Q1 is considerably shorter than Q2. While many long speeches are cut, abbreviated, or revised, the structure of the play remains essentially as Shakespeare originally conceived it.
Q1 is thus quite different, for instance, from Q1 Hamlet , whose provenance is still open to debate. While both of these early quartos were once believed to be memorial reconstructions, and thus 'Bad' quartos, the theory of memorial reconstructions has now been seriously disputed. The production's design was featured in the Folger Exhibition Shakespeare's the Thing. Romeo and Juliet. The title page of Romeo and Juliet printed in the First Folio. STC Fo. The Second Folio title page of Romeo and Juliet.
The title page of Romeo and Juliet printed in the First Quarto. STC The Second Quarto title page of Romeo and Juliet. The Third Quarto title page of Romeo and Juliet. The ? Fourth Quarto title page of Romeo and Juliet. All these problems and limitations granted, Romeo and Juliet , by preserving not only the quarto on which modern editions are usually based but also the first quarto, may allow us to glimpse, in the gap that separates one quarto from the other, some of the transformations a Shakespeare play underwent in the first years of its existence.
Accordingly, this edition, even though it is an edition of The First Quarto of Romeo and Juliet , does not advocate study of the first quarto for its own sake. Q 1 and Q 2 throw interesting light on each other, and it is at their peril that students study Q 1 without awareness of Q 2 — or Q 2 without awareness of Q 1. Therefore, throughout introduction, collation, and commentary, I propose to study the first quarto by constantly keeping an eye, as it were, on the second quarto.
By providing separate critical editions of the first two early quartos, the New Cambridge Shakespeare series invites comparative study of the different versions of Romeo and Juliet. What, broadly, is the difference between the first and the second quartos of Romeo and Juliet?
The difference in length is conspicuous: with some lines more than Q 1, Q 2 is almost one third longer than Q 1. The two versions have the same characters and dramatise the same events in the same order. The Chorus at the end of Act 1 1. Some of these movements are considerably shorter, though, and a number of Q 2 speeches disappear entirely from Q 1. Q 1 also does not include at all or condenses a great many short or very short passages present in Q 2. Each Q 1 scene is shorter than its equivalent in the longer text, Scene 11 being less than half and Scene 2 being more than 90 per cent of Q 2, with the relative length of the other scenes being somewhere in between.
In fact, the only part of Q 1 that is longer than Q 2 is the stage directions, which tend to be more detailed and more numerous in the shorter text. Length constitutes an important but by no means the only difference between the two versions. In general, the relationship between the two texts is relatively close in the first seven scenes 1. What is it else? A madness most discreet, A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.
O child, O child! Dead art thou. Cruel, unjust, impartial destinies, Why to this day have you preserved my life? To see my hope, my stay, my joy, my life, Deprived of sense, of life, of all by death? Cruel, unjust, impartial destinies! Q 1, All of the above examples are in verse, but parts of Q 1 and Q 2 are in prose and, at times, one text prints a passage in prose which the other text has as verse. The same applies to the Nurse in Scene 4 1. Conversely, Q 1 prints the Queen Mab speech Sc. The parts of Capulet and the Nurse in scene 14 3.
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