HAMLET
from SHAKESPEARE: Script, Stage, Screen (Chapter 15)
Edited by David Bevington, Anne Marie Welsh and
Michael L. Greenwald, Pearson Longman, 2006.
Context and dating
After Julius Caesar (1599) and Twelfth
Night (1601)
The first of four great tragedies (Hamlet,
Othello, Macbeth, King Lear)
More than 40 films exits
Many women have played the role
including women like Sara Bernhardt 
and Judith Anderson
Universally noted for the human-ness of
its protagonist
It is memorable both as superb
storytelling and spectacular theater
Plots and Counterplots
Relies on three interlinked stories about
fathers and sons
Hamlet and his father
Polonius and Laertes
Fortinbras and his father
Laertes is too passionate in his revenge
Hamlet is too deliberate
Fortinbras is methodical and successful
HAMLET represents a new type of storytelling as he writes
about a character “suspended” between impulse and action.
--Stephen Greenblatt
The play is more than a murder story: it is an examination
of the kind of response provoked by murder.
--Peter Alexander
Harold Bloom
The phenomenon of Hamlet, the prince without the play,
is unsurpassed in the West’s imaginative literature.
Hamlet the character transcends his play
Hamlet is the theatre’s most
enigmatic hero…
Laurence Olivier begins his award-winning film with a voiceover “the tragedy of a man who cannot make up his mind”
He is a character fraught with inconsistencies
Is he feigning madness or indeed mad?
He seems tender, yet he has his friends murdered
Shakespeare’s only tragic character with an enviable sense of
humor
Unlike Ophelia’s depiction, he is cruel to both her and
Gertrude
He will not kill himself and deliberately refuses to kill his
uncle
7 Soliloquies
O that this too, too sullied flesh would melt (I.2)
O all you host of heaven! (I.5)
O what a rogue and peasant slave am I (II.2)
To be, or not to be (III. 2)
Tis now the very witching time of night (III.3)
Now might I do it pat (III.3)
How all occasions do inform against me (IV.4)
Soliloquies mark
Hamlet’s movement from
paralysis to action
Oedipal implications
These have been explored in several films including the
adaptations with Laurence Olivier and Mel Gibson
Laurence Olivier and Eileen Herlie
Glenn Close and Mel Gibson
Other notable characters
CLAUDIUS, the wicked uncle-king
POLONIUS, a garrulous and meddling counselor
OPHELIA, an innocent ingenue
LAERTES, her fiery brother
HORATIO, Hamlet’s faithful friend
Manipulative and manipulated schoolmates
ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN
Even Minor Characters are memorable
Fortinbras, future King of Denmark
The clowns
Osric
The Gravediggers
Sources and Inspirations
The Spanish Tragedy
by Thomas Kyd (1588)
Ur-Hamlet
(Kyd? in 1589)
Saxo Grammaticus
Historia Danica 1180-1208
Francois de Belleforest
Histories Tragiques (1576)
1601
It was written in 1601 at the
height of a vogue for
children’s companies.
That same year is the death
of Shakespeare’s father.
Could it be a meditation on
the death of a father?
Several images dominate notably those describing
corruption and decay
“Something is rotten in the State of Denmark” (1.4.90)
A sterile promontory - unweeded garden - ulcerous place
An evil act (fratricide, the primal sin) soils everyone
Language and music
Language and music
Play seems to move from beautiful to
harrowing
Marcellus description of rising son (1.1.72)
to appearance of ghost
Shakespeare’s most ambitious attempt to
create a psychologically complex character
through language
The play has a preponderance of theatre
language
“Drama holds the mirror up to nature”
Language and music
Contains three songs
1.
2.
3.
Hamlet sings a jaunty
tune to celebrate the
success of “The
Mousetrap”
Ophelia’s song is one of
the bawdiest in all of
Shakespeare
Gravedigger’s sing a
nonsense song as they
dig Ophelia’s grave
QUEEN
How now, Ophelia!
OPHELIA [She sings.]
"How should I your true love know
From another one?
By his cockle hat and staff,
And his sandal shoon."
