Hamlet
In Our Time: Culture
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The Late Discovery of Shakespeare's Plays
Shakespeare's first quarter Q1 was only discovered in 1823, 200 years after his plays were printed as a collected edition. It caused a literary sensation because it was so different from the longer versions of Hamlet and folio F. When Shakespeare arrived in London, he was probably working with Lord Strange's men and he was playing revenge plays. These were the plays that he had in his muscle memory. So no wonder to me that these plays come out in his own revenge play Titus Andronicus and then later in Hamlet. He's remembering these plays and redoing these plays because he knows these plays and the language of these plays.
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