The First Hamlet and Its Many Secrets

Journal title PARADIGMI
Author/s Alessandro Serpieri
Publishing Year 2015 Issue 2015/1 Language Italian
Pages 17 P. 37-53 File size 79 KB
DOI 10.3280/PARA2015-001004
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

The case of Hamlet is very strange indeed, given that it is the only Shakespearean play of which we have three different versions. Till 1823 only two were known, the Quarto edition of 1604-5 and the rather different Folio version of 1623. But in that year another copy was discovered by Sir Henry Bunbury in his house, and it was dated 1603 as announced on the title page, which means one or two years before the great play till then known. The text was largely different from the two preceding versions, and much shorter, since it counts 2200 lines in comparison with the Quarto’s 3800 and the Folio’s 3600. The author of this essay argues that it seems to be one of the early plays of the young Shakespeare.

Keywords: Discovery, First, Hamlet, Shakespeare, Text, Young.

  1. Shakespeare W. (1997a). Amleto, a cura di Serpieri A., con testo a fronte. Venezia: Marsilio.
  2. Shakespeare W. (1997b). Il primo Amleto, a cura di Serpieri A., con testo a fronte. Venezia: Marsilio.
  3. Shakespeare W. (2006a). Hamlet, eds. Thompson A. and Taylor N.. London: The Arden Shakespeare, Bloomsbury Publishing.
  4. Shakespeare W. (2006b). Hamlet: The Texts of 1603 and 1623, eds. Thompson A. and Taylor N. London: The Arden Shakespeare, Bloomsbury Publishing

Alessandro Serpieri, Il primo Amleto e i suoi molti segreti in "PARADIGMI" 1/2015, pp 37-53, DOI: 10.3280/PARA2015-001004