Book excerpt: "While differences among the three early texts of Hamlet have been considered in terms of interpretive consequences, The Hamlets instead considers practical issues in the playhouses of early modern London. It examines how Shakespeare's company operated, how they may have treated the authorial text, what the actor's needs might have been, and how the three texts may be manifestations of the play's life in the theater. By studying cue-line variation in the three texts, the book introduces a unique method of analysis and constructs for Hamlet a new narrative of authorial, textual, and playhouse practices that challenges the customary assumptions about the transmission of Shakespeare's most textually troubling play."--BOOK JACKET.