Shakespeare final:Mind doc rev
3/7/08
16:24
Page 26
SHAKESPEARE ON TOAST
– and, as the other eighteen were only scattered about in quarto, we might have lost them too (this count excludes the three plays that have been acknowledged in recent times as being written, at least in part, by Shakespeare: Cymbeline, Edward III, and The Two Noble Kinsmen). Of the thousands of plays written over those times, only 230 are still in existence: 39 of them – 17 per cent – are Shakespeare’s. Henry Condell and John Hemmings had acted and worked with Shakespeare during much of his writing career, and they got together after Shakespeare died and set the record straight. Too many versions of his plays had been printed full of mistakes by rival theatre companies trying to steal Shakespeare’s plays. There were quarto editions without Shakespeare’s name on them, editions of Hamlet missing chunks of the text … The new folio edition would address all that.
The (bad) First Quarto of Hamlet … This was written in 1603, probably from memory, and we should be thankful that Shakespeare’s most famous speech didn’t survive only in this incarnation: To be, or not to be, I [ay] there’s the point, To Die, to sleepe, is that all? I all:
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