Author Description

The thousands of variants in the three texts of Shakespeare's Hamlet range from variant words in sentences that are otherwise identical, to unique passages in each text. This publication is designed to assist scholars in efficiently identifying and analyzing textual variants, by furnishing a set of parallel texts with variant words and passages color-coded. The three texts are displayed in modern type, on wide-format pages. On each page, a page of Q2 text appears in the center, as the control text, flanked by corresponding portions of the Q1 and the Folio texts. Each Q1 variant appears in blue in the Q1 text to the left, and each Folio variant appears in red in the Folio text to the right. When words or entire passages are unique to Q2 vs. the Folio text, these appear in red in the Q2 text. Since minute particulars can affect scholarly judgment of textual variants, facsimiles of the original printings of the texts appear opposite each page of the modern-type texts.