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I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of duality inShakespeare’s plays. Duality, perhaps, appears in its mostquintessential form in Hamlet —the idea of “to be or not

to be,” action versus inaction, good versus evil, right versus wrong. Often, the veneer of a society seems to be at odds with the reality beneath the surface; for instance, in many of Stephen King’s books, something very dark lurks just below the seeming tranquility of a sleepy town. I began to look at Hamlet with the notion of “seeming” in mind. Knowingthat our Art Department was mounting an exhibition of Edward Gorey’s works, I explored his cache of drawingsand saw this same “seeming” embodied in them: what lookslike a nice little children’s cartoon is actually a dark tale of death. Hamlet is exactly the same way—what you think

you see may not be what is actually there. Hamlet “feigns”madness, but certainly straddles that thin border between

sanity and the other side for much of the play, occasionally crossing too far before coming back to an acceptance of “whatever will be, will be.” Claudius “seems” like a goodking, but maybe he didn’t fully realize all the problemsthat come with the job when he decided to murder hisbrother. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern try to appear likeHamlet’s best buddies, but their hidden agenda isn’t very

well hidden. Polonius “seems” to be a good old man with aslight memory defect, but under that cover is a much darkerintent. As for Ophelia, there’s more under the surface than

just Hamlet’s transformation that drives her over the edge.

Part of choosing to do Hamlet is making sure you’ve gotsomeone or a few people who can handle the demandsof the roles. At UHM, I am very lucky that the current

crop of actors is very talented and, even better, eager tobe challenged. We could have cast this production in any number of ways, and I do hope that all of the actors get achance later in their careers to take a stab at other roles inthe play. However, in playing with the idea of duality, wehave double-cast some roles to give more actors a chance to

work on this play. Moreover, we are stressing to the actorsthat the double-cast characters don’t have to be exactly thesame—in fact, it’s better if they have distinct dierencesdepending on an individual actor’s interpretation. Tisstrategy forces the other actors on stage to be aware of how all scenes must be played freshly and in the moment.Hamlet’s advice to the players is very apt, and as they strive

to hold the mirror up to nature, all the actors will need to beaware, alert, and alive to every moment.

Paul T. Mitri is Associate Professor of Teatre at UHM where heteaches advanced acting styles, voice, and movement. He was thePrincipal Founder/Past Artistic Director of the Seattle ShakespeareFestival and is the current Artistic Director of All the World’s aStage Teatre Company.

Shakespeare’s2010-2011 SeaSon

audience Guide

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David Garrick as Hamlet, in a portrait painted by Benjamin Wilsonand engraved by James McArdell. Published in 1754. Reproduced courtesy of the Library of Congress. Garrick’s terried reaction to theGhost revealed his physically expressive acting style.

For centuries, societies and individuals have adapted the

play to specic moments. Who Hamlet is now, and whatthis play represents is for the new generation to decide.One thing is certain: there has been no loss of interest.

ReferencesBrokering, Jon M. “Ninagawa Yukio’s Intercultural Hamlet:

Parsing Japanese Iconography.” Asian eatre Journal 24.2.(2007): 370-397.

Fedderson, Kim and J. Michael Richardson. “Hamlet 9/11:Sound, Noise, and Fury in Almereyda’s Hamlet .” College Literature 31.4 (2004): 150-170.

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

Litvin, Margaret. “When the Villain Steals the Show: TeCharacter of Claudius in Post-1975 Arab(Ic) Hamlet

Adaptations.” Journal of Arabic Literature 38:2 (2007): 196-219. Tompson, Ann, and Neil aylor. “Introduction.” Hamlet . Arden

Shakespeare, third Series. London: Methuen Drama, 2006.

Eleanor Svaton is a Creative Writing MA candidate in theDepartment of English at UHM, with interests in theatre,performance, and publishing. She is the 2010-2011 Abernethy Fellow at Mānoa Journal, the Page to Stage Project Assistant, anddramaturg for the current Hamlet production at Kennedy Teatre.

A noble hero, an ineectual crybaby, a guy withpsychological issues—who is Hamlet? In the introduction

to the third Arden edition of Hamlet , Ann Tompson andNeil aylor explain that although “an assumed Englishtradition conventionally dominates the history of the play in performance until the end of the nineteenth century”(97), the more recent history of Hamlet productionsis rich and varied, international, and inuenced by interpretations, translations and adaptations.

