About the Folio Differences

This page is introductory to the "Folio Difference" Notes I provide for the playscript of Hamlet on this website.

Some specific, and significant, differences exist in the First Folio version of Hamlet (1623) as compared to the Second Quarto version (1604-5.) In providing a publication of the play, it's necessary to choose one or the other to follow, where a substantive difference exists between those publications. So, this is all about how I made the necessary choices for Hamlet as I present it here.

For brevity in what follows, I may call the Second Quarto, Q2, and the First Folio F1 or just F.

On the Folio Difference pages for the various Scenes, e.g. "Scene 1 Folio Differences," the words or phrases (or sometimes passages) at issue are in a list format. Each list item is identified by its line number for that Scene.

For example, on the page Scene 2 Folio Differences you will find the following item:

038
Of these {delated} [dilated] articles...

delated
dilated

038 is the line number, in Scene 2. The line, itself, follows. Then "delated" and "dilated" are the words to be considered, with the Second Quarto word listed first.

In quoting the original playscript line, as printed in Q2 and F, respectively, I use {braces} to mark the Q2 wording, and [brackets] to mark the F1 wording. This technique allows both the Q2 and F1 wordings to be combined into one line. It avoids having to print both the Q2 and F1 lines, separately. Showing the lines separately would only waste space, since they often differ by just one word. To know the F1 wording of a line, simply leave out the words within braces. Or, to know the Q2 wording of the line, leave out the words within brackets. I omit the speech prefixes of lines that have one, except where the speech prefix is the issue.

Spelling was not standardized in Shakespeare's time, which means that Q2 and F1 have many differences in the spellings of the same words. This discussion concerns differences in wording, not differences in spelling, so no attention is paid to trivial spelling differences between Q2 and F1.

However, in a few cases, Shakespeare intentionally used a special spelling technique, for example, "seale/Selfe" in line 02-134, which are, surprisingly, the same word. (In that line, "seale" is a special spelling of the word "self," done to achieve a certain effect.) I do discuss cases where it can be reasonably concluded that the author used a special spelling for effect or for additional meaning.

Not every difference between Q2 and F1 is marked in the lines that are quoted, only the relevant words are shown in {braces} or [brackets]. In most cases, the quoted line is basically the line as it appears in Q2. I sometimes shorten the quoted line, and use an ellipsis to mark that.

As a matter of policy in interpretation, I generally try to resist the temptation to attribute differences between the Second Quarto and the First Folio versions of Hamlet to compositor errors. I occasionally do engage in such speculation, since it's inescapable in some cases, but those cases are knowing exceptions to my rule. It seems to have become fashionable among Hamlet editors and commentators to blame the original compositors, readily and easily, for any number of things, but such practice is intellectually lazy, and fundamentally irresponsible, since it is not factually knowable what any of the original Shakespeare manuscripts said. None of the author's manuscripts has survived.

There is, in fact, no sure way of knowing how much, or where, the compositors may have departed from their manuscript sources. I have identified specific instances where commentators, in various publications, have asserted compositor error where none actually seems to exist in the original Hamlet Second Quarto printing, and I have, I hope, learned from what I have seen. I have also identified instances where the fantasy of being able to read a nonexistent manuscript has led editors astray as to which wording is right (authorial) between Q2 and F1.

I'll offer a further remark on the issue of compositor error. In my readings of various publications, it seems that editors of Hamlet, when they suspect compositor error, will typically assume the fault must lie in Q2. However, it is a known historical fact that the original manuscripts were some twenty years older when F1 was printed. It is a practical impossibility that the original manuscripts were stored in a way best designed to preserve them, for two decades. That is, in those days, it is not possible the author's manuscripts were hermetically sealed, protected from contact with human hands, carefully shielded from ultraviolet light, and so on. At the time the Folio was printed, the manuscripts would have been subject to twenty years of aging, casual storage, and casual handling, beyond what the Q2 compositor saw. The Folio compositor's job would have been harder than the Q2 compositor's job. So, in those cases where the issue of compositor error might legitimately be raised, the Folio compositor must always be the prime suspect, so to speak. The Folio compositor was more likely to be in error, by twenty years' worth of degradation of his source papers. The author's original papers may have been quite difficult to read at the time the Folio was printed. There is also the elementary point that Shakespeare was alive when Q2 was printed, but not when F1 was printed. The Q2 compositor had potential recourse to the author, but the F1 compositor did not.

