Troperville
Editing Help
Tools
Toys
|
Did Ophelia ask Hamlet to bed? Was Gertrude incestuously wed? Is anything certain? By the fall of the curtain Almost everyone's certainly dead.
— A. Cinna, found in The Penguin Book of Limericks
Hamlet is probably Shakespeare's best-known play (although Romeo And Juliet gives it stiff competition for that), and certainly his most over-analyzed. It is very widely considered the most important work of literature in the English language.
Shakespeare did not invent the story of Hamlet's quest to bring the murderer of his father to justice. The earliest surviving "record" is in the twelfth-century Gesta Danorum ("Deeds of the Danes"), by Saxo Grammaticus, wherein Hamlet — or Amleth (Amlóði) as he's called in that version — is shown as a legendary character who succeeds in destroying his uncle and becoming king, only to die in a later battle. The story was abbreviated and amended numerous times and had been presented as a play in English more than once when Shakespeare decided to tackle the story. By that time it had been changed almost beyond recognition — Hamlet's mother, who had originally been forced to marry her brother-in-law, was now an accessory to his usurpation of the throne, while Hamlet had been turned into a Christian and aged a number of years.
Even more than is usual for Shakespeare, Hamlet is filled with expressions that have become clichés; examples include " Hoist By His Own Petard," "The lady doth protest too much," "Frailty, thy name is woman," and "The play's the thing." Oh, and something about whether or not to be that was really difficult to translate into Klingon.
Notable productions include
- A 1948 film starring and directed by Laurence Olivier, which remains the only filmed Shakespeare to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. This is a heavily cut version (excluding such characters as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern entirely), with a murky Gothic aesthetic, and a prominent Freudian leaning (it carries Playing Gertrude to extremes—the actress playing Gertrude was eleven years younger than Olivier!)
- A 1961 German made-for-TV production starring Maximillian Schell as Hamlet (with Ricardo Montalban dubbing Claudius into English). This version is most notable for being featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
- A 1980 BBC production starring Derek Jacobi and directed by Rodney Bennett. This is an almost full-text production, made as part of the BBC's complete Shakespeare series. Also notable for featuring Patrick Stewart as Claudius.
- A 1990 film starring Mel Gibson and directed by Franco Zefirelli. This is heavily cut and rearranged and
probably even more Freudian than the Olivier version. However, Gibson was praised for playing a youthful, energetic Hamlet (despite being thirty-three years old...).
- A 1996 film starring and directed by Kenneth Branagh. This is a highly lavish, cinematic full-text version, which includes BRIAN BLESSED (as the Ghost) and a Falling Chandelier Of Doom. Oh, and Robin Williams as Osric. Set in the 1800s.
- A 2000 film directed by Michael Almereyda. Claudius is the CEO of Denmark Corp., and Hamlet is a disaffected film student.
- The RSC's 2008 production had David Tennant as Hamlet and Patrick Stewart as Claudius. A film version will be released in January 2010.
Since Hamlet is almost always performed with cuts (performing every last line would take over four hours), arguably every production is an adaptation. Still, sometimes the basic idea is what's adapted, more or less faithfully, and little or none of the original language is used.
Some notable adaptations include:
Many of the aforementioned film versions of the play, plus several others (nine total), are compared and contrasted in this neat little article .
Tropes include:
The Play Within A Play contains examples of the following tropes
The Klingon version contains examples of the following tropes
|
|
