As an instructor of English 102, First-Year Composition, for more than eighty-six times, I have read and taught Hamlet repeatedly. I have come to know the play extensively and, as a result, when we read the play aloud in class I have to stop the students repeatedly to explain various arcane references that are not explained in any single version of the play. For several years I have threatened to do my own complete version of Hamlet; finally, I have. The result is The Complete Hamlet: An Annotated Edition of the Shakespeare Play. It has taken me years of study and application. My hope is that the play will, thus, be more accessible to the general reader.
