Showing papers on "Hamlet (place) published in 1997"

The Interpretation of Culture(s) after Television

Abstract: IF I WERE TO OPEN, AS CLIFFORD GEERTZ did one of his most celebrated (not to mention controversial) essays, with a story about how I began my recent fieldwork in a village, there would be telling differences.' I would confess that rather than walking anonymously around the Upper Egyptian village with the feeling that people were looking through us as if we were "gusts of wind," my spouse and I were immediately recognized and firmly placed-in a social network of Canadian, American, and French scholars, journalists, and archaeologists whom the villagers had known. On the west bank of the Nile and a ferry ride from Luxor, the hamlet was in and among the Pharaonic temples that for over a century archaeologists had been unearthing and tourists-now in air-conditioned buses, on donkeys, or riding bicycles-had been admiring. When I arrived in the spring of 1990, the friendly welcome I received was also due to intense curiosity. Here, finally, was "the wife." My husband had preceded me there, following the trail of an American writer who in 1978 had published a popular life story of a village youth. This was a story that had (too) closely echoed earlier accounts by Jesuits and Orientalists of "the Egyptian peasant," a timeless creature of habit and violence.2 My husband had sought out a few individuals whom a friend of ours from Cairo, a folklorist writing a dissertation on Upper Egyptian funeral laments, had told him about and to whom she had sent greetings. He had made a special point of meeting Zaynab, whose household had been our friend's haven.3 I, in turn, found Zaynab serious and gracious. Her weathered face and unkempt hair, peeking out from her patterned black head shawl, betrayed exposure to the sun and the pressures of being a mother of six (at that time) whose husband had migrated to the city. She asked for news of the folklorist "Leez," as she would do every time I arrived in the village over the next five years, whether from Cairo or the United States. I was forced to exaggerate my knowledge of Liz even as I tried to distance myself from other foreigners I did not know and whose morals and behavior in the village could not be guaranteed. I played on my halfPalestinian identity to distinguish myself. But in the end, Zaynab knew I was from the world of the foreigners she had met, and she took advantage of our time together to improve her understanding of fellowships, dissertations, the cost of living in the United States, research, and books, among other more troubling

Village, Hamlet and Field: Changing Medieval Settlements in Central England

Abstract: Why is the countryside in some parts of England and Continental Europe dominated by large villages, while in many regions looser groupings of houses in hamlets, or isolated farms, provide the main forms of settlement? The answer lies in the period c.850-1200, when the settlement pattern which still survives was created. This volume sets out to provide explanations of the process behind that great formative movement in the fabric of our culture. Using a combination of archaeological and documentary evidence, the authors show that there is no single, easy reason for the development of villages and hamlets, but that they grew out of a complex combination of social, agricultural and political influences. The text explores the origins and developments of villages, hamlets and farms in the Middle Ages, using the landscape of four East Midland counties as a focus. It provides a basis for understanding early settlement.

The Performance of Prayer: Sincerity and Theatricality in Early Modern England

Abstract: IN A WELL-KNOWN BUT RELATIVELY UNEXAMINED moment in Hamlet, Claudius, having confessed his guilt for his brother's murder, struggles to pray. Hamlet, who secretly observes Claudius in what appears to be a convincing act of devotion, refuses the opportunity to strike his revenge for fear of sending his uncle straight to his salvation: "Now might I do it pat, now a is a praying / And now I'll do't-And so a goes to heaven. . . / And am I then revenged / To take him in the purging of his soul / When he is fit and seasoned for his passage?"2 Upon Hamlet's exit of the stage, however, Claudius announces to the audience the failure of his prayer. Despite efforts to align his internal state with his external gestures of piety-"Bow, stubborn knees;" he commands, "and heart with strings of steel/ Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe" (3.3.70-71)-Claudius remains unrepentant.3 The scene concludes with Claudius's announcement of the irreconcilable discrepancy between his heart and tongue: "My words fly up, my thoughts remain below/ Words without thoughts never to heaven go" (3.3.97-98). For centuries, literary critics have considered this scene to be little more than another example of Hamlet's procrastination and delay. In the most generous accounts, its importance lies in the murder that it fails to produce. Thus A. C. Bradley observed: "This incident is, again, the turning point of the tragedy. So far, Hamlet's delay, though it is endangering his freedom and his life, has done no irreparable harm; but his failure here is the cause of all the disasters that follow."4 In less favorable readings of Hamlet's behavior, the scene exposes a side of his character that we would be well served to ignore; as Samuel Johnson famously noted, Hamlet's decision to spare Claudius in order to assure that "his soul may be as damned and black / As hell whereto it goes" represents a sentiment "too horrible to be read or to be uttered."5 And yet, what critics of all persuasions have largely ignored is the actual content of this scene-its detailed exploration of the devotional process that fails to produce a sincere state of contrition. Indeed, far from simply occupying a pivotal location in the narrative's unfolding, this

