Hamlet

by William Shakespeare

  Laertes changes from light, golden boy to black avenger. Hamlet begins as a black avenger and ends up in light grey, a sort of Everyman colour, because on his return in Act 5, Hamlet becomes more accepting, more at peace in a sense. Grey tones also give a sense of being half in and half out of the world. It's as though, at the end, Hamlet is beginning to accept that he's about to join the world of the ash people--the gravedigger is also in grey.66

  Greg Hicks, who played the startling Ghost, also played the Player King and the First Gravedigger: "It's a great treble because there are resonances of Hamlet's father in each one of the roles, especially the gravedigger."67

  Michael Boyd's doubling of roles provided a sense of the dead being present among the living and looking after their loved ones in spirit:

  When I asked her [Meg Fraser, who played Ophelia] to play the second gravedigger too it was because I thought there was something very moving in the fact that, in that benign scene, Hamlet was with people who loved him: his father and Ophelia.68

  Meg Fraser commented on this comforting but macabre idea: "I also play the second gravedigger--Ophelia digs her own grave!... And now I wear the same make-up for both parts because it's about making connections rather than being naturalistic."69

  The references to grief and death were markedly used in the set for the Adrian Noble production in 1992:

  The unweeded garden of Elsinore exists downstage in Bob Crowley's design. The right arm of the subterranean ghost pushes through like the arm in John Boorman's Deliverance, and Ophelia plucks her flowers here shortly before the gravediggers prepare her tomb. If Denmark is a prison, it is also, finally, a graveyard. The stage is littered with pink garlands and funeral mounds.70

  As indicated, the Ghost in this production emerged from a garden, which formed the front part of the stage, and was later used for Ophelia's madness scene and the burial.

  What you are left with after Hamlet's return from England is a landscape of grief. By the end the whole stage is a huge graveyard, not literally with tombstones, but just dead flowers everywhere.71

  Love and Madness

  Hamlet evokes the long-distance loneliness and isolation of three lost, young things--Hamlet, Laertes and Ophelia--caught up in a political and personal revenge that's the death of them. (Nicholas de Jongh)72

  The parallel stories of two families and how their children cope with the death of their fathers is central to the plot of Hamlet. Hamlet's dilemma after seeing the Ghost lies in the fact that he is too aware of the possible consequences of his actions. The intelligence of his imagination is such that he knows that the Ghost's request for revenge has two possible outcomes for him: death or madness. As hot-blooded avenger he will provoke the punishment of the state, whereas not to act--to withdraw--would only compound and multiply his already unbearable grief and frustration to a state of madness. Both of these options are against his nature and his sensibility. However, Shakespeare demonstrates their tragic consequences in the reactions of Polonius' children, Laertes and Ophelia.

  Most actors, although they may reach a peak of frenzy, do not play Hamlet as genuinely mad. In Ron Daniels' 1989 production, however, the disintegrating mind of Hamlet was evidenced in Elsinore's state of collapse.

  Set in what appears as an exclusive sanatorium with extensive views over the North Sea, Ron Daniels's production presents a group of cheerfully contented inmates who all fall victim to a killer disease.... Antony McDonald's vertiginously angled, hydraulically operated set suggests that Elsinore is sliding into the sea.

  Its opening court scene presents an image of harmony and political health, with only Mark Rylance's spiritlessly dejected Hamlet signalling the plague that will strike them down.73

  The large planes of flat, subdued color and sparse detail have a two-fold effect. They highlight the characters and, at the same time, emphasize their littleness against the massive ruins and the stormy sea.

  The heart of Denmark is rotten, and Daniels concentrates on that heart. Questions of legitimacy, kingship and ambition are treated in terms not of the State but of individual fate. Intrigue is social, courtly, politic, not broadly political. The huge windows open on the sea and the rabble is heard only as an electronic noise, as of sirens. Daniels seems to want to lift the court out of history, to a plane on which the psychological and metaphysical themes can be purely explored.74

  Known as "the pyjama Hamlet," due to the fact that Mark Rylance wore pyjama bottoms from entering for the "To be, or not to be" soliloquy to his exile to England, Rylance's performance took Hamlet's loss of sanity to extreme and believable levels. When the production toured and did a special performance at Broadmoor, a hospital for the criminally insane, one inmate wrote to his local paper, explaining that Rylance "was able to capture every aspect of a person's slip into the world of psychopathic, manipulative paranoia ... Many of us here in Broadmoor are able to understand Hamlet's disturbed state of mind because we have experienced such traumas."75

