Paperback, 270 pages
English language
Published April 17, 1963 by W. W. Norton.
Hamlet
An authoritative text, intellectual backgrounds, extracts from the sources, essays in criticism (Norton Critical Editions)
3 stars
(1 review)
The text has been entirely newly edited: it is based on the second Quarto edition (1604-5), supplemented with some 80 lines of the Folio (1623) that are missing from Q2. The most elaborate textual apparatus to be found in any paperback edition of the play, and a full range of explanatory notes.
Ample extracts from the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus and The Tragical Histories of Belleforest - the only extant pre-Shakespearean accounts.
Source readings on four subjects of absorbing interest to the late Renaissance - melancholy, demonology, the nature of man and death. (back cover)
