Hamlet

Content Group

Overview
Hamlet, John Phillip Kemble as Hamlet, Drury Lane Theatre, 1785

Hamlet has a uniquely rich and complex stage history reflecting the fascination which the principal character has aroused in every kind of critic, partly because the exceptional use of his soliloquies draws compelling attention to his elusive subjective identity. The ambiguities of the hero and the plot have opened infinite interpretative options, and it is possible that this diversity provides a challenge deliberately created by the playwright to incite audience interest. After all, like the Oedipus of Sophocles, this play has elements of one of the great literary forms: the detective story. It appears that a major crime has been committed in the state which the hero is compelled to investigate, but in the process he finds that his own integrity is severely challenged by his own involvement in homicide. The recurring uncertainty of proving concealed guilt and of responding to what is uncovered may well be the real subject of both plays, and might be more stressed as a major concern of the play. The play's multiple structure invites this view, since it presents no fewer than four children losing fathers through violence, each responding in significantly different ways: Ophelia by losing her sanity in suicide, Laertes by pursuing injudicious violence against others, and only Fortinbras ultimately surviving to achieve his goals without further crime. One possible production option may be not to surrender entirely to the hero's point of view, but to recognize and enjoy the script's fascinating shifts of tone and situation, while recognizing in the end that, if Hamlet is killed, by that point he has achieved some greater awareness of a less hectic and distraught response to life's vicissitudes than he began with.

Images
Hamlet, Royal Shakespeare Company, 1966
Hamlet, Royal Shakespeare Company, 1966
Hamlet, Royal Shakespeare Company, 1966
Hamlet, Moscow Art Theatre, 1911
Hamlet, Old Vic Players, 1937
Hamlet, Old Vic Players, 1937
Hamlet, Old Vic Players, 1937
Hamlet at Elsinore Castle
Hamlet, Herbert Beerbohm Tree as Hamlet, 19th Century
Hamlet, William Poel Company, 1881
Hamlet, Sir John Forbes-Robertson as Hamlet, 1897
Hamlet, Lyric Theatre, Circa 1905
Hamlet, Mrs. Patrick Campbell as Ophelia, 1897
Hamlet, Lily Brayton as Ophelia, 1905
Hamlet, Harry Brodribb Irving as Hamlet, 1905
Hamlet, Edward Gordon Craig as Hamlet, 1897

Pages

Videos
Slideshows
Commentary
Essay Title Author
"Hamlet" and Its Audiences Hugh Richmond
Bibliography

Aasand, Hardin L., ed. Stage Directions in Hamlet. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003.

Alkire, N. L. "Subliminal Masks in Olivier's Hamlet." Shakespeare On Film Newsletter 16 (1991): 1, 5.

Bailey, Helen Phelps. "Hamlet" In France: From Voltaire to Laforgue. Geneve: Librairie Droz, 1964.

Barber, Frances. "Ophelia." In Players of Shakespeare, vol. 2, edited by Russell Jackson and Robert Smallwood, 137-49. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Barrie, Robert. "Telmahs: Carnival Laughter in Hamlet." In New Essays on Hamlet, edited by Mark Thornton Burnett and John Manning, 83-100. Hamlet Collection 1. New York: AMS, 1994.

BBC Archive: Talking Hamlet | Actors discuss playing Shakespeare's Dane

Berry, Ralph. "Hamlet and the Audience: The Dynamics of a Relationship." In Shakespeare and the Sense of Performance: Essays in the Tradition of Performance Criticism in Honor of Bernard Beckerma, edited by Marvin Thompson and Ruth Thompson, 24-28. Newark: University of Delaware Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1989.

Bertram, Paul, and Bernice Kliman, eds. The Three-Text Hamlet: Parallel Texts of the First and Secdond Quartos and the First Folio. New York: AMS Press, 1991.

Billigheimer, Rachel V. "Diversity in the Hamlets of the Eighteenth Century Stage in England, France and Germany." Hamlet Studies: An International Journal of Research on 'The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke' 11, nos. 1-2 (Summer-Winter 1989): 34-48.

Billington, Michael. "From Time Lord to antic prince: David Tennant is the best Hamlet in years." Review of Hamlet, with David Tennant, Royal Shakespeare Company, Courtyard, Stratford-Upon-Avon, 2008. The Guardian, London, August 6, 2008.

Bowers, Rick. "Cooke's Hamlet in Performance, 1785." Dalhousie Review 82 (2002-3): 347-63.

Breight, Curtis. "Branagh and the Prince, or 'The Royal Fellowship of Death.'" In Shakespeare on Film: A Casebook, edited by Robert Shaughnessy, 126-44. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.