QUEEN
Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?
OPHELIA
Say you? nay, pray you, mark.
Song.
"He is dead and gone, lady,
He is dead and gone;
At his head a grass-green turf,
At his heels a stone."
Themes
No play in history has generated
more commentary than HAMLET
Hamlet as religious treatise
Hamlet as a cry of despair
Hamlet as interrogation into
the human condition
Hamlet as existentialist tract
Hamlet as political document
Hamlet as feminist discourse
Staging Challenges
WHICH TEXT--and how do we cut it?
1. Unauthorized quarto or “bad quarto”
(1603)
2. Authorized quarto performed by King’s
Men (1604)
3. 1623 Folio is compatible with Q2,
about 100 lines shorter
The longest of the plays and modern
versions are longer than any acted in
Shakespeare’s day
Play was undoubtedly trimmed in
Shakespeare’s time and subsequently
modern productions must deal with
the length
Staging Challenges
Hamlet’s Ghost has been used in
various ways in different productions
including one in which Gertrude
was allowed to see the Ghost
The dumb show (play within the
play) exposes the king
Hamlet’s treatment of women is
problematic
The graveyard scene, if not handled
properly can seem absurd and
foolish
HAMLET onstage
Richard Burbage
Richard Burbage was the first Hamlet. Was
Shakespeare the ghost?
Many of the best performances have been documented
in print and film beginning with Thomas Betterton in
1661
Richard Burbage
Thomas Betterton
The Elizabethan Era
Burbage was the first Hamlet, followed by Joseph Taylor.
The Globe theatre seems perfectly designed for the play.
th
17
th
18
and
centuries
Betterton played the role into his
70s and played it in “modern” dress
Garrick was the most noted Hamlet
of the 18th century...but, unlike his
other Shakespeare’s edited the text
to conform with tastes of
Neoclassicism. For example, after
killing Claudius, he exonerated
Laertes and cut the return of
Fortinbras
th
19
century – romantic hero
Coleridge was a great commentator upon the play
John Philip Kemble (1783) the first “melancholic”
prince
Edmund Kean first played the role in 1814 to
great acclaim
Edwin Booth played the role for 100
performances in NY, a first 
Henry Irving (1864) played opposite Ellen Terry
as Ophelia and was lavish, set in the 6th century
William Poel’s Elizabethan Stage Society
production (1881)
John Forbes-Robertsoin (1897) restored the
Fortinbras subplot
Early 20th century
John Barrymore triumphed in London and NY (1925)
Barry Jackson staged a revolutionary “modern dress” Hamlet (1925)
Guthrie Theatre opened in 1964 with a Hamlet in tuxedos and
gowns. The title
role was played by
George Grizzard.
Jessica Tandy was
Gertrude with Hume
Cronyn as Polonius
Early 20th century
In the 1930s and 40s...Gielgud
played role five times as an
aristocratic and delicate prince
Olivier’s Hamlet, in contrast,
was athletic, masculine and
passionate
Late 20th Century
RSC’s first Hamlet staged in 1965 by Peter Hall. In it, David Warner
was very clearly anti-heroic...very much a symbol of his time
Nicol Williamson played the role as an outsider on stage and on film
In 1975, the RSC cast Ben Kingsley in the role
Derek Jacobi (1977) at the Old Vic became basis for 1980 BBC
production
Michael Pennington (1980) at RSC seemed tame compared to earlier
ones
Postmodern
Hamlets
1965 Theatre of Cruelty (Marowitz)
presented Collage Hamlet
Joseph Papp’s Naked Hamlet
deconstructed the play in 1967

German director Peter Zadek staged the
play in an empty factory in 1977
German H. Hayme offered an electronic
Hamlet in 1979
Robert Wilson’s Hamlet Monologue
(1995) was a one man performance
Inspired in part by the Gielgud/Burton, Kevin Klein
played Hamlet at the Public Theatre in 1990. It was
broadcast on public television.
Ralph Feinnes and Jude Law both
played Hamlet on Broadway
Feinnes played the role in 1995 and Law in 2009.
