The play behind the play

The Play Behind The Play is essential reading for anyone interested in producing or understanding Hamlet as it was first presented. Foster takes up in detail the First Quarto, which is reproduced in its entirety, while discussing the early stories that furnished the play's basic plot. He analyzes the First Quarto as a drama, then discusses the complications introduced - most of them unintentionally - by the revisions that lengthened the play.

In the process, readers gain new insight into the play itself, observing the play's evolution as it took shape in Shakespeare's mind.