The Broken Ruler: 'A' Level Shakespeare Study Site

Brooks, Jean R. "Hamlet and Ophelia as Lovers: Some Interpretations on Page and Stage." Aligorh Critical Miscellany 4, no. 1 (1991): 1-25.

Brown, John Russell. "Multiplicity of Meaning in the Last Moments of Hamlet." Connotations 2 (1992): 16-33.

Buhler, Stephen. "Double Takes: Branaugh Gets to Hamlet." Post Script: Essays in Film and the Humanities 17, no. 1 (1997): 43-52.

Buell, William Ackerman. The Hamlets of the Theatre. New York: Astor-Honor, 1968.

Calderwood, James L. To Be and Not to Be: Negation and Metadrama in Hamlet. New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1983.

Burnett, Mark Thornton. "The 'Very Cunning of the Scene': Kenneth Branaugh's Hamlet." Literature Film Quarterly 25, no. 2 (1997): 78-82.

Campbell, Kathleen. "Zeffirelli's Hamlet—Q1 in Performance." Shakespeare on Film Newsletter 16, no. 1 (1991): 7-8.

Canaris, Volker. "Peter Zadek and Hamlet." Drama Review 24, no. 1 (March 1980): 53-62.

Charney, Maurice. "Analogy and Infinite Regress in Hamlet." In Psychoanalytic Approaches to Lit and Film, edited by M. Charney, 156-67. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickenson Press, 1987.

Charney, Maurice. "Asides, Soliloquies, and Offstage Speech in Hamlet: Implications for Staging." In Shakespeare and the Sense of Performance: Essays in the Tradition of Performance Criticism in Honor of Bernard Beckerman, edited by Marvin Thompson and Ruth Thompson, 116-31. Newark: University of Delaware Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1989.

Charney, Maurice. "Hamlet without Words." ELH 32 (1965): 457-77.

Church, Tony. "Polonius in Hamlet." In Players of Shakespeare: Essays in Shakespearean Performance by Twelve Players with the Royal Shakespeare Company, edited by Philip Brockbank, 103-14. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Coursen, Herbert. "A German Hamlet." Shakespeare on Film Newsletter 11, no. 1 (1986): 4.

Cross, Brenda, ed. The Film "Hamlet": A Record of its Production. London: Saturn Press, 1948.

Davison, Richard Allan. "The Readiness Was All: Ian Charleson and Richard Eyre's Hamlet." In Shakespeare: Text and Theater: Essays in Honor of Jay L. Halio, edited by Lois Potter and Arthur F. Kinney, 170-82. Newark: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1999.

Dawson, Anthony B. Hamlet. Shakespeare in Performance. Manchester, New York: Manchester University Press, 1995.

Dent, Alan, ed. "Hamlet": The Film and the Play. London: World Film Publications, 1948.

Duffy, Robert A. "Gade, Olivier, Richardson: Visual Strategy in Hamlet Adaptation." Literature/Film Quarterly 4 (1976): 141-52.

Edwards, Philip, ed. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. New Cambridge Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Ehrlich, Jeremy. "The Search for the Hamlet 'Director's Cut.'" English Studies 83 (2002): 399-406.

Furness, H. H. "The Hamlet of John Barrymore." The Drama (March 1923): 207-8, 230.

Furness, H. H., ed. Hamlet. Variorum Edition, 2 volumes. London; Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1905

Gay, Jane de. "Playing (with) Shakespeare: Bryony Lavery's Ophelia and Jane Prendergast's I, Hamlet." New Theatre Quarterly 14 (1998): 125-38.

Gianakaris, C. J. "Stoppard's Adaptations of Shakespeare: Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth." Comparative Drama 18 (1984-85): 222-40.

Gibinska, Marta, and Jerzy Limon, eds. Hamlet: East-West. Gdansk: Theatrum Gedanense Foundation, 1998.

Gilder, Rosamond. John Gielgud's Hamlet: A Record of Performance; With Notes on Costume, Scenery, and Stage Business by John Gielgud. New York; Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1937.

Glick, Claris. "Hamlet in the English Theater—Acting Texts from Betterton (1676) to Olivier (1963)." Shakespeare Quarterly 20, no. 1 (1969): 17-35.

Golder, John. "Hamlet in France 200 Years Ago." Shakespeare Survey 24 (1971): 79-86.

Goldman, Michael. "Hamlet: Entering the Text." Theatre Journal 44 (1992): 449-60.