Teaching Shakespeare with Film and Television: A Guide

Abstract: Preface Theory, Techniques, and Resources Background Energizing Weaker Productions: The Tempest Student Writing: Contexts and Vocabulary Some Extra-Shakespearean Contexts Available Resources Recent Critical Work on Shakespeare and Film Applications Genre: Twelfth Night's Malvolio Editing: Othello Allusion: A Midwinter's Tale Mise-en-scene: As You Like It and Richard III Film: Hamlet Historicist: Pistol Selected Bibliography Index

The real Shakespeare : retrieving the early years, 1564-1594

Abstract: Part 1 The country background: reading and writing the family home and trades religion, school and Latin the early theatre poverty butchery and by-products John Shakespeare's Catholic testament Lancashire the law clerk Lucy and his deer marriage and departure theatre, work and company the battle of the books wits and their butts - Marlowe, Greene, Nashe, Lodge, Peele, Lyly. Appendices: allies - Harvey and Spenser the Parnassus plays Willobie his avisa the sonnets the actor-playwright of the 1590s. Part 2 Style - the noted weed: Ur Hamlet Hamlet 1603 the taming of a shrew the troublesome reign contention and true tragedy faire em and locrine man's wit and the dialogue of dives early start and revision "Bad Quartos" and "Memorial Reconstruction by Actors" "Source Plays", "Derivative Plays" and plagiarism dating and "Collaboration" "Stylometry" handwriting documents.

Critical responses to Hamlet 1600-1900

Abstract: "Memoirs of Bannister", 1839, John Adolphus Correspondence, 1839, John Quincy Adams and J.H. Hackett "Macready's Hamlet", New York 1826, 1843, James H. Hackett "Shakespeare's Dramatic Art", 1839, Hermann Ulrici "Essay on Hamlet, 1839, Jones Very "Marginalia" c.1840, Edgar Allan Poe "Supplementary Notice on Hamlet", 1814, Charles Knight "On the Character of the Ghost in Hamlet", 'Professor Grabstein' {R.H. Horne}, Fraser's Magazine 1845 "New Illustrations...of Shakespeare, 1845, Joseph Hunter {Whitwell Elwin} Review in Quarterly Review, 1847 "Shakespeare's Hamlet, 1848, Sir Edward Strachey (a) "Lectures on Shakespeare", 1845, (b) "Shakespeare's Characters", 1872, Henry N. Hudson "Commentary on Hamlet", 1849, G.G. Gervinus "A Note on Hamlet", 1852, F. Guizot "Shakespear: A Lecture", 1854, George Gilfillan.

Censorship and the Myth of Appropriateness: Reflections on Teaching Reading in High School

Abstract: is part of the challenge of censorship. pringtime comes to the campus, and my sophomore class is reading Hamlet in the best possible way: outside, in groups, preparing to perform "scenes and soliloquies in class on an imminent rainy day Someone-call him Jose-chooses to read Hamlet's speech to his mother from Act 1II, Scene iv, in dialogue with a friend who'll play Gertrude's part. They're asking questions about the meaning and delivery of certain lines: when Hamlet asks, "Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed and batten on this moor? Ha! Have

"In the Rank Sweat of an Enseamed Bed": Sexual Aberration and the Paradigmatic Screen Hamlets

