"Hamlet" After Q1 : An Uncanny History of the Shakespearean Text /
Lesser, Zachary
"Hamlet" After Q1 : An Uncanny History of the Shakespearean Text / Zachary Lesser. - 1 online resource (304 p.) : 27 illus. - Material Texts .
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction. The Urn-Hamlet -- Chapter 1. As Originally Written by Shakespeare -- Chapter 2. Contrary Matters -- Chapter 3. Enter the Ghost in His Night Gowne -- Chapter 4. Conscience Makes Cowards -- Conclusion. Q1 in the Library at Babel -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Acknowledgments
restricted access http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec
In 1823, Sir Henry Bunbury discovered a badly bound volume of twelve Shakespeare plays in a closet of his manor house. Nearly all of the plays were first editions, but one stood out as extraordinary: a previously unknown text of Hamlet that predated all other versions. Suddenly, the world had to grapple with a radically new-or rather, old-Hamlet in which the characters, plot, and poetry of Shakespeare's most famous play were profoundly and strangely transformed.Q1, as the text is known, has been declared a rough draft, a shorthand piracy, a memorial reconstruction, and a pre-Shakespearean "ur-Hamlet," among other things. Flickering between two historical moments-its publication in Shakespeare's early seventeenth century and its rediscovery in Bunbury's early nineteenth-Q1 is both the first and last Hamlet. Because this text became widely known only after the familiar version of the play had reached the pinnacle of English literature, its reception has entirely depended on this uncanny temporal oscillation; so too has its ongoing influence on twentieth- and twenty-first-century ideas of the play.Zachary Lesser examines how the improbable discovery of Q1 has forced readers to reconsider accepted truths about Shakespeare as an author and about the nature of Shakespeare's texts. In telling the story of this mysterious quarto and tracing the debates in newspapers, London theaters, and scholarly journals that followed its discovery, Lesser offers brilliant new insights on what we think we mean when we talk about Hamlet.
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
In English.
9780812246612 9780812290394
10.9783/9780812290394 doi
Transmission of texts--History--England--17th century.
LITERARY CRITICISM / Shakespeare.
Cultural Studies. Literature. Medieval and Renaissance Studies.
PR2807 -- .L385 2015eb
822.3/3
"Hamlet" After Q1 : An Uncanny History of the Shakespearean Text / Zachary Lesser. - 1 online resource (304 p.) : 27 illus. - Material Texts .
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction. The Urn-Hamlet -- Chapter 1. As Originally Written by Shakespeare -- Chapter 2. Contrary Matters -- Chapter 3. Enter the Ghost in His Night Gowne -- Chapter 4. Conscience Makes Cowards -- Conclusion. Q1 in the Library at Babel -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Acknowledgments
restricted access http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec
In 1823, Sir Henry Bunbury discovered a badly bound volume of twelve Shakespeare plays in a closet of his manor house. Nearly all of the plays were first editions, but one stood out as extraordinary: a previously unknown text of Hamlet that predated all other versions. Suddenly, the world had to grapple with a radically new-or rather, old-Hamlet in which the characters, plot, and poetry of Shakespeare's most famous play were profoundly and strangely transformed.Q1, as the text is known, has been declared a rough draft, a shorthand piracy, a memorial reconstruction, and a pre-Shakespearean "ur-Hamlet," among other things. Flickering between two historical moments-its publication in Shakespeare's early seventeenth century and its rediscovery in Bunbury's early nineteenth-Q1 is both the first and last Hamlet. Because this text became widely known only after the familiar version of the play had reached the pinnacle of English literature, its reception has entirely depended on this uncanny temporal oscillation; so too has its ongoing influence on twentieth- and twenty-first-century ideas of the play.Zachary Lesser examines how the improbable discovery of Q1 has forced readers to reconsider accepted truths about Shakespeare as an author and about the nature of Shakespeare's texts. In telling the story of this mysterious quarto and tracing the debates in newspapers, London theaters, and scholarly journals that followed its discovery, Lesser offers brilliant new insights on what we think we mean when we talk about Hamlet.
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
In English.
9780812246612 9780812290394
10.9783/9780812290394 doi
Transmission of texts--History--England--17th century.
LITERARY CRITICISM / Shakespeare.
Cultural Studies. Literature. Medieval and Renaissance Studies.
PR2807 -- .L385 2015eb
822.3/3