Gorfain, Phyllis. "Toward a Theory of Play and the Carnivalesque in Hamlet." Hamlet Studies 13 (1991): 25-49. [Reprinted in Donald Keesey, Contexts for Criticism (1994) and in Ronald Knowles, Shakespeare and Carnival: After Bakhtin (1998).]

Gregory, Michael. "Hamlet's Voice: Aspects of Text Formation and Cohesion in a Soliloquy." Forum Linguisticum 7 (December 1982): 107-22.

Guntner, Lawrence. "Expressionist Shakespeare: The Gade/Nielsen Hamlet (1920) and the History of Shakespeare on Film." Post Script: Essays in Film and the Humanities 17, no. 2 (Winter-Spring 1998): 90-102.

Guthrie, Tyrone. "Hamlet at Elsinore." London Mercury 213 (July 1937): 246-9.

Halio, Jay. "Three Filmed Hamlets." Literature Film Quarterly 1 (1973): 316-20.

Halverson, John. "The Importance of Horatio." Hamlet Studies 16 (1994): 57-70.

Hansen, Niels Bugge. "Be As Ourself in Denmark: Hamlet in Performance at Kronborg Castle, Elsinore." Angles on the English-Speaking World 10 (1997): 5-16.

Hapgood, Robert, ed. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Shakespeare in Production. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Hardesty, Susan M. "David Garrick's Adaptation of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark." Gypsy Scholar: A Graduate Forum for Literary Criticism 6 (1979): 93-100.

Hassall, Anthony J. "Fielding and Garrick's Hamlet." Studies in the Eighteenth Century 4 (1979): 147-65.

Hibbard, George, ed. Hamlet. Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Holland, Peter. "Hamlet and the Art of Acting." In Drama and the Actor, edited by James Redmond, 39-61. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Holland, Peter. "Hamlet: Text in Performance." In Hamlet, edited by Peter J. Smith and Nigel Wood, 55-82. Buckingham and Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1996.

Hu, John. "Adapting Shakespearean Plays into the Chinese Opera: Pitfalls as Exemplified by Hamlet." Studies in Language and Literature 5 (October 1992): 95-104.

Impastato, David. "Zeffirelli's Hamlet: Sunlight Makes Meaning." Shakespeare on Film Newsletter 16 (1991): 1-2.

Jackson, Russell. "Another Part of the Castle: Some Victorian Hamlets." In Images of Shakespeare, edited by Habicht Werner et al. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1988.

Jackson, Russell. "Kenneth Branaugh's Film of Hamlet: The Textual Choices." Shakespeare Bulletin 15, no. 2 (1997): 37-38.

Jensen, Michael. "Mel Gibson in Hamlet." Shakespeare on Film Newsletter 15, no. 2 (1990): 1-2, 6.

Johnson, Jeffrey. "Sweeping up Shakespeare's 'Rubbish': Garrick's Condensation of Acts IV and V of Hamlet." Eighteenth Century Life 8, no. 3 (May 1983): 14-25.

Jones, Ernest. Hamlet and Oedipus. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1949.

Jorgens, Jack. "Image and Meaning in the Kozintsev Hamlet." Literature Film Quarterly 1 (1973): 307-15.

Kaaber, Lars. Staging Shakespeare's "Hamlet": A Director's Interpreting Text Through Performance. Lewiston, NY: Edward Mellin, 2006.

Klein, Holger, and Dimiter Daphinoff, eds. Hamlet on Screen. Shakespeare Yearbook 8 (1997).

Kliman, Bernice. "A Palimpsest for Olivier's Hamlet." Comparative Drama 17 (1983): 243-53.

Kliman, Bernice. "'Enter Hamlet': A Demythologizing Approach to Hamlet." Shakespeare on Film Newsletter 15, no. 1 (1990): 2, 12.

Kliman, Bernice. Hamlet: Film, Television and Audio Performance. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickenson University Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses,1988.

Kliman, Bernice. "Swedish Hamlet Bursts into View." Shakespeare on Film Newsletter 11, no. 2 (1987): 1, 4.

Kliman, Bernice W. "Hamlet Productions Starring Beale, Hawke, and Darling from the Perspective of Performance History." In A Companion to Shakespeare's Works, vol. 1, edited by Richard Dutton and Jean E. Howard, 134-57. Malden, MA; Oxford: Blackwell, 2003.

Kliman, Bernice. "Olivier's Hamlet: A Film-Infused Play." Literature-Film Quarterly 5 (1977): 305-14.

Kliman, Bernice W. "The BBC Hamlet: A Television Production." Hamlet Studies 4, nos. 1-2 (1982): 99-105.

Kliman, Bernice W. "The Spiral of Influence: 'One Defect' in Hamlet." Literature/Film Quarterly 11 (1983): 159-65.