Abstract: Since the first film adaptation of Hamlet in 1900, sexuality has played a significant role in determining how Hamlet is presented on the screen. In that Maurice Clement-directed version of Shakespeare's play, the famous Sarah Bernhardt played Hamlet (Rothwell and Melzer 54), and as such she became the first of many actors and actresses who, either because of their gender, or because of how they played the title character in deference to their director, would contribute to the now almost conventional viewpoint that Hamlet is a play underscored by Prince Hamlet's sexual aberrations. Many of the early film versions of the play used sexuality as an undercurrent because the directors were influenced by one of several landmark examinations of Hamlet in print. After the middle of the century, new films were being influenced by earlier film versions, and in this self-perpetuating cycle, cinematic adaptations were emerging that in fact began to focus on Hamlet's sexuality not as minor element, but as the indisputable central issue of the play. A number of films have contributed to and have grown out of this tradition, and although there are many versions of Hamlet which are sexo-centric, I will focus on four adaptations that cover a variety of film genres. Chronologically, they are Svend Gade's 1920 silent adaptation starring Asta Neilsen as Hamlet, the 1948 black-and-white version directed by and starring Laurence Olivier, the 1980 BBC teleplay directed by Rodney Bennet and starring Derek Jacobi as Hamlet, and the 1990 cinematic film directed by Franco Zeffirelli and starring Mel Gibson as Hamlet. Each of these adaptations, while influenced directly or indirectly by one or more seminal critical evaluations of the play, has in itself become a cinematic icon by influencing the way in which the movie-going public has come to regard Shakespeare's play. The end result is that, because of these various film adaptations, more so than the literary antecedents that influenced them, most of us now see Hamlet as a drama in which sexual issues are predominant. "In order to enjoy [this] screen version of Hamlet," reported the New York Times in 1921, "the spectator should first of all get Shakespeare out of his mind as much as possible" ("Hamlef 20). A strange comment under normal circumstances, but Svend Gade's 1920 version of Hamlet was anything but normal. Although it was slightly unusual that Gade had Asta Nielsen-a female-in the lead role, at the time it certainly was not unheard of to use a woman to play a male's part; and, as mentioned earlier, Bernhardt had played Hamlet in the first cinematic version released. What made the film unusual was that Gade's production was based less on Shakespeare's play than on Edward P. Vining's interpretation of the play put forth in his book The Mystery of Hamlet (1881), as well as the fact that Gade returned to Saxo Grammaticus and Belleforest for many of the details of the plot (Duffy 142-43).What emerges is a film that, by dint of changing Hamlet from a man to a woman disguised as a man, makes sex and gender the most important issues in the play, and completely subverts Shakespeare's play as well. In Gade's film, Gertrude gives birth to a daughter, but at that moment a messenger arrives and mistakenly reports that King Hamlet has been killed in battle. Gertrude decides to claim that her daughter is actually her son in order to assure her place, and her daughter's place, as the rulers of the kingdom. When King Hamlet returns, he does not reveal to his subjects his child's sex for fear that they will rebel. Hamlet thus grows up as a boy, and his "boyhood" friendship with Horatio is, to Hamlet, a deep and abiding love. After Claudius kills the King, Hamlet becomes melancholy and brooding, especially after he learns the true cause of his father's death. To further add to his grief, Ophelia captures Horatio's heart, and thus Hamlet's misery becomes twofold. After joining forces with Fortinbras, Hamlet burns down the royal palace in the midst of a drunken orgy being held by Claudius. …

