Showing papers on "Hamlet (place) published in 1984"

The Renaissance Hamlet: Issues and Responses in 1600

Abstract: Drawing on recent advances in historical knowledge, the author describes contemporary attitudes toward issues such as rebellion, conscience, regicide, incest, retribution, and mourning. His investigation reveals a number of convincing new reasons for viewing Hamlet not as an irresolute young man but as a vigorous and determined figure in confrontation with the moral dilemmas of his age. By understanding the play in its original terms, we find that it takes on new depth and power for our own time.Originally published in 1984.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Stoppard's Adaptations of Shakespeare: Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth

Abstract: One of the remarkable characteristics of playwright Tom Stoppard is his inimitable talent for borrowing. Entire plots, fragmentary characters, or bits and pieces of dialogue from recognized literary masterpieces these Stoppard snatches up and reformulates into highly idiocyncratic plays. When we also take into account his debt to Shakespeare's works as well, we begin to understand why Stoppard never has ceased to intrigue his critics.

Othello, Hamlet, and Aristotelian Tragedy

Abstract: L'A. montre que la theorie de la tragedie d'Aristote est en effet accomplie dans O. mais non dans H.

"It is No Novelty for a Prince to be a Prince": An Enantiomorphous Hamlet

Abstract: ISHALL BEGIN BY QUARRELING with a formulation by R. A. Foakes that has an unassuming and unprovocative appearance, namely that Hamlet is "basically an heroic tragedy . . . in spite of the elements of satire."1 What I take exception to is not the view of the play as heroic rather than "dark," but the phrase "despite the satire," which implies that satiric and heroic characterization, satiric and heroic temperaments, are essentially incompatible. I wish here to offer historical, literary, and theoretical evidence to the contrary, providing an examination of the special connection between the satiric and the heroic. The satiric and heroic temperaments, and by extension their corresponding literary modes, as I hope to show, are connected in a special way. They are compatible or structurally interdependent but not reducible to a common element. The connection between them to be found in Hamlet derives ultimately, I believe, from a historical dialectic of power and powerlessness within the Renaissance imagination. And I am persuaded, further, that a recognition of this connection and this dialectic has implications for the general issue of character consistency in Shakespeare.2

Why Measure for Measure

Abstract: It remains a puzzle for some viewers that BBC-TV's Measure for Measure, one of the first productions in the Shakespeare Series, remains one of the best. I would suggest that it is not merely because subsequent productions, including Dr. Miller's Taming of the Shrew and Antony and Cleopatra, have been, to put it unobscenely, less than satisfactory. Assuming good casting and intelligent direction-warranted assumptions in the case of Desmond Davis' BBC-TV-production-the script per se proves excellent for television. Before glancing at some of the excellencies of this particular version, I wish to examine some of the generic reasons why Measure for Measure seems almost to have been written for television. Measure for Measure has been labelled a "problem play," of course, a convenient category that critics have invented to solve their problems. The problem play is unlike a comedy such as As You Like It in that the problems the problem play raises run deeper than the "folly" and myopia that get resolved at the end of the comedy. The problems of the problem play- in this case, illicit sexuality, radical abuse of political office, oath-breaking, attempted murder, and so on- are potentially tragic issues. Yet at the end of Measure for Measure, no Hamlet dies (Hamlet has been called a problem play, of course), no Othello kills himself, no Macbeth is struck down by Macduff, no Octavius gives orders for the funeral of Antony and Cleopatra. The Duke has power to save. The play ends "happily," with the multiple marriages endemic to the comic ending. Many feel, however, that nothing really has been solved beneath the imposition of Vincentio's politics, and that the "comic ending" is "coerced," rather than springing from new awarenesses within characters, awarenesses that society is ready to incorporate within its widened frame. If society is a better place at the end of a Shakespearean comedy it is because most of the characters have learned something about themselves during the course of their dramatized careers. Is Vienna a better place as a result of all we have witnessed? Desmond Davis' BBC-TV production might answer with a craftily qualified "yes." But one must be careful, for the production, like the script, invites the subjective response of the individual auditor, and Measure for Measure finds itself high on the list of plays that evoke radically divergent views, along with Hamlet and Henry V. The problem play tends towards melodrama, a mode that may seem to raise profound issues but does not pretend to solve them. If it does pretend to solve them, the pretense shows through, as in the case, I would argue, of the celebrated Equus and, possible, of Measure for Measure. Television is a medium for melodrama, and the best shows, "The Waltons," for example, are often the ones where the "solutions" are the most muted and ambiguous. It is true that the "situation comedy," a genre akin to farce, has been standard tube-fare for years. That means that Love's Labour's Lost and The Taming of the Shrew should be excellent on television. Our expectations for the medium form a large component of our response and also tell us something of the built-in limitations of the medium. It is a question, to paraphrase Robert Frost, of making the most of a diminished thing. Certainly television is not a medium for tragedy, nor is the "modern world." Nameless, faceless, sexless leaders, for all the world-shattering power at their fingertips, seem simply to have lost the stature of the Oedipus, King Lear, or Marc Antony, whose fate is the world's fate. Perhaps that is a good thing. Derek Jacobi, a fine Hamlet a few seasons ago at the Old Vic, will be a very different Hamlet this fall on television. Not only must he accommodate himself to microphone and camera, but we will see a ten-inch figure mechanically reproduced within a frame. We will not be inhabiting the space where Hamlet is happening. The distinction between mechanical reproduction and living space is less important when we talk of melodrama: first, because melodrama accommodates itself so neatly to the dimensions of television, and second, because there is something mechancial about melodrama anyway, as in the way Duke Vincentio assigns parts to everyone at the end of the play, even designating a tiny cameo role to the head of the dead pirate, Ragozine. …

