Hamlet Shakespeare's revision? Theater historians have found references to a play about the Hamlet story dating back to 1589. Based on the Historicæ Danicæ of Saxo Grammaticus, as retold in the Historique tragiques of Belleforest (where Amleth goes to England, marries the king's daughter, and returns triumphantly to Denmark), this -Ur-Hamlet featured a ghost crying for revenge and a duty-bound son. Most historians attribute it to Thomas Kyd, a friend of Marlowe, though some think that Shakespeare may have written it at the start of his career. Shakespeare's revision, whether of his own play or someone else's, was first staged around 1600-01. A "bad quarto" was printed in 1603, evidently from players' memories. (The famous "To be or not to be" soliloquy was mangled almost beyond recognition.) Shakespeare's company must have been angered because a rare authorized version appeared in 1604. The folio edition of 1623 omitted several hundred lines but added approximate seventy there were not in the "good quarto." Most editors have tried to include every line that Shakespeare wrote, and the result, at more than 3800 lines, is Shakespeare's longest play, longer by a third than his shortest play, Macbeth. It seems likely that actors routinely cut scenes from a text like Hamlet, and that Macbeth is an acting text, from which scenes have been removed. Few directors have tried to stage the whole text of Hamlet, though see below for one notable exception. A revenge play. Shakespeare's play was first called The Revenge of Hamlett Prince Denmarke. Its central concern is certainly Hamlet's decision to revenge the murder of his father, King Hamlet. But there are other levels of revenge that begin to obscure the simple revenge plot. Shortly before the action begins, Fortinbras, the King of Norway, decides to revenge the slaying of his father, old King Fortinbras, by King Hamlet, said to have occurred on the very day when Prince Hamlet was born. Moreover, before Hamlet can slay his uncle Claudius, he kills Polonius by mistake and Laertes sets out for revenge. The Renaissance hero. Unlike the prince of medieval chronicles, Hamlet is university educated. He knows the skeptical philosophy of Montaigne as well as the Bible, and he is less suited to a revenger's outing than a medieval prince like Hal/Henry V. Part of the conflict between the ghost and the prince is that between the medieval code of blood ties and the Renaissance sense of the self. The Romantic hero. Hamlet's famous delay comes from a conflict between action and awareness that makes him see both sides of every issue. Nineteenth-century critics regarded Hamlet as Shakespeare's most important play, partly because it raised the great moral issues that interested Hölderlin, Kiekegaard, and Nietzsche and Freud later on. More recent critics have suggested that Shakespeare created the Romantic consciousness before the Romantics themselves were born. In either event, it seems dangerous to think of Hamlet as Shakespeare's self-portrait, even or especially when talking about theater. The Prince who speaks of a good play as "caviary to the general" (2.2.461) is an amateur who could hardly please the groundlings. An Oedipal story? In The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), Freud suggested that Claudius had done with aplomb what Hamlet wanted to do all along: kill his father and marry his mother. Freud's biographer Sir Ernest Jones wrote a book about Hamlet, which influenced some modern productions-e.g., Laurence's Olivier's film version of 1948. Although the story of Oedipus may cross cultures, the anthropologist Laura Bohannon has written a wonderful essay on the difficulty of telling the basic story of Hamlet to the Tiv of Nigeria. Film adaptations. Michael Almereyda's 2000 film stars Ethan Hawke as Hamlet , Kyle MacLachlan as Claudius, and Bill Murray as Polonius. Kenneth Branagh's 1996 production, which runs to 4 hours, stars Branagh as Hamlet and Kate Winslet as Ophelia, with Billy Crystal as the gravedigger. Franco Zeffirelli's production of 1990 stars Mel Gibson as Hamlet, Glenn Close as Gertrude, Alan Bates as Claudius, and Helena Bonham Carter as Ophelia. Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, first staged in 1966, was made into a film in 1990, with Gary Oldham and Tim Roth as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and Richard Dreyfuss as the Player. Also notable, and now available on video, is John Gielgud's 1964 production, which features Richard Burton as Hamlet and Gielgud as the ghost.

Last modified: November 12, 2000 13:08:11.
Today: February 10, 2012 19:18:12.