Freud's Footprints in Films of Hamlet

Abstract: In 1910 Ernest Jones published an article, "Hamlet and Oedipus," which was to have a significant influence on the performance of Shakespeare's play. Jones said that an Oedipus complex dwells at the heart of Hamlet's mystery. This idea labors under a heavy load of theoretical and practical difficulties, but in films of Hamlet it seems to have become gospel. The idea is at the root of performances of the "closet" scene in each of the four readily available English-language films: Laurence Olivier's 1948 version, the 1969 production directed by Tony Richardson and starring Nicol Williamson, the 1980 BBC version with Derek Jacobi as Hamlet, and the 1990 production, directed by Franco Zeffirelli and starring Mel Gibson and Glenn Close. Not only have these actors and directors all shown their belief in the Oedipal nature of Hamlet's story, but the idea seems to have become fixed in the popular understanding of the play. For instance, in its 1990 Christmas Eve issue, Maclean's magazine offered its readers a survey of films for holiday viewing, including the new Hamlet. The review, generally favorable, offered the observation that although Glenn Close "looks too young to be Gibson's mother, that serves to heighten the hint of incest" (Johnson 50). This casual comment indicates how deeply the "hint of incest," or the "Oedipus complex," has been inscribed upon the popular understanding of the play and the character. This unquestioning acceptance of the same idea also appears in the recent scholarly commentary on the film productions of Hamlet. In an article examining Olivier's film version and the 1980 BBC television production, June Schlueter and James Lusardi note that it is "the Oedipal premise that provides a coherent sequence of stage images" (166), but they do not presume to comment on the persuasiveness or emotional effect of that sequence. More recently, Murray Biggs, in a survey of the treatment of the "closet" scene in four film versions, deplores Zeffirelli's translation of "the Oedipal theme into a full-blown, vulgarized, traditional screen romance between coevals" (61). Thus Biggs, who certainly knows better, writes as though the "Oedipal theme" were an explicit fact of the text, rather than an interpretation. How did this situation develop? And what should we think of it? Jones's idea about the play came from Freud, and-in an oddly circular way-Freud's concept about the Oedipus complex may have come from the play. Or at least this is how Norman Holland tells the story: It is not so much that Freud brought the Oedipus complex to Hamlet as that Hamlet brought the Oedipus complex to Freud. In the very letter (dated 15 October 1897) in which Freud first said, "I have found love of the mother and jealousy of the father in my own case, too, and now believe it to be a general phenomenon of early childhood," he immediately went on to apply the concept to Oedipus Rex and Hamlet. It is almost as though the two plays guided him in his self-analysis. (59) Freud's key assertion is that Hamlet delays the killing of the King because the King is Hamlet's unconscious self. That is, Claudius has done the two things that the repressed child inside Hamlet desires: killed the Father and married the Mother. Hamlet cannot bring himself to kill Claudius because Hamlet's unconscious sees Claudius as Hamlet's own self. This notion was developed into Jones's article, and the article eventually became a book which Jones revised several times. More importantly for our story, producer Tyrone Guthrie found Jones's idea interesting, and he passed it on to Laurence Olivier.1 At that time, 1936, Olivier was a rising young star of London's fashionable West End theater district. Guthrie had persuaded him to turn aside-at least for a season-from his increasingly lucrative career, both stage and film, in order to dedicate himself to Shakespeare at the Old Vic. The Old Vic was run by Miss Lilian Baylis, who was a kind of nun of the theater, dedicated to the classics and firmly opposed to liquor, licentiousness, and a living wage for actors. …

Nietzsche’s Hamlet

Abstract: It was not until the nineteenth century, whose speculative genius is a sort of living Hamlet, that the tragedy of Hamlet could find such wondering readers. Emerson, 'Shakespeare; or, the Poet' [W]hoever would become light and a bird must love himself... only man is a grave burden for himself! That is because he carries on his shoulders too much that is alien to him. Like a camel, he kneels down and lets himself be well loaded. Especially the strong, reverent spirit that would bear much: he loads too many alien grave words and values on himself, and then life seems a desert to him. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra I don't want to be confounded with others - not even by myself. Nietzsche, Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is Nietzsche's thinking about Hamlet goes beyond the brilliant, glancing remarks in The Birth of Tragedy and is bound up with the deepest themes of his philosophy. His ideas, moreover, have influenced twentieth-century criticism of the play, especially that which is troubled by the Ghost and which may even find something positive in Hamlet's not immediately setting to work and dispatching Claudius. This essay attempts to explore some of the ways Hamlet mattered to Nietzsche. Like Coleridge, and many others who have identified with Shakespeare's Prince, Nietzsche seems to have used Hamlet to interpret his own life. And his views on Fevenge, I will argue, illuminate a central issue of the play.

Toward an Objective Correlative: The Problem of Desire in Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet

