Author Description

In 1823, Sir Henry Bunbury discover a badly bound volume of twelve Shakespeare plays in a closet of his manor house. Nearly all of the plays were first editions, but one stood out as especially noteworthy: a previously unknown text of Hamlet that predated all other versions... ZQ1, as the text is known, has been declared a rough draft, a memorial reconstruction, and a pre-Shakespearean "ur-Hamlet," among other things... Zachary Lesser examines how the improbable discovery of Q1 has forced readers to reconsider accepted truths about Shakespeare as an author and about the nature of Shakespeare's texts"--Jacket.