Donate to ISKME

Resources
Collections
Providers

Sign in to see your Hubs
Login
Featured Hubs
2022 OER Partner Summit
Open Textbooks
#GoOpen
Professional Learning
Climate Education
OERizona
See all Hubs

Sign in to see your Groups
Login
Featured Groups
Adult Education Open Community of Resources
OpenStax Biology 2e
PA STEM Toolkit
Pathways Project | Language Teaching Repository @ Boise State
Student Advocacy
See all Groups

About
Help Center
About Hubs
Services
OER 101

Open Author

Create a standalone learning module, lesson, assignment, assessment or activity

Submit from Web

Submit OER from the web for review by our librarians

Learn more about creating OER

Add Link
About creating OER

Advanced Search

Sign In/Register

Please log in to save materials. Log in

Export to Google Docs
Report

Summary
Table of Contents

"The Tragedy of Hamlet" is, first and foremost, a text to be performed. William Shakespeare intended for the text to be seen in performance, not read, and all of the early texts have no reliable connection to Shakespeare's editorial authority. In light of this, from the very earliest printings, editors have chosen to edit the play's text for particular purposes: to make a quick buck, to memorialize a recently deceased friend, to conform to a time period's unique aesthetic, or to attempt to reconstitute what Shakespeare might have intended in an ideal version of the play. This particular edition is focused on the student who wants to read the play quickly. The edition is unabashedly abridged. "The Tragedy of Hamlet" is a long play, and, in a time of increasingly compressed curricula, a maximal edition can often take a long time to get through in class. Nearly all performances of the play, both on stage and screen, feel empowered to reduce the size of the play. The Zeffirelli film cuts the play's text by half. Moreover, if we use"Romeo and Juliet"s prologue as a guide that most of Shakespeare's plays were approximately two hours in length, then that suggests that "Hamlet," which can easily reach four-hour run-times in a "full-text" version, can be cut in half and still be coherent. Therefore, this is a performative textual edition. It cuts the text by 50% but doesn't dumb down Shakespeare's language by modernizing spelling or altering the syntax. In particular, this edition has removed the Fortinbras subplot. Teachers and students should be aware that this removes a significant political theme in the play. It also removes a Hamlet soliloquy and a key foil for Hamlet's character. This edition is based on the 1860 Globe edition because of its free availability. Later editions (both full-text and abridged) might eventually be offered that are based on a critical conflation of early texts in order to arrive at an ideal authorial-intent text. Importantly, this edition has the advantage of including textual annotations to help the student understand difficult vocabulary, syntax, and cultural allusions. In this last regard, the edition attempts to be more useful than other online texts of the play that might be freely available but lack helpful guidance for the reader. Other contextual material are provided to help the student understand early appreciations of the play.

title "Abridged Scholarly Edition of the 1860 "The Tragedy of Hamlet"" 2024 by William Hughes
under license"Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike"

Version History

Cite this work

Abridged Scholarly Edition of the 1860 "The Tragedy of Hamlet"

Created Feb. 7, 2024 by William Hughes

Download: TheTragedyofHamlet_annotated.pdf

Subject:: English Language Arts
Level:: High School, Community College / Lower Division, College / Upper Division
Material Type:: Primary Source

Standards

No Alignments yet.

Delete Resource?

Cite this work

MLA
APA

Hughes, William. "Abridged Scholarly Edition of the 1860 "The Tragedy of Hamlet"". OER Commons. Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education, 08 Mar. 2016. Web. 03 Jan. 2025. <https://oercommons.org/authoring/12625-abridged-scholarly-edition-of-the-1860-the-tragedy>.

Hughes, W. (2016, March 08). Abridged Scholarly Edition of the 1860 "The Tragedy of Hamlet". OER Commons. Retrieved January 03, 2025, from https://oercommons.org/authoring/12625-abridged-scholarly-edition-of-the-1860-the-tragedy.

copy citation

History

Updated Mar 8, 2016 by William Hughes

Updated Mar 8, 2016 by William Hughes

Created Mar 8, 2016 by William Hughes

Discover

Resources
Collections
Providers

Community

All Hubs
All Groups

Create

Submit a Resource

Our Services

About Hubs
About OER Commons
OER 101
Help Center

My Account

My Items
My Groups
My Hubs

Subscribe to OER Newsletter

Connect with OER Commons Facebook, Opens in new window Twitter, Opens in new window

Donate to ISKME

Powered By

Privacy Policy Terms of Service Collection Policy DMCA

© 2007 - 2025, OER Commons

A project created by ISKME. Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License.

Sign in / Register

Your email or username: *

Did you mean ?

Password: *

Forgot password? Show password

or

Sign In through your Institution

Create an account Register

or

Sign In through your Institution