A Synoptic Hamlet: a Critical-Synoptic Edition of the Second Quarto and First Folio Texts of Hamlet

A Synoptic Hamlet is an alternative response to the editorial problems of this multiple-text play. Like most critical editions, it presents the early texts in a manner helpful to the general reader by modernizing spelling and punctuation, and emending non-sensical readings. However, it does not hide the text's diversity by exclusively selecting readings from either the Second Quarto or the First Folio in order to reconstruct a single-reading version corresponding to the authentic Hamlet. Rather, it makes their significant variants immediately available in the line itself (offering alternative editorial interpretations of identical or similar readings at certain points). Thus the reader can have a direct appreciation of the divergence and similarity between these early texts from which the Hamlet of today is known.

CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
PREFACE, by Bernice W. Kliman
INTRODUCTION
ACCOUNTS OF THE TEXTS AND THEIR TRANSMISSION
Theoretical premises
Date of composition
Publication
First Quarto 1603 (Q1)
Second Quarto 1604/5 (Q2) and First Folio 1623 (F1)
Overviews and final assessment
THE PRESENT EDITION
Editorial justification in the context of general and Shakespearean editing
The synoptic presentation of the text
Editorial principles and procedures
Annotation
Postscript
CRITICAL-SYNOPTIC EDITION OF THE SECOND QUARTO AND FIRST FOLIO TEXTS OF HAMLET
Conventions and abbreviations used
[Notes and critical-synoptic text]
The Names of the Actors
Long Notes
BIBLIOGRAPHY