The Complicated Publication History of Hamlet

One of the more interesting parts of the Introduction to Hamlet was the discussion of the play's publication history, particularly what we know and don't know about it. The play was written some time between 1599 and 1602, and was published in multiple editions beginning in 1603 First Quarto. It was reprinted in the Second Quarto just a year later, and then a longer version was published in the First Folio in 1623. The different texts have substantial differences, and earlier editions of Shakespeare's mostly combined the Second Quarto and the First Folio, as the First Quarto wasn't discovered until 1823. The First Quarto, for example, had an entire scene missing from the other two editions, and almost every line in the different versions have some minor variations in wording. It's interesting how such a famous text exists in multiple different versions; the admiration for Shakespeare's writing in a work that we don't have a consistent version of poses interesting questions.

Another interesting part of the writing and publication of Hamlet, though, is the hypothesized existence of the Ur-Hamlet, an earlier play that Shakespeare might have taken material or ideas from. The idea of such a play is based on commentary from years before the writing of the version of Hamlet that we have that includes ideas specific to Shakespeare's version. Specifically, the commentary references the play having a vengeful ghost, a particular characteristic of Shakespeare's version of the Hamlet story. So the theory goes that Shakespeare drew from this Ur-Hamlet text in creating his own work. Nothing definitive can be said about this hypothetical play though, there is even disagreement about who might have written it. Some say playwright Thomas Kyd might have written this play that then gave Shakespeare inspiration, while others maintain that Shakespeare actually wrote this play based on some parts of Hamlet's story but then later revisited the subject to produce the play we have today. This interesting history of Hamlet raises many interesting questions about the nature of works of literature and their authors, and I find it surprising just how unclear the history of one of the most famous plays in existence is.