Ofel: Alas, what change is this? Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayHam: But if you want to marry, marry a fool, For the wise know well enough, What monsters do you make of them, for a convent goe.Ofel: Pray to God that he will return him.Ham: No, I too have heard of the your painting, God has given you one face, and you make another, HAMLET, Prince of Denmark, The First QuartoThe title page of the second quarto of Hamlet states that the text below is "Newly impressed and enlarged almost as much / again as it was, according to the true and perfect / Couples". Taking this at face value, three facts necessarily follow: that at least one previous edition exists (otherwise this could not be "reprinted... again"); that the previous edition was shorter (otherwise this one could not be "enlarged"); and that this quarter does not contain some verses of the "Perfect Couples" (since it is "almost as much"). In fact, there is a First Quarto dated one year earlier (1603); Q1 is about 1600 lines shorter; and the Folio restores some apparently authorial passages. It seems that "IR", the printer, or "NL", the publisher, are correct on every possible front. We can't even condemn IR and NL for selfish advertising. They admit that their copy is "almost," but not quite, "perfect." perfect", and therefore is corrupt not only in its brevity, but also in the presentation of the text it actually contains. This would mean that Q1 did not use the "true and perfect Couples" as copy-text. It does not seem absurd to rephrase: our new edition is larger and truer than the other edition, because we had access to the work as it was supposed to be, while the previous publication NL would certainly know if this were the case, since it was one of the printers of Q1 that this reading is credible suggests that it is exactly what we mean to believe, since the title page is an advertisement after all. Accepting this last implication as true, Q1 must be the product of a theatrical production in one sense or another , its title page boasts that the text is "As he acted several times" instead of as "William Shake-speare" had written it. For now there is nothing confusing If the actor who played Marcello and Luciano reconstructed the text of Q1 from memory, it fits well with the two title pages. An actor would obviously have access mainly, if not exclusively, to the "acted" theatrical text or to its memory; a shilling or two should provide the rest of the explanation. However, the thesis as it stands cannot satisfy all the curiosity that an attentive reader of the First Quarto has to experience. It's not simply that an actor misremembered the "truer" text of Q2. Rather he worked from what was "acted at different times", and therefore directed, and therefore probably cut for length and reshaped for the sake of entertainment (i.e. profit). So, there are necessarily other agencies involved, whose work falls somewhere between Shakespeare and his more infamous memorizer. This sets up two totally distinct problems regarding the origin of the in-quart. The first is the memory problem. The text is certainly not exactly what was recited. The simple fact that the lines spoken by or in the presence of Marcellus or Lucian are much closer to the text of the Second Quarto, almost indisputably, suggests that the rest of the text is even further from the work as it was produced because it demonstrates that the plaintiff had a variable and faulty memory. The second problem is, as mentioned previously, that of productions. Additionally, we need to hirea thoughtful agency, because Q1 is such an effective tool, but fundamentally different game. If Q1 were simply the result of incorrect memorization of the basic text of Q2 or Folio Hamlet, then there is no conceivable explanation for how Q1, independently of either of these texts, has such strong dramatic logic, unless we regress and we assert that it was one of Shakespeare's earliest drafts, or perhaps, his final draft. This distressing thought would have many, though perhaps not insurmountable, problems in explaining the extraordinary similarity of Marcellus's Q1 lines to Marcellus's Q2 lines. Let's say then that there is both a "memorist" and a "director" (who can, of course, be any of numerous people who chip and reshape the work). These two major mitigating factors that separate Q1 from Shakespeare's imagined pen often come together in a reading. Any attempt to decipher one from the other, especially once composer issues are introduced into the mix, is undoubtedly conjecture. Some guesses, however, are better than others. And working through this particular issue sheds an interesting light on the play as we know it, as the essentially cut-and-paste masterpiece whose birth post-dated Shakespeare's death by about a century. Starting from the focal point of English. literature (as high school students learn it) reveals exactly how complicated the textual situation is: To be or not to be, that's the question, To die, to sleep, that's all? I all: No, sleep, dream, Maria, here it goes, because in the dream of death, when we are awake, and brought before an eternal judgement, from where no passenger ever returns, the country discovered, at the sight of which the happy smile and damned damned. If it were not for this, the joyous hope of this, who would endure the scorn and adulation of the world, despised by the righteous rich, the rich cursed by the poor? The widow is oppressed, the orphan offended, the taste of hunger, or a tirants raigne, and a thousand other calamities beyond, grunting and sweating vunder the weary life, when he can do his full Quietus, with a naked bodkin, who would want this harden ,But for a hope of something after death? Which torments the brain and confuses the sense, which makes us prefer to endure those euilles we have, rather than flying towards others we don't know. I who, or this conscience makes cowards against all, (836-857) The first problem with interpreting this monologue in the context of Q1, and therefore interpreting it in the context of