pedanther

PS: Since I posted this, I've been learning more about the different versions of Hamlet. There is no one original version of Hamlet: it was published in two different editions during Shakespeare's lifetime, and then a third time in the collected-works Folio edition shortly after his death; each of the three versions contains things and omits things that the others don't. I was aware of that much in broad outline, but had never really thought about the specifics, or even the question of which version is the one I know from school -- which, it turns out, is a fourth version, the standard teaching text being something of a kitchen sink version that includes everything from all three early editions.

So it turns out that both of the big edits I found striking in the second half of the play -- the second half of the Fortinbras scene, and the compression of Hamlet's return (including the scene with Horatio and Gertrude) -- are actually taken straight from one or other of the early editions, and may actually have been edits used to get the play down to playable length in Shakespeare's own lifetime.