Hamlet

Lines 1-168: Hamlet tells Horatio the circumstances of his return to Denmark. He explains that while on board the ship he crept from his cabin and took the letter entrusted to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern by Claudius, containing the instructions for his execution. He explains how he forged a replacement letter from Claudius, asking that the English put Rosencrantz and Guildenstern "to sudden death." The next day he was captured by the pirates, leaving Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to sail to their deaths, a fate he feels that they deserved. He repeats his intention to kill Claudius and expresses regret at his behavior toward Laertes, acknowledging the similarities in their circumstances. They are interrupted by Osric, whose long-winded and obsequious manner is mocked by Hamlet. Osric explains that he has been sent to tell Hamlet that the king has placed a bet that he will win a fencing match against Laertes and to ask if Hamlet will take up the challenge. Hamlet agrees and Osric goes to report this. Horatio warns Hamlet that he will "lose this wager," but Hamlet says that he has been in "continual practice" and, anyway, it does not matter if he is killed as everyone must die: it is not important when, but "the readiness is all."

Lines 169-230: Claudius and Gertrude enter with Laertes, other courtiers and attendants, emphasizing the public nature of the duel in contrast to the secret intentions of Claudius and Laertes. The king joins Hamlet's and Laertes' hands and Hamlet asks for Laertes' pardon, explaining that his actions were "Never Hamlet," but the result of "madness" which caused "Hamlet from himself [to] be taken away," again reinforcing the fragmented nature of his identity. Laertes will not consider "reconcilement" until he has consulted "some elder masters" on the matter of honor, but he accepts Hamlet's "offered love." They begin to fence.

Lines 231-325: The fight signifies a shift from "words" to "action." After all the contemplation and conversation, we are presented with fast and confusing activity, added to by the various characters' brief comments and asides. There is a switch of rapiers, resulting in both Hamlet and Laertes being stabbed with the poisoned blade. Gertrude, meanwhile, mistakenly drinks the poisoned wine. She dies and Hamlet demands that they seek out the treachery that killed her. Laertes, realizing that he and Hamlet are both dying, explains everything and blames Claudius. Hamlet kills Claudius with the poisoned sword, finally fulfilling his quest for revenge. Laertes begs Hamlet to "exchange forgiveness" with him and dies. Hamlet forgives Laertes and curses the courtiers who stand around and watch as "but mutes or audience to this act," sustaining the theatrical awareness to the end. Horatio wishes to drink the poison and die, but Hamlet begs him to remain alive "in this harsh world," so as to tell Hamlet's story. A "warlike noise" is heard, and Osric explains that Fortinbras and the English ambassadors have arrived. Hamlet announces that Fortinbras will be the next king of Denmark and dies.

Lines 326-353: Fortinbras asks what has happened, and Horatio promises to tell him. We learn that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. Fortinbras claims the Danish throne and orders that Hamlet be given a military funeral.

HAMLET IN PERFORMANCE:

THE RSC AND BEYOND

The best way to understand a Shakespeare play is to see it or ideally to participate in it. By examining a range of productions, we may gain a sense of the extraordinary variety of approaches and interpretations that are possible--a variety that gives Shakespeare his unique capacity to be reinvented and made "our contemporary" four centuries after his death.

We begin with a brief overview of the play's theatrical and cinematic life, offering historical perspectives on how it has been performed. We then analyze in more detail a series of productions staged over the last half-century by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The sense of dialogue between productions that can only occur when a company is dedicated to the revival and investigation of the Shakespeare canon over a long period, together with the uniquely comprehensive archival resource of promptbooks, program notes, reviews and interviews held on behalf of the RSC at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon, allows an "RSC stage history" to become a crucible in which the chemistry of the play can be explored.

Finally, we go to the horse's mouth. Modern theater is dominated by the figure of the director. He, or sometimes she (like musical conducting, theater directing remains a male-dominated profession), must hold together the whole play, whereas the actor must concentrate on his or her part. The director's viewpoint is therefore especially valuable. Shakespeare's plasticity is wonderfully revealed when we hear directors of highly successful productions answering the same questions in very different ways.

FOUR CENTURIES OF HAMLET: AN OVERVIEW

Hamlet is the best-known and most discussed of all Shakespeare's plays. It is also one of the most frequently performed. The many early references to it suggest that this has always been the case. There is then a remarkably full stage history which reveals a certain continuity and predictability by way of a perpetual focus on the figure of the prince himself, claims for the "naturalistic" quality of the actor's performance, a sense of the play's special capacity to catch the contemporary Zeitgeist, cutting and rearranging of the text, and the international dimension and appeal of the play. The legendary centrality of the prince--with nearly forty percent of the lines--has led to the focus on the performance of the leading actor in the main part, particularly in historical productions in which the cutting of the text increased the relative size of the role. Such a focus is problematic but inevitable and does have some value, as the modern critic Anthony Dawson recognizes:

I am aware of perpetuating the discredited tradition of equating performance history with detailed accounts of how one or another famous actor played a single role. But one explanation is that the available source materials make such an emphasis almost unavoidable; moreover, leading actors express in heightened ways features of cultural style, and when they take on Hamlet they help to reveal an era's understanding of subjectivity.1

Thanks to an anonymous elegist writing on the death of Richard Burbage, the leading actor in Shakespeare's company, we know that Burbage played the part in the early seventeenth century:

He's gone and with him what a world are dead!

Which he reviv'd, to be revived so,

No more young Hamlet, old Hieronymo

Kind Lear, the grieved Moor, and more beside,

That lived in him; have now forever died,

Oft have I seen him, leap into the grave

Smiting the person which he seem'd to have

Of a sad lover with so true an eye

That there I would have sworn, he meant to die;

Oft have I seen him, play this part in jest,

So lively, that spectators, and the rest

Of his sad crew, whilst he but seem'd to bleed,

Amazed, thought even then he died indeed.2

Assuming that the lines describe the graveyard scene in Act 5 Scene 1 of Hamlet, we are also given some idea of how he played the part. In general Burbage is praised for the realism of his performances. It is striking that all the great actors who followed in his footsteps are similarly praised despite very different conceptions of the part and performance styles. There is also a tendency for actors themselves to trace a lineal descent for their performance, as though perhaps this might validate or authenticate their interpretation. This was certainly the case after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 when the part was played for Sir William Davenant's company by Thomas Betterton. John Downes, company bookkeeper and prompter, reports that

Hamlet being Perform'd by Mr Betterton, Sir William (having seen Mr Taylor of the Black-Fryars Company Act it, who being Instructed by the Author Mr Shaksepeur) taught Mr Betterton in every Particle of it; which by his exact Performance of it, gain'd him Esteem and Reputation, Superlative to all other Plays ... No more succeeding Tragedy for several Years got more reputation, or Money to the Company than this.3

In fact Joseph Taylor, who inherited Burbage's roles, joined the King's Men at the Blackfriars three years after Shakespeare's death so could not have been personally instructed by the author, but he probably performed them in a similar way. Betterton played Hamlet to great acclaim until he was seventy:

had you been to-night at the play-house, you had seen the force of action in perfection: your admired Mr Betterton behaved himself so well, that though now about seventy, he acted youth; and by the prevalent power of proper manner, gesture, and voice, appeared through the whole drama a young man of great expectation, vivacity, and enterprise. The soliloquy where he began the celebrated sentence of "To be or not to be?," the expostulation, where he explains with his mother in the closet, the noble ardour, after seeing his father's ghost; and his generous distress for the death of Ophelia, are each of them circumstances which dwell strongly upon the minds of his audience, and would certainly affect their behaviour on any parallel occasions in their own lives.4