Hamlet's Soliloquy (short story)

Hamlet's Soliloquy is the twenty-second story in The Shakespeare Notebooks.

Summary
''The earliest known copy of Hamlet's famous soliloquy from Act III Scene I in its final form is handwritten, but annotated with comments in the same handwriting. There has been some speculation that Shakespeare dictated the text, and the annotations were added by whoever took down his words. Earlier drafts of the text, with rather different wording, do exit - and indeed the annotations refer to these. But whatever the source, this is surely the earliest example of a critique of what is arguably the Bard's greatest work.''

Characters

 * Fourth Doctor
 * William Shakespeare

Continuity

 * The Doctor helped Shakespeare write Hamlet. (TV: City of Death, PROSE: The Stranger, The Writer, His Wife and the Mixed Metaphor, PROSE: The Empire of Glass, PROSE: Byzantium!)