the Hamlet corpus, is its total incomprehensibility towards the beginning. The phrase "When we wake up" never properly ends. We cannot awaken "the rediscovered country", the land of the dead, as if that country were a person to be awakened. Nor does the expression "the damned damned" have any "objective correlate", to force TS Elliot's expression. If the "smile" at the "sight" of the "judge", the cursed man certainly cannot "damn himself". Grammar simply doesn't allow it. Maxwell Foster, in his book The Play Behind the Play, blames the composer accordingly. Since a few words and a little rearrangement would have made sense of the passage, he argues, the passage the composer was staring at and scoffing at must have been: For in that dream of death, when we are awake, In the unknown countryFrom where no passenger ever returns, and brought before an eternal judge, at whose sight the happy smile and the cursed are damned, if not for this... Indeed, we now know what Hamlet aims at. Foster is adamant that Q1 is an early Shakespearean draft; the transition must have made sense at some point. Naturally the discussion is circular. Shakespeare wrote the passage, so the passage must give alogical contribution to the dramatic thrust of the play, therefore the play is "good", therefore Shakespeare wrote this passage. However, it's hard to believe that anyone who was paying attention could allow a passage as it appears. The fact that the lines as we know them ("For in that sleep of death...") are themselves complicated and do not serve as an excuse, because Q1 often simplifies with extraordinary clarity. For example, "The courtiers, the soldiers, the schoolboys, the eye, the tongue, the sword, / The expectation, and the Rose of the faire state" which ends in "quite quite downe" in Q2 (1808-1810) is reduced to being "All dasht and splinterd thence" in Q1 (922). Furthermore, the ease with which Foster rearranged the passage suggests that the memorizer, who by default takes on the role of editor, could easily have done the same thing. So it makes some sense that the passage once made sense. The composer's emendations may well be to blame, though perhaps misleading their purpose, they serve the purpose of inserting otherwise meaningless phrases into a familiar pattern. What the confusion ultimately reveals is how difficult it is to determine who, if anyone, has made a mistake. But at least now the work of inserting the monologue into a broader scheme can move forward. “But for the joyful hope” of our eternal (“eternal”) salvation let us avoid letting our “Quietus” insinuate that if he were to kill himself it would be “.” cursed" and, consequently, "damned". He decides to continue living because he might eventually reach the degree of "happy". In Q2, however, it is the pure "fear of something after death", as opposed to a " joyful hope", this is Hamlet's supposed reason for not taking his own life. The second quarto is more depressing in this sense, since here there is no explicit reference to the possibility of heaven, but only to Hamlet's "terror" of a punishment. Another key distinction between the two monologues, besides what seems to be markedly marked by Q2 superior poetry, are the concluding lines not found in Q1: Thus conscience makes cowards, And so the native vision of resolution It is hawked with the pale tinge of thought, And feats of great pace and moment, With regard their currents turn awry, and lose the name of the action (1737-1742) In the second part, then, Hamlet connects his inability from committing suicide to a more far-reaching cowardice. The word "feats" includes both suicide and murder, self-murder and massacre. By concluding Hamlet's inner conversation of "Oh, this conscience makes cowards of all," Q1 barely leaves open the possibility of this connection. If we see it, it is most likely because we are projecting our knowledge of Hamlet onto that passage. An independent reading reveals that Hamlet is simply extending his understanding of himself to others. Not only am I, Prince of Denmark, incapable of committing suicide because of my "conscience", but so is everyone else. In the Second Quarto, Hamlet implies that we are all incapable of action, period. The Folio adds the words “of us all” to solidify the point. This reading makes Hamlet's projection absurd. After the play within the play, Hamlet will have categorical proof that we are not all cowards: Claudius managed to muster enough courage to send Hamlet Sr. to the very same unknown country he is so afraid of. .Each version adapts to the work in which it is found. Hamlet's ridiculous assumption that the "name of the action" is universally lost serves him as a rationalization in Q2 for his delay, whereas in Q1 such a rationalization is unnecessary. Hamlet kills the king as soon as he deems it feasible, provided that the king receives his just punishment. Alsoin a detail like this, Q1 is coherent in a way that a bungled reconstruction of some other play wouldn't necessarily be. If that were the case, we would expect a loose end here. It seems, therefore, that someone consciously cut some lines. However, the very next line in Q1 appears to be an excellent example of faulty memory. The difference between “Lady in thy horizons, let all my sins be remembered” and “Nymph in thy horizons / Let all my sins be remembered” is not insignificant in terms of what it can tell us about question 1. “Nymph” is a word load. It expresses in a breath Hamlet's ambivalence towards Ophelia, who here is a sexualized divinity, a woman who is simultaneously the two dichotomous Maries of the New Testament. Perhaps even more interestingly, a nymph also denotes a stream or river. This allows us a much more in-depth reading of the "horizons"; they are no longer simply prayers. Even a "horizon" is a "horizon". Hamlet thus betrays an explicit desire to cast his sins into the remotest depths of a river. This clearly foreshadows Ophelia's death. And since Ophelia drowns in both Q1 and Q2 as a result of taking Hamlet's sins upon herself, there is no logical