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Hardy M. Cook. "Reformatting Hamlet: Creating a Q1 Hamlet for Television."<http://asgard.humn.arts.ualberta.ca/emls/iemls/shaksper/files/REFORMAT%20HAMLET.txt> Context: This is the text of a paper presented at the "Reformatting the Bard" Seminar, Sixth World Shakespeare Congress (1996, Los Angeles). Thesis: Cook reports on the results of an experiment he performed. He "re-edited the BBC TV Shakespeare Hamlet from its little more than three-and-a-half-hour-long, roughly full-text version into an approximately three-hour version, following the scene structure of Q1." For the most part, this required cutting passages, but Cook also had to insert some material, which he did by displaying photographs of the appropriate Q1 passages and (with his daughter) giving them dramatic readings. He comes to the conclusion that in Q1 shows an Ophelia "more victimized, . . . a more determined Hamlet and a more evil Claudius, as well as a less complicit Gertrude and Laertes." A Little Background on Q1, Q2, etc. For over 100 years all editions of Hamlet have been "conflated." This means that one text (the "copy-text") is improved by adding bits and pieces (words, phrases, speeches, speech-headings, stage directions) from other texts. This is the process of "conflating" the texts. The goal is to come as close as possible to Shakespeare's original intention when he wrote the play. The copy-text and the texts conflated with it are all early 17th-century texts that might have some "independent authority." A text with "independent authority" is one which could have been (no one will ever know) printed from a manuscript by Shakespeare, or one which was copied from another printed edition, but possibly corrected by someone (say, an actor in Shakespeare's company) who would know what Shakespeare really meant. In the case of Hamlet, the usual copy-text is Q2, which is conflated with F1, Q3, Q4, and (to a lesser extent) Q1. The letter-number combinations look like the model designations of luxury cars or fighter jets, but they're just scholarly jargon. "Q" stands for "quarto," and "F" stands for "folio." A book with medium-sized pages is called a "quarto"; a book with large pages (about 15 inches vertical) is called a "folio." (The Latin root of "folio" means "leaf of paper," and in Shakespeare's time two folio pages were made by folding a standard sheet of paper once; the Latin root of "quarto" means "four," and four quarto pages were made by folding a standard sheet of paper twice.) In discussions of Shakespeare, "Q" is used to designate a single play by Shakespeare printed in a quarto, and "F" is used for a collection of Shakespeare's plays in a folio. The numbers attached to "Q" and "F" indicate the order; for example, the "Q1" of Hamlet is the first known quarto, and Q2 is the second known quarto, etc. You will sometimes see these various editions referred to as the "First Folio" or the "Second Quarto," with capitals, as if "First Folio" or "Second Quarto" were actual titles. They are not. Here is what is printed on the title page of Q1: THE Tragicall Historie of HAMLET Prince of Denmark. By William Shake-speare. As it has beene diuerse times acted by his Highnesse seruants in the Cittie of London: as also in the two Vniuersities of Cambridge and Oxford, and else-where. At London printed for N. L. and Ihon Trundell. 1603.As you can see, "First Quarto" is no more of a title than is "Q1." Adding to the confusion, Q1 may be referred to as the "Bad Quarto" and Q2 as the "Good Quarto." Q1 is "bad" because it is short and (in the opinion of many scholars) clumsy. It contains only a little more than half as many words as Q2. As for the clumsiness, here's a famous passage as it usually appears and as it appears in Q1:
Scholars have theorized that Q1 is pirated edition, created by "memorial reconstruction," which means that some actor of a minor role, working from memory, made a copy which he sold to a publisher. All of this assumes that Shakespeare had one original intention, and that anything that is missing from the copy-text is missing because some printer made a mistake. (We have nothing in Shakespeare's handwriting except a few signatures.) On the other hand, other scholars (especially recently) have theorized that Q1 is a first draft, or an acting version, or a road show version. If any of this is true, Shakespeare had different intentions at different times. It's the sort of thing a scholar can spend a lifetime on. Bottom Line: An odd way to show that the much shorter Q1 is much simpler than the usual Hamlet. |