Kott, Jan, and Marek Mirsky. "On Kozintsev's Hamlet." Literary Review 22, no. 4 (Summer 1979): 385-407.

Lehmann, Courtney, and Lisa S. Starks. "Making Mother Matter: Repression, Revision, and the Stakes of 'Reading Psychoanalysis into' Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet." Early Modern Literary Studies 6, no. 1 (2000): 2-24.

Levenson, Jill. "At Last, an American Hamlet for Television." Literature/Film Quarterly 20 (1992): 301-07.

Lewes, George Henry. "Alive or Dead?: Fechter in Hamlet and Othello." Cambridge Quarterly 14 (1985): 76-92.

Loney, Glenn. Hamlet Through the Ages. London: Rockliff, 1952.

Lusardi, James P. "Hamlet on the Postmodernist Stage: The Revisionings of Bergman and Wajda." Hamlet Studies: An International Journal of Research on 'The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke' 19, nos. 1-2 (Summer-Winter 1997): 78-92.

McGuire, Philip C. "Bearing 'A wary eye': Ludic Vengeance and Doubtful Suicide in Hamlet." In From Page to Performance: Essays in Early English Drama, edited by John Alford, 235-53. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1995.

Maher, Mary Z. Modern Hamlets. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1992.

Mander, Raymond, and Joe Michimson. Hamlet Through the Ages: A Pictorial Record From 1709. London: Rockliff, 1952.

Matsuoka, Kazuko. "Metamorphosis of Hamlet in Tokyo." In Hamlet and Japan, edited by Yoshiko Uéno, 227-37. Hamlet Collection 2. New York: AMS, 1995.

Mills, John A. Hamlet on Stage: The Great Tradition. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985.

Morrison, Michael A. "John Barrymore's Hamlet at the Haymarket Theatre 1925." New Theatre Quarterly 27 (August 1991): 246-60.

Müller, Heiner. Hamletmachine and Other Texts for the Stage, edited and translated by Carl Weber. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1984.

Murakami, Takeshi. "Shakespeare and Hamlet in Japan: A Chronological Overview." In Hamlet and Japan, edited by Yoshiko Uéno, 239-303. Hamlet Collection 2. New York: AMS, 1995.

Naikar, Basavaraj. "Raktaksi: An Example of a Cultural Adaptation of Hamlet." Hamlet Studies: An International Journal of Research on 'The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke' 22 (2000): 110-23.

Nightingale, Benedict. "Who's there? A new Hamlet takes the stage"; "Prince Who: David Tennant is introducing Shakespeare to new audiences"; "Quantum leap to a great classical role is just what Doctor Who ordered." Reviews of Hamlet, with David Tennant, Royal Shakespeare Company, Courtyard, Stratford-Upon-Avon, 2008. The Times, London, August 6, 2008, 1, 2, 19.

Palmer, John. "Hamlet in Modern Dress." Fortnightly Review 2 (November 1925): 675-83.

Pennington, Michael. "Hamlet." In Players of Shakespeare: Essays in Shakespearean Performance by Twelve Players with the Royal Shakespeare Company, edited by Philip Brockbank, 115-28. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Pennington, Michael. Hamlet: A User's Guide. New York: Limelight Editions, 1996.

Perret, Marion. "Kurosawa's Hamlet: Samurai in Business Dress." Shakespeare on Film Newsletter 15, no. 1 (1990): 6.

Phelps, Henry P. The Stage History of Famous Plays: "Hamlet" From the Actor's Standpoint: Its Representatives and a Comparison of Their Performances. New York: Edgar S. Weiner (Folger), 1890.

Quinn, Edward. "Zeffirelli's Hamlet." Shakespeare on Film Newsletter 15, no. 2 (1990): 1-2, 12.

Rafferty, Terrence. "Zeffirelli's Hamlet." The New Yorker, 11 February, 1991, 11.

Robinson, Randal F. Hamlet in the 1950s: An Annotated Bibliography. Garland Shakespeare Bibliographies. London: Taylor Francis, 1984.

Rosenberg, Marvin. The Masks of Hamlet. Newark: University of Delaware Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1992.

Ross, Valerie. "Hamlet." Review of Hamlet, directed by Risa Brainin, Shakespeare Santa Cruz, 2003. Shakespeare Bulletin 22, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 86-8.

Rossi, Alfred. Minneapolis Rehearsals: Tyrone Guthrie Directs "Hamlet". Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970.

Salmon, Eric. "Why Mr Marowitz Is Wrong: A Comment on the Marowitz Versions of Hamlet and Macbeth." Wascana Review 6, no. 2 (1972): 16-25.

