Hall of Fame/HallofFameCDROM.cdr/misc2/pcbrs101.lzh/QUARTO

Text File | 1989-10-11 | 6KB | 112 lines

<QUARTO TEXT>                                                                  [BR= /I60.62 /J22.20 /K0.0 ]

    The Quarto of 1603 (or First Quarto) is considered by some Shakespeare's
"first draft" of Hamlet.  There's no doubt that the Quarto Hamlet is
Shakespeare's play; it is the transcription itself that is dubious.

    It is worth comparing the First Quarto's "To be, or not to be" to the
standard Folio text.

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<TO BE, OR NOT TO BE> ── First Quarto version

To be or not to be ── aye, there's the point.
To die, to sleep ── is that all?  Aye, all.
No, to sleep, to dream ── Aye, marry, there it goes,    (Marry[?glossary])
For in that dream of death, when we awake
And, borne before an everlasting Judge,
From whence no passenger ever returned,
The undiscovered country, at whose sight
The happy smile, and the accurséd damned.
But for this, the joyful hope of this:
Who'd bear the scorns and flatt'ry of the world,                <Note (scorn)>
Scorned by the right rich, the rich cursed of the poor,         <Note (poor)>
The widow being oppressed, the orphan wronged,
The taste of hunger or a tyrant's reign,
And thousand more calamities besides ──
To grunt and sweat under this weary life
When that he may his full quietus make
With a bare bodkin?  Who would this endure              (Bodkin[?glossary])
But for a hope of something after death?
Which puzzles the brain and doth confound the sense,
Which makes us rather bear those evils we have
Than fly to others that we know not of ──
Aye, that!  Oh, this consciénce makes cowards of us all!

    (Notes are available on the provenance of this transcription.)

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<TRANSCRIPTION>

    Shakespeare's Hamlet first appeared in a quarto edition dated 1603, along
with 11 of his other plays (including The Two Noble Kinsmen, for which
Shakespeare is traditionally accorded only partial credit).  The printer did
not identify himself on the title page, an understandable impulse for a volume
described as "barbarously cropped, and ill-bound" by its discoverer, Henry
Bunbury.

    Because there is no printer's credit, and because the text differs so
radically from that of the later quartos and the folio editions, there is
great division among scholars as to the validity of the text contained in this
volume.  It's assuredly Shakespeare's play; but is the Quarto text an earlier
version, or was it transcribed by the unknown printer as an actor from the
company recited the lines?

    It's easy to accept the Quarto as an actor's poorly remembered
transcription.  An actor may well remember his (or her) own part perfectly,
yet be able to give only the sense of other parts, mixing accurate speeches
and dialog that stuck in his mind with half-remembered fragments and
embellishments of parts completely forgotten.  Too, the appearance a year
later of another quarto text (the "Second Quarto"), one almost identical to
the First Folio, suggests that Shakespeare's troupe, The King's Players, may
have wanted to force out a "pirate printing" by making the real thing
available.

    Yet the First Folio's Macbeth is also considered by many to be an actor's
transcription (based on internal evidence), and few cavils over its text are
to be heard.  (Perhaps this is so because no "better" copies exist.)

    There's other evidence, too, that the Quarto is a first draft or earlier
version rather than simply a corrupt copy of the unchanging Hamlet.  For
example, the fact that Polonius is called Corambis throughout the Quarto can
hardly be a transcription error.  In addition, the wholesale rearrangement of
the order of scenes is equally plausible as an actor's bad memory or as a
playwright's attempt to focus a complex play for the wildly diverse audiences
of Elizabethan times.

    Ultimately, it matters little.  The Folio text is clearly a better, richer
play, and the First Quarto remains an interesting curiosity whose most noble
purpose, perhaps, may be to spark lively (if pointless) discussions at our
mental Mermaid Taverns.

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<PIRATE PRINTING>

    Plays in Shakespeare's time were not "literature;" they were to be acted,
not read.  They were rarely published, for two reasons ── printing, a labor-
intensive process, was best reserved for "serious" works such as sonnets or
The Bible, and there were effectively no copyright laws.  If you got hold of
a rival company's playscript, you could present the play and make money from
it.  Thus playscripts were zealously guarded, and it was rarely in a company's
interest to publish them, even if a willing publisher could be found.

    Perhaps it were best if Shakespeare's plays today would no longer be
regarded as "literature," to be discussed in arid tones in English classes and
exegeses such as this, but as the living, breathing, mutable works of
extraordinary theatre that they were and remain.

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<PROVENANCE>

    The text here has been retranscribed by Steven Brant from H.H. Furness'
transcription of a lithographic reprint of Henry Bunbury's copy, one of only
two in existence.  Mr. Brant takes full responsibility for any points of
spelling or punctuation with which the reader wishes to disagree.

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