In many parts of the world, productions have been overtly political, which is not surprising in a century of world

wars and revolutions. In countries throughout the SovietUnion, for example, Hamlet was a symbol of resistance,“an intellectual dissident in a totalitarian state” (Tompsonand aylor 116). In 2008, Japanese director Ninagawa

Yukio—irritated by the artice of Japanese actors “donningstrange wigs, dying their hair blond, puttying their noses,and making themselves up in ways incongruous with theirOriental physiognomy”—set the play in the “backstage”of a theatre, with stacks of cubed dressing rooms anduttering curtains. By employing traditional Japanesetheatre techniques, primarily “kabuki and bunraku withtheir amboyant aesthetics and elaborate theatricality,”Ninagawa emphasized the presentational nature of his production (Brokering 375, 371). In recent Arabproductions, King Claudius, who is typically seen as the

“bad guy,” is noted for stealing the show as an irresistible villain, such as Richard III or Iago (Litvin 200).

Te cinema has seen its share of Hamlet s, each one instark contrast with its predecessor. Laurence Olivier’s 1948lm, noted for its “exploration of relationships betweenlm and theater” (Kliman 305), presents a psychologicalportrait of Hamlet, emphasized by deep cuts in the scriptand a Freudian-Oedipal relationship between Hamlet andGertrude. Kenneth Branagh (1996) chose to lm the entirescript—a four-hour spectacle with lots of white light andbright open spaces. Te innovative 2000 lm version by Michael Almereyda features generation X-er Ethan Hawke

as Hamlet, with a modern-day New York City setting, acorporation called Denmark, and the bulk of the “o beor not to be” speech delivered in a Blockbuster video store.According to Kim Fedderson and J. Michael Richardson,“the lm feels positively saturated by an impending doom,coming upon the characters from somewhere other thanthe rottenness within” (162).

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First staged (1600) at the very outset of the seventeenthcentury, a century that would see an explosion of scienticand technological innovation and rapid growth inunderstanding of the natural world, Hamlet was not apassive entertainment but a thrilling confrontation withthe mysteries of the supernatural and of the human mind,particularly the skeptical mind of a scholar wrestling withmultiple pressures. Margreta de Grazia asserts, “No work in the English canon has been identied so closely withthe beginning of the modern age as Hamlet ” (485). Shefurther explains,

By speaking his thoughts in soliloquy, by reecting onhis own penchant for thought, by giving others cause to

worry about what he is thinking: Hamlet draws attentionto what is putatively going on inside him. In recognitionof this psychological depth and complexity, Hamlet hasbeen hailed as the inaugural gure of the modern period,‘an icon of consciousness.’(485)

Hamlet was a student (as was Horatio) at the university in Wittenberg—Luther’s university and the seedbed of the Reformation—when he was presumably called homefor his father’s funeral and his mother’s wedding. As deGrazia further notes, “it is useful to compare him to another

Wittenbergian: Martin Luther, [. . .] who ushers in themodern period by turning faith inward. Hamlet’s ‘inwardness’is the dramatic counterpart to the historical Luther’s‘introversion of the soul upon itself ’” (495). Hamlet’sdramatic task seems at times to be a metaphysical one ashe is compelled again and again to look into himself foranswers. His struggle is a complexly constructed harbinger of modern psychological literature.

Despite his bouts of passion and imagination, his ights of strong emotional language, Hamlet’s character continually returns to the reective, skeptical approach of the trainedscholar. In his rst encounter with the ghost, Hamletdeclares he will call it “father” (1.4.24). In a more reectiveframe of mind, however, he decides he must have furtherproof of Claudius’s guilt lest the devil, “who is very potent

with such spirits, Abuses me to damn me” (2.2.591-592).And in his most famous soliloquy, Hamlet describes deathas “Te undiscovered country, from whose bourn No travelerreturns” (3.1.80-81), bold language that suggests the utmostlimit of human knowledge.

Hamlet’s character guides the audience across a shiftingmetaphysical landscape that leads to a kind of peacefulacceptance of imperfect knowledge and recurring doubt.His assertion that there is “a special providence in the fallof a sparrow” (5.2.166-167), an allusion to Matthew 10:29,suggests a recognition of an unfathomable and powerfuldivine order. Tis sort of epiphany is common to tragicheroes from Oedipus to Job, individuals whose behavior inthe face of their own imperfection becomes a paean to thehuman spirit. Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a gure in whomgenerations have “found” a compelling dramatization of theindividual’s heroic struggle with the stressful doubts that sooften mark the human condition.

ReferenceDe Grazia, Margreta. “When Did Hamlet Become Modern?”

Textual Practice 17.3 (2003): 485-503.

Author of a number of articles on children and early modernEnglish drama, Mark Lawhorn is Associate Professor of Englishat Kapi‘olani Community College. His most recent published work appeared in Shakespeare and Childhood from CambridgeUniversity Press and in Journal of British Studies.

