The highly-anticipated Shakespeare Quartos Archive has been officially launched today with a complete digital collection of rare early editions of Hamlet. For the first time, all 32 existing quarto copies of the play held by participating UK and US institutions are freely available online in one place.
This initiative is jointly led by the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford and the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC, through a joint transatlantic grant from JISC in the UK and the National Endowment for the Humanities in the US.
Controversy surrounds Hamlet as there were several different versions published before the theatres were closed in 1642. The most significant differences are between the first folio, and the first (Q1) and second (Q2) quartos. For example, in Q1 Hamlet’s famous soliloquy appears in a different scene and begins “To be, or not to be, I there’s the point / To die, to sleep, is that all? I all” and the edition documents an entire scene not present elsewhere. Meanwhile Q2 is almost twice the length, with various additions including a new soliloquy for Hamlet.