Abstract: It is a disheartening comment on the current state of Shakespeare in Hollywood that many productions undermine the ambiguities which make his plays so readily available to interpretive criticism. One such example is the 1990 film version of Hamlet, directed by Franco Zeffirelli. Like many representations of Shakespeare on film, Zeffirelli carefully edits the play to adhere to what Hollywood believes to be the approximately two-hour attention span of the cinema patron. In the process, Hamlet becomes less a tale of political corruption in the Danish court and, instead, more closely resembles a dysfunctional family melodrama. Hamlet successfully occupies both positions at once. Because the affairs of state have been de-emphasized, Zeffirelli's Hamlet does not have to reconcile the demands of his position as Crown Prince with his personal desire to avenge his father's murder. For centuries, critics have asked, "Why does Hamlet hesitate to take action and kill his usurping uncle?" The failure to answer that question in any definitive manner has led to volumes of critical response and countless stage and film adaptations of Hamlet. The 1990 Hamlet links Hamlet's hesitancy to his unnaturally strong bond with his mother, Gertrude. This interpretive tradition seems to have begun in the 1940s and culminated in a series of lectures about Hamlet by Jacques Lacan in 1959. Lacan's and Zeffirelli's Hamlets are far less complex than Shakespeare's play would suggest. In addition, the 1990 film essentially strips the play of many ambiguities which make it such a labyrinth of conflicting desires. Before examining Zeffirelli's representation of the mother-son bond in Hamlet, it may prove helpful to consider some other ways in which Hamlet reduces the complexity of meaning in the Shakespeare play. The first significant omission of the play's narrative occurs at the beginning of the film, where we witness the burial of Hamlet's father. Zeffirelli eliminates any mention of the father's reign, or of the King's heroic battle with Fortinbras of Norway. At the beginning of the play, Horatio narrates the elder Hamlet's victory over Fortinbras and the subsequent seizure of Norwegian lands (I.i.79-107). As a result, Shakespeare's play opens with the threat of an impending invasion of Denmark by the son of Fortinbras. Thus, Zeffirelli's film excludes important narrative elements of the play, such as "tales of the Norwegian and Pollack wars, the presence of young Fortinbras, a going and coming of ambassadors and the threat of a popular insurrection" (Wilson 27). In Hamlet, the atmosphere at court is marked by everpresent spying. By contrast, Hamlet omits the political significance of the surveillance within the Danish court; the film fails to connect the eyes that constantly monitor Hamlet's machinations with the more general atmosphere of espionage that looms over the Danish state. Zeffirelli cuts the scene in which Polonius sends Reynaldo to monitor Laertes's actions in France, where Polonius advises, "With windlasses and with assays of bias/By indirections find directions out" (II.i.65-66). Such an omission never disrupts the course of the narrative but it does reduce the level of espionage to a strictly personal one, and lessens the importance of espionage at the state level. In Hamlet, the espionage exists on both personal and political levels. The Denmark of the senior Hamlet's reign was a military state, characterized by the heroic hand-to-hand combat of the father. Undoubtedly, Shakespeare intended his portrait of the current espionage state of the younger Hamlet's Denmark to comment upon a similar trend within Elizabethan society. The tragic consequences at the conclusion of Shakespeare's play reveal that the "new" Denmark pales in comparison with the heroic age of Hamlet's father. The end of Hamlet is similarly de-politicized. Zeffirelli concludes his film with an aerial shot of the dead bodies of Hamlet, Claudius, Laertes and Gertrude strewn about the floor of the castle. …

Differentiating Hamlet : Ophelia and the Problems of Subjectivity

Abstract: By considering the positions Hamlet explores with regards to the nature of intention, the nature and acquisition of knowledge, the effectiveness of reason, and their relation to psychological integrity, the author of this paper argues that Shakespeare evaluates the play's participation in the project of defining subjectivity. Ophelia's role in its inquiry provokes questions which challenge many of Hamlet's, Claudius' and Polonius' assumptions about subjectivity, which are often aligned. The play sustains both object relations methods and post-modern constructions of the self because Hamlet's arguments dominate but are also critiqued.

Allegory as rhetoric: Faulkner's trilogy

Abstract: Careful and critical readers are aware that frequently, it is in the reflections of others that they see themselves. This is but one of the effects which readers both experience and respond to as they read Faulkner's trilogy. Functioning as their narrator--their surrogate--and their touchstone, V. K. Ratliff reveals to them the effects of Faulkner's militant rhetoric, rhetoric which is devised to deliberately manipulate their thoughts and those of Ratliff and other characters in his trilogy and effect mental changes in all of them. Exploiting such rhetorical and stylistic devices as designed instability, misdirection, implicature, and ellipses, Faulkner's manipulative style forces his readers to both experience the effects of Ratliff's contradictory behavior and respond to Faulkner's texts by speaking with them. What is unique about Faulkner's rhetorical use of allegory is that the allegory he chooses--one which is both familiar but whose message only seems obvious--causes uncritical readers to overlook it as either a rhetorical argument or an analytical tool. Because most readers are aware of some version of the tale about the man who sells his soul to the devil, they miss the implicature which

John Barrymore, Shakespearean Actor

Abstract: Preface and acknowledgements Part I. Setting the Stage: Prologue: Legacies: 1. The education of an actor, 1882-1919 Part II. The Productions: 2. Richard III, 1920 3. Hamlet, 1922-4 4. The London Hamlet, 1925 Part III. Aftermath: 5. Shakespeare in Hollywood, 1925-42 Epilogue Appendix A. The casts Appendix B. The texts.

