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Abstract

This paper looks at the three versions of Hamlet which editors work with (Q1,Q2, Folio), and attempts to think of a way of resolving the problems they pose - since everyone’s memory will be a mixture of all three, and no single text can be established - by reference to Gilles Deleuze on the ‘three syntheses of time’ (Difference and Repetition) and to Gerard Genette, noting how every description of an event in time in Proust is overlaid by another description, so that every singular description takes place in plural times. The paper explores the consequences of these examples of differences inside repetition, and tries to develop a theory of how we read from them.