Sarah Bernhardt, the most famous actress of her generation, took onthe title role of Hamlet in 1899, touring to several European cities.

Photo reproduced courtesy of the Library of Congress. Bernhardt felt that a mature woman had the ability to combine “the light carriage of youth with the mature thought of the man.”

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Hamlet the character is tough on women. His remark,“Frailty, thy name is Woman” (1.2.146), is often quotedas if it were Shakespeare’s view of women, but Hamletsays those lines when he is so distracted by his mother’sremarriage that he contradicts himself about how longhis father has been dead (rst he says two months, thenunder a month). He is consistently an unreliable judgeof women, which makes it dicult to arrive at a reliableassessment of Gertrude. What do we know about herapart from Hamlet ’s opinions? Was she in on the murder?

Hamlet learns about the murder from his father’s ghost,but the same ghost cautions him not to “taint” his “mindnor let thy soul contrive / Against thy mother aught; leaveher to heaven / And to those thorns that in her bosomlodge / o prick and sting her” (1.5.85-88). Old Hamlet

warns his son not to become preoccupied with her guilt,but Hamlet is unable to act on the advice. In the bedroomscene following e Murder of Gonzago (the play withinthe play), Hamlet lets her have it. First he objects to hermarrying her husband’s brother because she has violatedthe prohibited degrees of consanguinity according toChristian tradition. He is correct that the marriage wouldhave been deemed incestuous at the time. Ten he chargesher with killing a king. Her response turns his accusationinto a question: “As kill a king?” (3.4.28).

Gertrude seems shocked by the allegation. In therst printed edition of Hamlet , published in 1603, hercharacter is given the lines, “I sweare by heauen / I neuer

knew of this most horride murder” (note to 3.4.28). Inthe later editions of 1604-05 and 1623 she is not soexplicit, but she asks what she could have done to promptHamlet’s rebuke. She seems to know nothing of themurder. Yet Hamlet continues his obsessive accusationsabout her and Claudius. It is only when the ghost returns,demanding that Hamlet cease his attacks and “stepbetween” his mother and “her ghting soul” (3.4.109), thathe nally quits.

Gertrude is a confused, grieving widow, easily led, who turns much too quickly to another sexual partner.Manipulated by Claudius, who wants the queen so hecan better secure the crown, she marries without realizinghow that choice might hurt her son or compromise herown reputation. She is not innocent, but neither is she anaccessory to the killing. Just as the ghost feared, Hamlet’smind becomes tainted with thinking about his mother’ssexual union but the play does oer us some critique of hisposition. It is kinder to Gertrude than her son is.

ReferenceShakespeare, William. Hamlet . Ed. Ann Tompson and

Neil aylor. Arden Shakespeare, third Series. London:Methuen Drama, 2006.

Valerie Wayne has recently retired as a Professor of English atthe University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. A member of the editorialboard of Shakespeare Quarterly and past president of the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women, she has edited or co-edited ve books, including Staging Early Modern Romance: Prose Fiction, Dramatic Romance, and Shakespeare (Routledge, 2009)and omas Middleton: e Collected Works (Oxford University Press, 2007). She is currently preparing an edition of Cymbeline for the Arden Shakespeare, third Series.

Daniel A. Kelin II as Hamlet and Jillian Sakamoto as Gertrude in the1989 Kennedy Theatre production. Photo: Malcolm Mekaru.

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Daniel A. Kelin II as Hamlet in the 1985 production of Hamlet at Kennedy Theatre, directed by Terence Knapp. Photo: Malcolm Mekaru.

At the end of Hamlet , Fortinbras orders that Hamlet’s

body be borne from the stage like a soldier and that he begiven a military funeral accompanied by soldiers’ musicand the rites of war. We don’t see this ceremony in mostproductions, but the command poses a question: is Hamleta conventional hero? Fortinbras says he is, but Fortinbrashardly knows him. Like Laertes, Fortinbras is a man of action, and both characters function as Hamlet’s foils.

Since the play of Hamlet is a tragedy and Hamlet is itscentral character, he is a tragic hero, but what does thatmean? It doesn’t mean that Hamlet has a “tragic aw” (atroublesome term associated with Aristotle’s harmatia), because that notion of a hero who makes one big mistakeis usually associated with Greek tragedy and even thereis often reductively applied. Perhaps the more importantquestion is not what Hamlet does wrong, but what hedoes right. What makes him a hero deserving of oursympathy and respect?

After Hamlet encounters his father’s ghost and is toldof the murder, his famous “o be, or not to be” speechbecomes a debate about whether he should endure hisoutrageous fortune or “take arms against a sea of troubles.”But the person he imagines taking arms against is himself.

