Theres actually no definitive version of any of Shakespeares plays. Most of them exist in two or three different versions, as the plays were collected in different volumes. The shortest version we have of Hamlet, for example, is 2,200 lines. The longest is 3,570. Obviously the short one may be missing a number of lines, but its not always a case of just saying the longest version is the real one. Writers were known to revise each others work and its possible that the extra lines were added by someone else. Other differences can be very subtle. Some plays are almost identical but for one or two words. But when youre studying Shakespeare, one or two words can completely change the meaning of the dialogue. Its up to academics to work out the correct versions, and often its just guesswork. For all we know, the people who collated the volumes might have added their own work too. Much of what we think of as Shakespeare was probably never written by him at all.
