Thursday, February 02, 2006

Enfolded Hamlet: Enfolded Text

Enfolded Hamlet: Enfolded Text:


I hadn't seen this before. The "enfolded" Hamlet merges First Folio and Second Quarto editions of the play into one listing, so you can see exactly what has changed. I'm not sure what the difference is between "first folio" and "first folio only" in the options, though. Perhaps it is "show what is only in the first folio", because when you choose the only option you only get snippets of text, not any semblance of the play itself.


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1 comment:

Alan K.Farrar said...

This is an example of the use schollars can make of such an enfolded text:

'Even if the general impression I received from the play were that Hamlet was a youth of eighteen or twenty, I should feel quite unable to set it against the evidence of the statements in V. i. which show him to be exactly thirty, unless these statements seemed to be casual. But they have to my mind, on the contrary, the appearance of being expressly inserted in order to fix Hamlet's age; and the fact that they differ decidedly from the statements in Q1 confirms that idea.'

From: http://www.webcom.com/pweller/bradley/tr407.html

And the first folio only gives exactly what you suggest - the text which is found only in the first folio and not in common with the other.