An additional point which requires mention is that the person, or persons, who assembled the Folio version of Hamlet must have had a large body of material to consult. The Second Quarto compositor probably worked from one manuscript. When the Folio was done, the available materials may have included:

• At least one copy of Q1,
• At least one copy of Q2,
• The Q2 manuscript, if it wasn't destroyed after Q2 was printed,
• The playhouse book for Hamlet, the prompter's book,
• Perhaps some actor's parts, individually, and
• anything further the author, or anybody else, had done for the play up to about 1622.

It could easily have been a deskful of material. Whoever put together F1 would have had some difficult choices deciding what to turn to, at any particular point, and also, there are only so many hours in the day. Certain deficiencies in F1 are undoubtedly just because of lack of time to do better at sorting through the material for each line of the play. The Q2 compositor's job should have been quite straightforward by comparison.

The measures I use, to judge between Second Quarto and Folio expressions, are, in no particular order:

• plain sense in context,
• thematic significance,
• root meanings,
• wordplay,
• relevant ambiguity,
• allusion,
• undertone,
• style,
• characterization,
• irony,
• immediacy to the passage,
• the flow of the dialogue,
• the flow of events,
• overall word usage in the play, and
• the fact that theater is a visual performance, so that all of the speeches imply action.

If all else fails, I look to the author's general usage of words, throughout his writings, and to the fact that he was a great poet. Such a range of tests will generally supply an answer as to which wording is more credibly authorial. I take it as given that Shakespeare was cognizant of his own themes, characterizations, etc., and that he was more than competent to handle both the plain meanings and root meanings of the words he used.

In the list of differences, I usually speculate on the reason for a difference between Q2 and F1, in which case I enclose my comment in curly braces: {for example.} It must be understood that however I may phrase such comments they are inevitably speculative, since no objective documentation has been preserved from the time of creation of the Folio, to explain why it differs from what Q2 says.

As to my arguments, themselves, on the differences between Q2 and F1, they're worth whatever rational value they have with respect to the facts of what Q2 and F1 actually say.

My general approach, in arguing between the Q2 and F1 wordings, is to assess whether the F1 wording can credibly be viewed as an authorial improvement, intentionally done by the author, after he wrote the Q2 version that was printed. Simple history makes such an approach reasonable, because of the plain fact that F1 was printed later. If the author desired a change, after Q2, F1 is the place to look for that. Although my approach does not directly address misprints or misreadings, it does accommodate those possibilites, since it's obviously unreasonable to think the author would have desired a misprint or misreading. In other words, misprints and misreadings should be ruled out along the way, in a search for author preference, even though one is not directly looking for them.

One may notice the dilemma. As already mentioned, there is reason to be suspicious of differences in F1, however, F1 is the place to look for authorial refinement, post-Q2. The credibility of any F1 differences is both enhanced, and diminished, at the same time. Be that as it may, careful and thorough examination will usually sort it out, I have found.

I modernize the spelling, for the word or phrase at issue, except where the original spelling appears to have significance for meaning. I usually disregard the eccentric capitalizations that occur within sentences in F1. Where a word or phrase is an addition in one source, the entry "[none]" is used for the other source. The list is fairly comprehensive, but does not include all the wording differences between Q2 and F1.

Also, I use the phrase "Folio editor." I use that phrase merely as a convenient catchall term for whoever decided what wording would be printed in the Folio. In modern terms, the decision of exactly what to print in a book would be called an "editorial" decision. In some cases, what I here call "editor" may have been nobody other than the typesetter. The exact organization, for printing of the Folio, is unknown. Thus, it is not known, as historical fact, that the Folio had an actual editor, in the modern sense, and I have no intent to suggest so.

A style note: In the discussions of the list items, I use italics for the expressions I think are most likely authorial, in either Q2 or F1. I also occasionally use italics in the ordinary way, such as for stress. I use "quotation marks" for expressions that I think are not authorial, in either Q2 or F1. I also occasionally use quotation marks in the ordinary way.

Then, since Hamlet is a playscript, of course, I generally offer a comment about acting the various words. It's vital that Hamlet be actable, and Shakespeare undoubtedly wrote it with playability as the highest priority. A play that didn't play was of no value to him or his company. This fundamental point is almost universally ignored by academic scholars from the field of literature, who approach the play as if it were merely an essay, to sit at a desk and read, and who then find themselves stumped by words and phrases that are clear enough when action is taken into account. Consideration of the actions that are reasonably associated with the various playtext words is an aspect that can't be neglected in any good presentation of Hamlet. The associated gesture for a word in the playscript can often be a powerful indicator of which wording is correct to the author, between the Second Quarto and the First Folio. After all, Shakespeare himself wrote, using his Hamlet character: "suit the action to the word, the word to the action."