tempest and Henry VII until about 1613. He died on April 23 1616, and was buried in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford. No collected edition of his plays was published during his life-time, but in 1623 two members of his acting company, John Heminges and Henry Condell, put together the great collection now called the First Folio.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Arden Shakespeare Hamlet, December 4, 2006

By 

Nathan Records - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hamlet (Arden Shakespeare: Third Series) (Paperback)

I am currently working on my MFA/Directing. I directed Hamlet and am now writing my defense of it. I have two thoughts on this third edition.

After going through this edition, from a point of view of the script, I'm not sure I understand the need to update Harold Jenkins's 2d edition. The script itself was easier to navigate in the 2d edition and I thought Jenkins's notes were more helpful. I also disagree with some of what Thompson and Taylor have to say in their editorial notes below the script. That said, I am biased because I used the 2d edition as a sort of "Hamlet Bible" as I directed the piece. Jenkins's notes were extremely insightful and useful. I became very comfortable with it.

On the other hand, this third edition has some different insight into the play in performance than does the second edition, as well as information on casting and music that was not included in Jenkins. Obviously there is much written about William Shakespeare in the world, and this 3rd edition of Arden is probably the most up-to-date resource for bibliographic material (as well as some photos of past productions of the play). Jenkins edition is 24 years old, ancient in the scholastic world's "what's new" when it comes to sifting the vast quantity of material written on Shakespeare and Hamlet.

Obviously, the needs of the theatrical world for playing Hamlet are different than that of the scholastic world (of which I am currently stuck in both). I think Jenkins is more user-friendly for the theatrician while Thompson & Taylor suit the needs of the scholastic better. My final thought is that a scholar/student of Shakespeare will want to have both the second and third editions for the differences they have to offer.

23 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply Indispensable, November 1, 2003

By 

Paul Frandano (Reston, Va. USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hamlet (Arden Shakespeare: Second Series) (Paperback)

When Henry James sat down to write on his Venetian travels for what later became the Italian Hours, he began with a disclaimer: "It is a great pleasure to write the word; but I am not sure there is not a certain impudence in pretending to add anything to it." Turning to Shakespeare, we might amuse ourselves by writing on, say, Hamlet, but can anything be said that's not already been said, and better, a dozen times, by superior critics and closer readers? In the appropriate spirit of humility (and in utter submission to the Bard and his great gift to civilization), I offer a few thoughts on the Arden 2nd Edition of Hamlet, and not on "the greatest work in the history of literature."

Hamlet is by far the longest of the Ardens at 574 pages. It breaks down thusly: the prefatory material of editor Harold Jenkins - one of the Arden Series general editors and a Hamlet authority of great renown - alone takes up 164 pages. Three-quarters of this is bibliographical and historical. In his 40-page critical introduction, Jenkins addresses many of the plays thorniest problems, with the Talmudic attentiveness of the closest reader. Then comes the play itself, spread over 264 pages (in terms of sheer length relative to the Bard's other plays, the text is a monster, coming in at more than 3800 lines). Each page of the Arden includes an average half-page of Jenkins' detailed, argumentative, authoritative, and uncommonly helpful footnotes. The final 146 pages consist of longer (end)notes that Jenkins simply could not physically fit onto the bottom of a page. Many of these are short essays (including an appendix that glosses an earlier discussion on the dating of the play).

Each of the Arden Hamlet's three sections might merit separate publication (after a modest bit of repackaging), but as a totality, Jenkins' edition must be the greatest value on the Shakespeare market. Jenkins' ruminations on the provenance of the story and the many sources Shakespeare might have drawn on, the "Ur-Hamlet" that might have come from the quill of contemporary Thomas Kyd (The Spanish Tragedy), the complexities of determining an authoritative text, the drama's inconsistencies and unanswered questions, the import of the great soliloquy of III.i (which is emphatically NOT, insists Jenkins, a deliberation on whether to commit suicide), Elizabethan revenge dramas in general, and so much more make this a truly indispensable, illuminating, even breathtaking volume.

We think we know this play well. We have read it, and seen performed on stage and in memorable or hideously forgettable films. Many of its greatest lines are embedded in our hearts. The beginning of true understanding, however, resides in a superbly annotated scholarly edition. The Arden is one of several choices you can make and is for me the one to own, equally suitable for students, scholars, actors, and mere Bardolators. It will - provided, of course, you are not already a scholarly specialist in Elizabethan drama - knock the scales from your eyes. And until the 3rd edition now in preparation under Ann Thompson is published, this Hamlet will stand as the epitome of the Arden Shakespeare's greatness as a series.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great edition to help you gather more riches from Hamlet, July 24, 2003

By 

Craig Matteson (Saline, MI) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hamlet (Arden Shakespeare: Second Series) (Paperback)

This edition of Hamlet will allow you to read the text more closely and with more understanding than any other I have seen. With all the added notes and helps you will not only understand the language of Shakespeare more clearly, you will also be able to come to your own informed opinions on this great work.

The richness of great works is their layering and their openness to multiple interpretations. And yet, misreading and misunderstanding the language is more often the source of missing the point of the passage rather than adding to a richer understanding. There are certainly creative misreadings, but those are made from deep understanding rather than superficial mistaken interpretation.

This edition has extensive notes with the text and when a topic requires longer treatment the notation LN is used for Longer Note. You turn to the back and find the Longer Note by Act - Scene - Line Number and get a great deal of useful discussion about that aspect of the play.

There is also a 159 page introduction with context setting essays on the issues around the date of the play, its publication, the various texts and the debates over the merits and deficiencies of the First and Second Quarto and the First Folio, plus editorial problems, and a critical introduction.

All in all, this great play deserves to be read closely and returns riches for all the effort you can afford to put into reading it. This edition is very fine and assists you in mining treasures from this magnificent work.