W. B. Yeats and Shakespearean Character

Abstract: Irish nationalist readers have sometimes had a particularly complicated relationship with Shakespeare.1 David Johnson cites an example of a Dublin edition of Hamlet, published in 1920, which located the play in an imperialist context: To bend Ireland to her will, Elizabeth maintained throughout her reign an enormous army, sometimes numbering 20 000 soldiers and more, engaged in active service against our chieftains and ravaging our country of its growing crops.2 Indeed, the readers would have quickly gleaned from this that the great documents of civilization are often produced within earshot of barbarism. However, this particular editor could remain an admirer of Shakespeare on the grounds that Shakespeare was, in Johnson’s words, ‘a universal genius’, and on the further grounds that he could be seen as more Celtic than Anglo-Saxon: ‘he in fact displays in his plays a rather more Irish than English temper’.3 Thus, Hamlet’s name is Irish, not Danish, and the lesson to be learned from Hamlet is encoded in the basic doctrine of Sinn Fein: ‘confidence in our own ego, and our own initiative … ’4

"Conflation" in the non-conflated Shakespearian editions

Abstract: In recent years, Shakespearian scholars and readers have witnessed a radical change in presenting critical editions of plays such as King Lear and Hamlet. Thus The Complete Works edited by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor for Oxford University Press in 1986, and the single-volume editions by J. Halio for New Cambridge, present two separate Lears, one based on the 1608 quarto text, the other on the First Folio version (without the well-known “mock trial” scene), instead of the traditional edition that brought together both textual authorities in a “conflated” text. Similarly, in the Oxford Complete Works and in the Oxford single-volume edition by G. Hibbard (1987) we can see a “nonconflated” Hamlet based exclusively on the Folio with passages unique to the 1604 quarto relegated to an appendix (among them the famous soliloquy “How all occasions do inform against me” from Act IV). These shocking editorial actions reflect a debate on the nature, transmission and editing of the early Shakespearian texts that we could briefly label “to conflate or not to conflate” when editing Hamlet or Lear.

The 'very cunning of the scene': Kenneth Branagh's 'Hamlet'

Abstract: On 21 January 1997, Kenneth Branagh's film version of Hamlet received its United Kingdom premiere at the newly opened Waterfront Hall in Belfast. It was an important event, as the audience was able to appreciate Branagh's four-hour realization of Shakespeare's play in a spectacular chrome and glass environment, a manifestation of the prosperity that has come to Belfast in the wake of the peace process. But the occasion also provided an opportunity to reflect upon the achievement of this extraordinary actor and director. If, in Britain, Branagh has been maligned for his "populist" readings of Shakespeare, film critics in the United States have praised him for his reworking of Renaissance theatrical traditions and acute cinematic intelligence. 1 In this essay, I will discuss the numerous virtues and isolated infelicities of Branagh's Hamlet in an attempt to discriminate between these judgments. While paying close attention to the film's textual sensitivity, I will also concentrate upon the "cunning" (or "art") of its "scene" (or representational devices). I Perhaps the most impressive element of the film is Branagh's performance as Hamlet, played in such a way as to bring out the multiple dimensions of a tortured psyche. Thus, from a grieving son lurking in the shadows at the start, Branagh moves to an explosive "man of action" in the later scenes, a knowing impersonator of madness and a theatrically dynamic presence. While Branagh clearly points up a personality-based and romantic reading of Shakespeare's play, the film is arguably more obviously dominated by its political resonances. For this Hamlet constructs Denmark as a militaristic state. Already in the opening scenes, there are glimpses of preparations for war; Hamlet strides through an arsenal on his way to encounter the ghost; and displays of fencing practice punctuate the narrative, foreshadowing the catastrophic conclusion. It is to Branagh's credit that he has restored to Hamlet its military subtexts, and the film does not hesitate to demonstrate the extent to which Denmark's power is dependent upon the cooperation of a gallery of soldierly underlings-Rosencrantz (Timothy Spall) and Guildenstern (Reece Dinsdale) wear regimental sashes; guards invade Ophelia's chamber; and the grave digger (Billy Crystal) arranges skulls side-by-side with all the precision of a campaigning general. Nor is this merely an extraneous interpretation. The play abounds in marital rhetoric, as when Claudius enjoins the "kettle to the trumpet speak/The trumpet to the cannoneer without,/The cannons to the heavens" (V.ii.272-74). Branagh takes his cue from the specific orientation of Shakespeare's text in a persuasive reconsideration of the material bases upon which Elsinore's preeminence is founded. It is part of the versatility of the film's representational scheme that Branagh also develops the Fortinbras sub-plot, which is so often omitted from modern productions. Frequent use is made of parallel montage whereby the "scene" cuts between unfolding wrangles at Elsinore and the relentless advances of Fortinbras's army. At one point, newspaper headlines are deployed to highlight the threat of the Norwegian commander, played with an icy implacability by Rufus Sewell. As the film progresses, it would seem as if there is every justification for the nervousness of the sentry who patrols the castle's gates. The "cunning" of the film's representational devices can be apprehended no less forcibly in set design and staging procedures. Joel Fineman's work on fratricide and cuckoldry has established the importance of Hamlet's "doubling" structures and assessment and mirrored arrangements. Branagh's Hamlet fits well with this assessment, since its interior scenes take place in a state hall lined with windows and mirrored doors. In such a setting, Hamlet is forced to confront reflections of himself, such as Claudius (Derek Jacobi), who, with his blonde hair and clipped beard, bears an uncanny resemblance to Branagh's Dane. …