Recent Hamlets In Prague

Abstract: The ancient city of Prague, with its chiaroscuro churches and palaces, its baroque statues gesticulating dramatically on a majestic Gothic bridge, its large remnants of battlements, its narrow crooked streets and spacious old cellars turned into modern beerhalls and winecellars all this seems to be particularly hospitable to the haunting ghosts of Hamlet's father. And the young Prince himself has become-as everywhere in the world-the supreme challenge for our actors. One of them has confessed in a recent interview that playing the role has been a cleansing bath for him during which "you leave a part of your own body on the stage and become a somewhat different man." Of course, there are many other Shakespeare plays that have become part and parcel of the repertoire of Czechoslovak theatres. During the first week of June 1983, for example, Prague theatres were offering five different Shakespeare plays: two large stone theatres were producing Hamlet and Richard III, whereas three smaller experimental houses were including in their repertoires for the week The Taming of the Shrew, All's Well That Ends Well, and Macbeth. Nevertheless, Hamlet was clearly stealing the show, appearing in strikingly different versions. Apart from the representative production at the large Smetana Theatre, Prague theatregoers could see a thrilling "little Hamlet," as it was called in the program of the avant-gardist Theatre on the Balustrade where it had been in repertory since 1978. Moreover, there was a provincial amateur performance in a Prague Students Club in 1982 under the title The Dream of Prince Hamlet; this production was inspired by Charles Marowitz's Hamlet collage of 1966. To beat it all, another Youth Club (Futurum) has been offering, since 1981, a weekend entertainment called Haprddns. The title is a provocatively cacophonous Czech abbreviation for "Hamlet, Prince of Denmark." The author and chief actor of this skit is Ivan Vyskocil, who conceives of Hamlet as an eccentric young man whose extravagant pranks should have no place in a modern, civilized society. This Hamlet is sent to England to be cured. He returns home completely reformed to become husband to Ophelia and a docile partner of Claudius. Since June 1983, this remarkable spectrum of approaches to Hamlet has been enlarged upon by Lyra Pragensis, a repertory company specializing in staged readings of both poetry and prose. One of their recent ventures has been the reading of Shakespeare's sources. They first tried out this original idea in 1982 when they staged a reading of William Painter's tale "The goodly history of the true and constant love between Rhomeo and Julietta" (1567), accompanied by music composed by King Henry VIII. Now their repertory has been enriched by the reading of the tale of Amleth, written by the French historiographer Franqois de Belleforest on the basis of the old Danish chronicle of Saxo Grammaticus. The Czech translation is brilliantly delivered by Radovan Lukavsky, who took the part of Hamlet in a famous production of the tragedy at the Prague National Theatre in the years 19591966. To appreciate more fully the changing shapes of Hamlet on contemporary Prague stages, I propose to concentrate now on the two productions which strike me as most representative of current Shakespearean trends in Czechoslovakia. The fact that these two productions are so widely different makes them particularly suitable for comparative analysis. I start with the "little Hamlet" which opened at the Theatre on the Balustrade in September 1978 and has been kept in repertory until now, in spite of adverse reviews by critics who have felt both puzzled and provoked by it. This production is full of surprises, challenging traditional views of the tragedy.