Colin Burrow writes:

But there are other respects in which this edition is extraordinary. The editors believe, unexceptionably, ‘that Q1’s copy was based on an anonymous reconstruction of a performance based on the text behind F, that Q2’s copy was largely based on Shakespeare’s foul papers, and that F’s copy was no more than one step away from a manuscript containing some significant authorial revisions to the text in the foul papers’. They go on, however: ‘It seems to us to follow from the argument above that each of Q1, Q2 and F records a distinct Hamlet.’ Or, as they put it elsewhere: ‘The only features that these three Hamlets have in common are the name and designation of the chief character, and the fact that they are plays.’

(LRB 21 June 2007)

A & C Black Publishers Ltd | Paperback 384 pp. |ISBN: 9781904271802