Hamlet in Freud's Thoughts: Reinterpretations in the Psychoanalytic Literature

Abstract: An involuntary recall of Hamlet was a source of inspiration to Freud during his process of creating psychoanalysis; later, another instance of an unintentional evocation facilitated Reik's understanding of a patient's dream and dynamics. In view of the creation of a new Hamlet film by Branagh which may be evoked by film-buff patients, therapists or supervisors, this paper presents a selection of interpretations in the psychoanalytic literature of Shakespeare's masterpiece.

Hamlet on screen

Abstract: Ghosts and courts - the openings of "Hamlets", Neil Forsyth Hamlet's ghost on the screen, Patrick Hunter reading and screening Ophelia - 1948-1996, Deborah Cartmell Fortinbras on film - safe passage for the Prince, Thomas L. Wilmeth "abstract and brief chronicles" on film - the players' scenes in "Hamlet", Leigh Woods "didst perceive?" - five versions of the mousetrap in "Hamlet", David G. Hale Hamlet and the jester's skull - the graveyard scene on film, James Rigney Hamlet and the kiss, John Ottenhoff "remember me" - the Gaument-Hepworth Hamlet - 1913, Emma Smith Hamlet as a woman - Asta Nielsen's Shakespeare film of 1921, Thomas Koebner a microcosm of art - Olivier's expressionist "Hamlet" - 1948, Lawrence Guntner rotten states - Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and Kurosawa's "The Bad Sleep Well", Stephen J. Phillips "hidden games, cunning traps, ambushes" - the Russian "Hamlet", Patrick Burke a worthy Dane - Richard Chamberlain's "Hamlet", Patrick McCord O that this too too solid play would melt - Coronado's "anti-O(edi)pus", Evgenia Pancheva antic dispositions - Shakespeare and Steve Martin's "LA Story", Stephen M. Buhler "a palpable hit" - Franco Zeffirelli's "Hamlet" - USA, 1990, Chris Lawson "neither a norrower, nor a lender be" - Zeffirelli's "Hamlet", Mary Z. Maher melodrama at Elsinore - Zeffirelli's "Hamlet", Michael Skovmand "Shakespeare in tombstone" - Hamlet's undiscovered country, Philip H. Christensen the "hope" Hamlet - Kenneth Branagh's comic use of Shakespeare's tragedy in "A Midwinter's Tale", Park Bucker words, words, words - searching for "Hamlet", H.R. Coursen suiting the word to the action - Kenneth Branagh's interpolations in "Hamlet", David Kennedy Sauer all the world's a screen - transcoding in Branagh's "Hamlet", Anny Crunelle Vanrigh reformatting "Hamlet" - creating a Q1 "Hamlet" for television, Hardy M. Cook.