Senelick, Laurence. Gordon Craig's Moscow "Hamlet": A Reconstruction. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1982.

Shattuck, Charles H. The Hamlet of Edwin Booth. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1969.

Showalter, Elaine. "Representing Ophelia: Women, Madness, and the Responsibilities of Feminist Criticism." In Shakespeare and the Question of Theory, edited by Patricia Parker and Geoffrey Harriman, 77-94. London; New York: Methuen, 1985.

Sokolyansky, Mark. "Grigori Kozintsev's Hamlet and King Lear." In Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film, edited by Russell Jackson, 199-211. Cambridge; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Spencer, Charles. "Thrills abound in Doctor Who Hamlet." Review of Hamlet, with David Tennant, Royal Shakespeare Company, Courtyard, Stratford-Upon-Avon, 2008. Daily Telegraph, London, August 6, 2008, 3.

Stern, Tiffany. "Hamlet and Performance in Early Modern London." English Review 10, no. 2 (1999): 2-5.

Stone, G. W. "Garrick's Long Lost Alteration of Hamlet." PMLA 49 (September 1934): 890-921.

Styan, J. L. "On Seeing Hamlet in Performance." Hamlet Studies 9 (1987): 9-20.

Hamlet at Talkin' Broadway.

Taylor, Gary. "Hamlet in Africa 1607." In Travel Knowledge: European "Discoveries" in the Early Modern Period, edited by Ivo Kamps and Jyotsna Singh, 223-48. Basingstoke: Macmillan; New York: Palgrave, 2001.

Taylor, Lark. Promptbooks for John Barrymore's Hamlet, 1922-23 at Washington: Folger Library,

Taylor, Paul. "Doctor who? David Tennant captivates as Hamlet. This Danish prince excels as the wry, prankish provocateur." Review of Hamlet, with David Tennant, Royal Shakespeare Company, Courtyard, Stratford-Upon-Avon, 2008. The Independent, London, August 6, 2008, 10-11.

Thompson, Ann, and Neil Taylor, eds. Hamlet, by William Shakespeare. [Quarto 2.] Arden Shakespeare. London: Arden, 2005.

Thompson, Ann, and Neil Taylor, eds. Hamlet: The Texts of 1603 and 1623, by William Shakespeare. [Quarto 1 and Folio 1.] Arden Shakespeare. London: Arden, 2006.

Trewin , J. C. Five and Eighty Hamlets. London: Hutchinson, 1987; New York: New Amsterdam, 1989.

Urkowitz, Steven. "'Well-sayd olde Mole': Burying Three Hamlets in Modern Editions." In Shakespeare Study Today: The Horace Howard Furness Memorial Lectures, edited by Geogianna Ziegler. New York: AMS Press, 1986.

Ward, David. "The King and Hamlet." Shakespeare Quarterly 43, no. 3 (Autumn 1992): 280-302.

Watkins, Ronald, and Jeremy Lemmon. Hamlet. In Shakespeare's Playhouse. Newton Abbot, England: David and Charles; Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1974.

Weller, Philip. "Freud's Footsteps in Films of Hamlet." Literature-Film Quarterly 25, no. 2 (1997): 119-24.

Werstine, Paul. "The Textual Mystery of Hamlet." Shakespeare Quarterly 39, no. 1 (Spring 1988): 1-26.

Wheale, Nigel. "Culture Clustering, Gender Crossing: Hamlet Meets Globalization in Robert Lepage's Elsinore." In Shakespeare and His Contemporaries in Performance, edited by Edward J. Esche, 121-35. Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2000.

Wilds, Lillian. "On Film: Maxmillian Schell's Most Royal Hamlet." Literature/Film Quarterly 4 (1976): 134-40.

Wilson, Luke. "Hamlet: Equity, Intention, Performance." Studies in the Literary Imagination 24, no. 2 (1991): 91-113.

Wilson, Robert F. "Lubitsch's To Be or Not To Be or Shakespeare Mangled." Shakespeare on Film Newsletter 1 (1976): 2-3, 6.

Yang, Sharon R. "The Truth Is Out There in Elsinore: Mulder and Scully as Hamlet and Horatio." Literature/Film Quarterly 32 (2004): 97-107.

Young, Alan R. Hamlet and the Visual Arts, 1709-1900. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2003.

Please offer comments and suggestions on any aspects the site to: Director Hugh Richmond at richmondh77@gmail.com. See samples at the site Blog.

Except where otherwise specified, all written commentary is © 2016, Hugh Macrae Richmond.