  In Ron Daniels's RSC production of Hamlet, the hero is ... a Black Prince of pain and destruction. Antony McDonald's sets are an expressionistic clash between sloping floors and tilted walls, as if the court were in danger of imminent collapse ... the threat comes from Hamlet. We first see Mark Rylance as a tense, pale, hunched figure tightly buttoned in a long, heavy overcoat. His eyes are glazed over with too much introspection. He is clearly on the brink of a crack-up, and his encounter with the Ghost topples him over. This Hamlet suffers from a combination of obsessional brooding and a retarded emotional maturity. In public, he acts up to his breakdown, until it takes over and he regresses to a difficult, irascible adolescence.... Daniels and Rylance show Hamlet to be a moral vessel which is too weak to bear its just cause. When, at the end of a superb, harrowing bedroom scene, he kisses his mother on the mouth, it begins as a kiss of comfort and complicity and ends in a shocked recognition of fear and freedom. Of course, you lose the "romantic" Hamlet; but you gain in hard emotional authenticity. This is a deeply shocking production in the most crucial sense: it shocks you into the difficult recognition that necessary moral actions can be performed by people who do not carry the usual moral price tag. And so our sympathy and pity for Hamlet is hard-earned and therefore all the more real.76

  Frances Barber as Ophelia in 1985 was universally praised for her extremely moving performance. She saw Ophelia as an extension of Hamlet's character, presenting

  the female counterpart and counterpoint to him. She provides the feminine qualities lacking in his sensibilities. Shakespeare uses her innocence and naivete to illustrate this imbalance and highlight its consequences; the destruction of a potent feminine force, caught up in a male-dominated power struggle.... I noticed Roger [Rees] as Hamlet became more lucid and reasonable as his obsessions took him over. He also used particular gestures each time he saw his father's ghost, and he was truly in danger of losing his mind. If I was to follow through my theme of Ophelia as a female counterpart to the Prince, it seemed interesting to incorporate some of Hamlet's gestures into the most inappropriate moments of her own madness, highlighting her then as his female counterpoint. Consequently one of Roger's most striking gestures was that of banging his chest violently after the ghost has appeared to him for the first time, as if his heart truly is breaking.... I decided to bang my chest and beat my heart as violently as I could at the most unexpected moment, during the sweetness of the song ... people are "certified" if they are likely to do harm to others or to themselves. I wanted to suggest that whilst Hamlet is likely to do harm to others at his most revengeful, Ophelia is capable of doing herself great harm at her most tranquil.... When Laertes enters the scene, I clasped his face, echoing Roger in the nunnery scene, but in this case singing gently and weeping for the loss of everything good in her life--a direct contrast to Hamlet's spitting accusations.... Another gesture that occurred during one rehearsal was coincidentally an echo of the closet scene in which a distraught Gertrude clasps her son to her bosom and strokes his hair. Kenneth Br
anagh (Laertes) sank into my arms as Ophelia sings, while I stroked his hair, unaware at that point of the parallel mother/son image.77

  Ophelia's loneliness and isolation are equal to, if not greater than, Hamlet's. The loss of Hamlet and the death of her father, the absence of Laertes, leave her no one to turn to in her distraction. Actresses in recent productions have often employed visual associations with Ophelia's loved ones in the madness scenes, indicating a lost mind helplessly turning to those she loves by assimilating their actions, keeping part of them alive and with her even though they are absent. In Meg Fraser's performance in 2005,

  Ophelia mimics or echoes her father's gestures when she's mad, for example the authoritative clap. I came by it accidentally in rehearsal but I love the way it gives the audience such a shock!... Ophelia's wearing the same colour her dad wears--the Polonius family are in silvers.78

  This idea was strongly adopted in 1992 when Joanne Pearce's Ophelia wore her dead father's clothes. Her innocence, isolation and vulnerability were highlighted by this effective piece of costuming:

  The mad scene began with the shattered young woman shuffling along in her father's clothes, the shirt bloodstained and the shoes, clownlike, much too large.79

  Many modern productions pick up on the fact that Hamlet and Ophelia are both condemned by paternal domination. Tony Church, who played Polonius twice, in 1965 and in 1980, commented:

  The appalling news that Hamlet has apparently been driven mad by Ophelia's rejection leads Polonius in the text straight into the problem of reporting this event to the King; here we added the business of the father covering his poor frightened daughter with his robes of state, and leading her protectively from the stage. Later, in the mad scene, Ophelia appeared wearing her dead father's robe, and it was only after the first night that I remembered that Glenda Jackson, the Ophelia in 1965, had used the same business. This led me to reflect on the nature of parental oppression; Glenda's reasoning was based on the suffocation of her spirit by her father--that although he had frightened her, she could not escape him. My Polonius of 1980, it could be said, overpowered his daughter in the end by too much love.80

  Elsinore, the heart of Denmark, is sterile and corrupt. There is a complete lack of responsibility from the older generation in this play, in caring for the fragility of their young. Despite the larger themes which the play deals with, these productions demonstrated that it is the emotional dependence and twisted parental relationships which give the play its emotional pull. Everything conspires to kill the young before they have a chance to grow. None survive the cruel parental world in which they live. Although Hamlet returns from England a changed man, he has been condemned from the moment his father utters his dreadful command. "Remember me": the words in their simplicity echo in the mind with each fresh death of the unprepared or tormented--those that perish before their time.