When he decides to go on living and “bear those ills we

have” rather than “y to others that we know not of,” headmits that the “enterprises of great pitch and moment”he envisioned have faded and his goals have lost “thename of action” (3.1.55-59, 80-87). In one sense, he doesnothing; but in another, he poses eloquently some of thelargest questions that humans can ask about life and deathand what comes afterwards.

Hamlet makes choices that are ethically suspect whenhe refuses to kill Claudius because he is praying andlater rewrites a commission so that Rosencrantz andGuildenstern will go to their deaths. Te play posesquestions about these actions but does not resolve them.

It also critiques military leaders like Fortinbras forsending 20,000 men to their senseless deaths (4.4.58-64); it explores the futile consequences of heroic action;

yet it ends with the grim prospect of Fortinbras rulingDenmark. Its strength, rather like Hamlet himself,is in the brilliant complexity with which it confrontsthese problems. If Hamlet is a hero, that is because of how astutely he relates his immediate predicaments to

larger human dilemmas, how brutally honest he is abouthis own shortcomings, how perceptive he is about themean-spirited deceptions and delusions of those aroundhim, who would “pluck out the heart of [his] mystery”(3.2.357-58), and how slow he is to act until he believesthe time is right. He is no conventional action hero andno soldier, but watching that bristling intellect debate theprinciples of heroic action creates a show unlike any other.

Reference

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. Ann Tompson andNeil aylor. Arden Shakespeare, third Series. London:Methuen Drama, 2006.

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Moderated by Dr. Valerie Wayne, these presentations featurecast members performing scenes from the play as the catalyst toa discussion. Co-sponsored by HCH, AWS, UHM Outreach

College and the Friends of the Library of Hawai‘i. Mid-October2010, at public libraries on O‘ahu

• Saturday November 6 2010 “Rogues, Fair Maidens, and Guilty Creatures: Hamlet on eatre” by Valerie WayneFree to the public

• Saturday November 20 2010“Hamlet’sGlobal Reach” by Eleanor Svaton

imes: 6:30 pm Location: Earle Ernst Lab TeatreFree to the public

Website for Kennedy Teatre Hamlet Production:https://sites.google.com/site/hamletuhmkennedy2010/

Hamlet by William ShakespeareDirected by Paul T. MitriKennedy Teatre November 5, 6, 20, December 3 at7:30pm; November 14, December 5 at 2pm

Page to Stage projects for Hamlet and Waiting for Godot are the joint project of the UHM Department of Teatre and Danceand All the World’s a Stage Teatre Company. We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Hawai‘i Council for the Humanities.Co-sponsors include the UHM Department of English , UHMOsher Lifelong Learning Project, the Hawai‘i State Public Library System (HSPLS), Friends of the Library of Hawai‘i, and theCommunity Services Division of Outreach College

For additional resources, see the endnotes to articles in thisAudience Guide.

BOOKSHamlet. Eds. Ann Tompson and Neil aylor. Te Arden

Shakespeare, third Series. London: Methuen Drama, 2006. Te most complete, scholarly edition.

Hamlet. Ed. Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen. New York:Modern Library, 2008. Scene-by-scene analysis andperformance history.

Hamlet. Ed. Suzanne L. Woord. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Boston: Bedford Books-St. Martin’s Press, 1994.

Shapiro, James. A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599.New York: HarperCollins, 2005.

Teaching Hamlet, Henry IV, Part I . Ed. Peggy O’Brien.Shakespeare Set Free Series. Folger Shakespeare Library. New

York: Washington Square, 1994.

ONLINE RESOURCES“Folger Shakespeare Library Lesson Plans” for Hamlet. (Enter

Hamlet in search box.) http://www.folger.edu/eduLesPlansearch.cfm“Hamlet Online.”

http://www.tK421.net/hamlet/hamlet.html“Hamlet on the Ramparts.” M.I.. Shakespeare Project.

http://shea.mit.edu/ramparts/welcome.htmRoyal Shakespeare Company, including sections on Hamlet ,

Shakespeare’s Life, Work, and past productions.http://www.rsc.org.uk/explore/hamlet

“Study Guide: Hamlet.” Folger Shakespeare Library.http://www.folger.edu/Content/each-and-Learn/eaching-

Resources/Study-Guides/Hamlet

VIDEOAlmereyda, Michael, dir. Hamlet . Miramax Films, 2000. DVD.Branagh, Kenneth, dir. Hamlet . Columbia Pictures, 1996. DVD.Doran, Gregory, dir. Hamlet. BBC-Worldwide, 2010. Royal

Shakespeare Company production starring David ennantand Patrick Stewart. DVD.

Olivier, Laurence, dir. Hamlet . Universal Pictures, 1948. DVD.

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