Before Hamlet's Gertrude, there was Hamlet 's Gertred. In an early version of Shakespeare's play, the queen Gertred clearly works to protect Hamlet and assure his succession to Denmark 's throne, unlike the reactive and passion-driven Queen Gertrude of the later work.

IU Kokomo Assistant Professor of English Terri Bourus recently spoke about the two queens to an audience of about 200 influential Shakespearean academicians and theatre professionals gathered in Staunton , Va. , for the Third Blackfriars Scholars' conference. Invited to speak at the conference, Bourus presented “ ‘ With thowsand mother's blessings :' Gertred's Motivations and the Commonweal of Denmark.”

With the help of two actors from The American Shakespeare Company, Bourus demonstrated how and why Shakespeare and his acting company revised Hamlet in performances between 1587 and 1604. Shakespeare might have made the changes, Bourus argues, to avoid a “too inflammatory” comparison of Gertred with Elizabeth I. By 1600, the aging real-life British monarch had not produced an heir. Bourus plans to continue her investigation of the queens in her forthcoming essay “The Danish Queen and Elizabeth: Shakespeare's Female Monarchs.”

Bourus has conducted an in-depth study of the differences of length, language, and character development between the two earliest printed texts of Hamlet — the First Quarto (Q1), printed in 1603, and the Second Quarto (Q2), printed in the winter of 1604–05. These two versions exist, she says, thanks to the business acumen of their 17 th -century London publisher, Nicholas Ling. When politics and plague kept London theaters from opening in spring 1603, Ling fed the hunger of theatre lovers by printing and selling copies of Shakespeare's scripts. With four pages printed on one large sheet of paper, these cheap, unbound “quartos” preserved manuscripts that no longer exist in Shakespeare's own handwriting.

With the support of an IU grant, Bourus has traveled to the British Library in London and the Huntington Library in San Marino , Calif. , where she has examined the two extant texts of Q1 Hamlet . At the Folger Library in Washington , D.C. , she examined Ling's Q2 Hamlet and the Folio of 1623. This research forms the basis for her upcoming work The King's Players and the Players' Printers: A Study of Nicholas Ling, James Roberts and Valentine Simmes.

Bourus is also working on a book to be published in spring 2006 by the University of Manchester Press called Shakespeare's Book: Essays on Writing, Reading and Reception and editing scripts of A Midsummer Night's Dream and Hamlet for the Sourcebooks Shakespeare for the 21st Century project.. In addition to annotating the plays, Bourus will contribute the introductory essays covering the history of the plays, the printing of their texts, and noted performances. A Midsummer Night's Dream is scheduled for release on Shakespeare's birthday, April 23, 2006.

From February 27 to March 5, 2006, the Actors From the London Stage (AFTLS) troupe will come to IU Kokomo, thanks to a $20,000 New Perspectives Grant awarded to Bourus from IU Office of the Vice Provost for Research. AFTLS will present two performances of The Merchant of Venice as well as numerous workshops for IU Kokomo classes and area high school students. Peter Holland, former director of the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford , England , will deliver a lecture on February 28. Organized as a “Shakespeare Team,” IU Kokomo students will host an April 23 Renaissance Faire to celebrate the IU Kokomo Semester of Shakespeare.