explanation as to why one would conscientiously replace "Lady" with "Nimph." If ever one word in a literary work was objectively superior to another, then “Nimph” is better than “Lady.” Of course, it could never be proven that "Lady" no longer rings true to anyone's ears. On the preponderance of the evidence, however, “Lady” is the result of a bad memory. Another clear example that illustrates the same point is Hamlet's condemnation of his mother's lust in Q1: "as if the increase / of appetite had grown from what he looked at" (214-215). The appetite is nourished in the second trimester (328-329), which is much more evocative. The first draft of the thesis could not explain these differences particularly well, because "fed" expresses what is really happening in both works. A writer would probably be familiar enough with his own work to adequately describe the situation: Hamlet sees Gertrude as having already succumbed to Claudius' temptations. "Looking at" Claudio no longer means "feeding" her, because she is already sleeping between "incestuous sheets" (Q1, 217). The placement of the monologue "To be or not to be" and the subsequent convent scene with Ophelia reveals the same structural coherence and the same memorization problems. In Q1, the scene would be the first scene of the second act, if the scene and act numbers were attributed to a play that did not originally bear them. It occurs immediately after Corambis and the King track it, which may reflect a memorizer's associative chain. However, it also establishes a series of consecutive spy scenes. Corambis himself then tries to discover the cause of Hamlet's madness. Then Rossencraft and Gilderstone try to play it like a flute. Finally, Hamlet orchestrates the play within the play in such a way that he can "capture the king's conscience" (1163). The cumulative effect is the sense the reader (who is a self-styled spectator) has of a powerful build-up, which appropriately culminates in the murderous game of cat and mouse (or game of "mouse" and mouse) that the King and Hamlet they play against each other. on the other, in which the delay is, with one theological exception, the result of circumstances. In Q2, the convent scene takes place between the scenes with the players, separating Polonius and the King's plot from their actual espionage with a few scenes. Yet despite the craftsmanship of Q1's structure, the pacing of the convent scene lacks much of Q2's punch. A small example that demonstrates this difference is the explicitHamlet's condemnation of Ophelia to the convent. Hamlet each time says: "To a Nunnery goe" (893, 904, 908, 919), while in Q2 he expresses the same idea in various ways, which better reflect his real or perceived madness. So what story could we build? about how Q1 is both remarkably coherent and in some places noticeably inferior, once you assume that it's not a Shakespearean draft? Steven Urkowitz rightly pointed out that "If the differences between Q1 and Q2 really stem from 'pirates,'" then "these pirates should deserve further study, because their theatrical acuity is impressive." But we cannot overlook the issue of the “Nimph” versus the “Lady”. Once these narrow boundaries are set, only one possible solution remains. The First Quarto must be a memorially reconstructed version of a cleverly cut and reshaped play. Otherwise we must attribute an annulment motivation to a character actor, who would not have much reason to spend his time carefully rearranging Shakespeare's scenes. Another plausible possibility presents itself. The above in no way explains why Polonious transforms into Corambis. This is not a mistake of the mind, especially since Corambis is not an arbitrary name for Polonious: Corambus was probably the name of the same character in an earlier non-existent play called Hamlet, now labeled Ur-Hamlet, presumably by the London playwright Thomas Kyd, who appeared about fifteen years before the Hamlet in question. This fact was deduced mainly from an extant German work from 1710 dealing with the same material, Der Bestrafte Brudermord. If Shakespeare had published only one manuscript of Hamlet, then the regression to a former name must be a creative decision on the part of a "director", an actor, or an "editor". The question of why any of these hypothetical people would want to alter the play in this way is, at best, problematic and at worst unanswerable, leading us to the tentative conclusion that Shakespeare actually wrote a first draft and that Q1 is a reconstruction of that draft. Furthermore, a first draft is expected to remain closer to its sources. Revision is exactly what the word implies: seeing again. This explanation would explain the undeniable power of Q1, just as Maxwell Foster claims. It also allows for the "precision" of Marcello and Luciano's scenes. To escape this conclusion, we might hope that Shakespeare's first draft differed only insofar as Polonius was Corambis, which would mean that the textual situation might still be the one I postulated in the previous paragraph. Deciding whether to read Q1 as preceding or following (adapted) Q2 has interesting ramifications for our reading of Hamlet today. If Q1 represents a draft, even if mauled, then, as Urkowitz says, placing it next to Q2 is "a bit like [examining] a museum or gallery showing variant states of Rembrandt's great etchings... Each can stand alone, but when seen side by side they show how the work has grown and changed, and we can better appreciate the particular virtues of each proof." Our new perspective would grant us the power to state with certainty that Shakespeare in every way imaginable intended the nunnery scene to disrupt Hamlet's relationships with the actors. Ophelia is also something of a player. He repeats, as if he had rehearsed them, the words of his father and brother almost verbatim. Laertes tells her that "as this temple grows / The inward service of mind and soul / Enlarges with all" (Q2, 475-477) and Polonius asks, "Be something scarcer than your virginal presence" (587) . He gives lessons to.