![]() ![]() ![]() One might make the case that the streamlining of the action of the performed text is likely the convenience of an actor and directorial choice. Why rearrange the two speeches and the action leading into them and accept nothing else about the validity of the 1603 quarto? In classes, I think it is important to distinguish between the results of this production choice and the text as almost always printed (either the second quarto or the 1604 text as informed by the Folio). The precedent dates to the 1603 First Quarto, perhaps, but everything else about the first quarto deserves its "bad quarto" designation. Along with all else quirky about it, the production accepts what seems to be a trend in recent film adaptations, dating from at least Zeffirelli's with Mel Gibson in 1991 that is, to rearrange the sequence of Hamlet's 2.2 and 3.1 soliloquies. At a crucial turning point in online access to quality productions of Shakespeare, the (April 2010) Great Performances airing of Hamlet (with David Tennant and Patrick Stewart), the occasion arose to turn the open access to it into teaching strategies.
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