Non-western Hamlets
Especially popular in Germany
from end of 19th century
Performed in Japan since 1880
South Africa productions have
been memorable since 1947.
Pictured at right, a
South African production
from 1977.
2014 – Benedict Cumberbatch plays
Hamlet at Shakespeare’s Globe
On Film and Television
Silent film
Most notably a 1920 Danish film with a female lead,
Hamlet, the Drama of Vengance directed by Svend Gade and
starring Asta Nielsen is said to have influenced Greta
Garbo and Marlene Dietrich
1948
1948 (Starring and directed by Laurence Olivier)
Oscar-winner for best picture
Black and white
Highly Freudian and Oedipal
1964 - GAMLET
A Russian film directed by
Grigori Kozintsev with an
adaptation by Boris
Pasternak
1964 – Gielgud directs Burton
Director John Gielgud made a film
of the NY stage production starring
Richard Burton and using
minimal staging
1967
Director Tony Richardson directed Nicol Williamson as
Hamlet and Marianne Faithfull as Ophelia
1990
Directed by Franco Zeffirelli and starring Mel Gibson,
Alan Bates, Julie Christie, Helena Bonham-Carter
1996
Kenneth Branagh was the star and director. He used
Blenheim Palace (near Stratford) as Elsinore. It was set in
the 19th century with an international cast of stars.
1996
Trevor Nunn discusses the title role featuring excerpts by
Olivier, Gielgud, Burton, Schell, Williamson, Kingsley and
others in a documentary called THE GREAT HAMLETS
2000
Director Michael Almereyda directed Ethan Hawke in a
film which sets Denmark as a modern corporation in NYC
On television
1960--Maximilian Schell played
Hamlet on West German
television
1970--Peter Wood directed a
BBC television production with
Richard Chamberlain as Hamlet
1980--Director Rodney Bennett
directed for the BBC with Derek
Jacobi as Hamlet, Patrick Stewart
as Claudius and Claire Bloom as
Gertrude

2010 –RSC/PBS
Patrick Stewart was once again Claudius in the 2010 RSC
production starring David Tennant as Hamlet.
Adaptations and spin-offs
1868--Ballet by Ambroise Thomas
1976 pop opera by Cliff Jones called
Rockabye Hamlet
Many other ballet versions have
been staged with music by Berlioz,
Liszt, Copland and Tchaikovsky
2000--Choreographer Stephen Mills
used music by Philip Glass...action
was seen as a flashback by Hamlet as
he died
Tom Stoppard
1966 – Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
1977 – Dogg’s Hamlet
Other stageplays
Poor Murderer (1977) by Czech playwright
Pavel Kohout
Hamletmachine (1977) by Heiner Muller
(Germany)
I Hate Hamlet (1993) comedy by Paul
Rudnick features ghost of Barrymore
Fortinbras (2002) is Lee Blessing’s
continuation of the story
Gertrude--The Cry (2003) by English
“shock” playwright Howard Barker
centers on the sexual life of Gertrude
Film adaptations
To Be Or Not To Be (1942) Ernst Labitsch
use a performance of Hamlet by a Polish
acting troupe to dupe the Nazis...remade
in 1983 by Mel Brooks
The Bad Sleep Well (1960) Akira
Kurosawa’s version set in modern Japan
Johnny Hamlet (1972) an American
western
A Midwinter’s Tale (1995) a comedy by
Kenneth Branagh about an out of work
film actor playing Hamlet in a small town
church
Others…
Strange Illusion (1945) an
expressionistic film by
Edgar Ulmer
Blue City (1986) a film
noir starring Judd Nelson
Let the Devil Wear Black
(1999) a film by Michael
Almereyda
Also…
Strange Brew (1983) a comedy
with Rich Moranis and Dave
Thomas where the foolish
protagonists end up at
Elsinore Castle, a brewery
Outrageous Fortune (1987) a
feminist perspective on the
play with Bette Midler and
Shelley Long
The Renaissance Man (1994)
uses the play against the
background of a group of
soldiers in training