Shakespeare's First Folio · William Shakespeare
Chapter 1
Executive Director's Notes: In addition to the notes below, and so you will *NOT* think all the spelling errors introduced by the printers of the time have been corrected, here are the first few lines of Hamlet, as they are presented herein: Barnardo. Who's there? Fran. Nay answer me: Stand & vnfold your selfe Bar. Long liue the King * * * * * As I understand it, the printers often ran out of certain words or letters they had often packed into a "cliche". . .this is the original meaning of the term cliche. . .and thus, being unwilling to unpack the cliches, and thus you will see some substitutions that look very odd. . .such as the exchanges of u for v, v for u, above. . .and you may wonder why they did it this way, presuming Shakespeare did not actually write the play in this manner. . . . The answer is that they MAY have packed "liue" into a cliche at a time when they were out of "v"'s. . .possibly having used "vv" in place of some "w"'s, etc. This was a common practice of the day, as print was still quite expensive, and they didn't want to spend more on a wider selection of characters than they had to.
You will find a lot of these kinds of "errors" in this text, as I have mentioned in other times and places, many "scholars" have an extreme attachment to these errors, and many have accorded them a very high place in the "canon" of Shakespeare. My father read an assortment of these made available to him by Cambridge University in England for several months in a glass room constructed for the purpose. To the best of my knowledge he read ALL those available . . .in great detail. . .and determined from the various changes, that Shakespeare most likely did not write in nearly as many of a variety of errors we credit him for, even though he was in/famous for signing his name with several different spellings. So, please take this into account when reading the comments below made by our volunteer who prepared this file: you may see errors that are "not" errors. . . . So. . .with this caveat. . .we have NOT changed the canon errors, here is the Project Gutenberg Etext of Shakespeare's play. Michael S. Hart Project Gutenberg Executive Director * * * * * Scanner's Notes: What this is and isn't. This was taken from a copy of Shakespeare's first folio and it is as close as I can come in ASCII to the printed text.
To the Reader. This Figure, that thou here feest put, It was for gentle Shakespeare cut: Wherein the Grauer had a strife with Naure, to out-doo the life: O, could he but haue dravvne his vvit As vvell in frasse, as he hath hit Hisface; the Print vvould then surpasse All, that vvas euer in frasse. But, since he cannot, Reader, looke Not on his picture, but his Booke. MR. William SHAKESPEARES Comedies, Histories & Tragedies, Published according to the True Original Copies London Printed by Ifaac Iaggard, and Ed, Bount. 1623 TO THE MOST NOBLE AND INCOMPARABLE PAIRE OF BRETHREN WILLIAM Earle of Pembroke,&c;. Lord Chamberlaine to the Kings most Excellent Majesty.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.