  THE DIRECTOR'S CUT: MICHAEL BOYD, JOHN CAIRD, AND RON DANIELS

  Ron Daniels, who was born in Brazil, was a founding member of the Teatro Oficina in Sao Paulo. In 1977 he was appointed Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company's Stratford-upon-Avon studio theater, The Other Place, and in 1980 he became an Associate Director of the RSC. In 1991 he became Associate Artistic Director of the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts. More recently he has worked out of New York as a freelance director. He has directed most of Shakespeare's major tragedies and history plays. He directed two RSC productions of Hamlet: with Roger Rees as the Prince in 1984 and with Mark Rylance in 1989; the interview concentrates principally on the latter, which became known as the "pyjama Hamlet," with Rylance's performance singled out for particular praise by the critics.

  John Caird, born in 1948 in Canada to British parents, staged and directed more than twenty plays, both classic and contemporary, while he was an Associate Director at the Royal Shakespeare Company. He has subsequently directed many musicals, plays and operas, both in London (e.g. for the National Theatre and the Almeida) and internationally. Together with Trevor Nunn, he directed the celebrated production of Charles Dickens' Nicholas Nick-leby for the RSC in 1980, as well as the internationally successful Les Miserables in 1985. His production of Hamlet in 2000, for the National Theatre in London on the proscenium-arch Lyttelton stage, featured Simon Russell Beale, one of the outstanding Hamlets of the modern age.

  Michael Boyd, born in 1955, trained as a director at the Malaya Bronnaya Theatre in Moscow. He then worked at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry and the Sheffield Crucible before founding his own company, the Tron in Glasgow. He became an Associate Director of the RSC in 1996, coming to prominence with his millennial staging of the three parts of Henry VI and Richard III in the company's "This England" cycle of history plays, which won him an Olivier award for Best Director. In 2003, he took over as Artistic Director, achieving a notable success in 2006-07 with his ambitious Complete Works Festival, whereby all Shakespeare's plays were staged in Stratford-upon-Avon over the course of a year, some by the RSC and others by visiting companies. His 2004 production of Hamlet starred Toby Stephens, son of the noted actors Robert Stephens and Dame Maggie Smith, as Hamlet.

  Design choices seem crucial in establishing the atmosphere of the first act of Hamlet, with its movement between the guards outside on the platform, the formal exchanges at court, where

  7. The domestic setting of Ron Daniels' 1989 Hamlet: Elsinore as a mansion instead of a castle.

  Hamlet's black costume sets him so conspicuously apart, and the private conversations of Polonius and his children: what was the process whereby you arrived at a vision for the look and style of the opening scenes?

  Daniels: Our basic approach was that this was to be a "domestic" Hamlet. My earlier [1984] production, with Roger Rees in the title role and with designs by Maria Bjornson, had been set somewhere in the vast expanses between heaven and earth--a "cosmic" and imposing Hamlet set literally among the clouds, some of which were painted on a vast transparent curtain above the stage and others on the huge ramp which finally parted to reveal Ophelia's grave beneath it. Though retaining a few of these elements [the encounter between Hamlet and the Ghost took place literally in the sky, on a platform suspended high above the stage], the 1989 production, designed by Antony McDonald, was to be much more intimate, rooted in personal relationships, a tragedy set in the heart of a family as well as of a state: the action was to take place in a mansion, a home, really, perched on the edge of a cliff high above the turbulent sea.

  Caird: My designer, Tim Hatley, and I didn't think of the opening scenes as a separate issue. We were more concerned with creating a performance space for the whole play. In Hamlet one needs a graveyard, a battlement, a fencing ground, a cloister, and so on. I was also keen to give the whole play a suffocatingly religious setting.

  In my production the two main design images were graveyard and travel, based on the "undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns." There were stone flags on the floor, many of them engraved with the names of the dead, alcoves from which the ghostly characters of the play emerge as if to re-enact an old story, and a large pile of old and dusty luggage out of which all of the settings of the play could be made. The set was part cathedral, part castle, part graveyard, part attic.

  Boyd: We wanted a space which could create tension, allow eavesdropping, open out as Claudius' grip on Hamlet and Denmark weakens, and generally encourage swift and fluid movement of scenes and actors. A rational, cold space for Claudius' "modern," "reforming" court. A black circular palisade, with no visible exits or entrances, the only visible way into the world from outside was from the audience, and was used exclusively by the Ghost and Players.

  Hamlet's language is famously introspective and self-questioning, while King Claudius is very adept at controlling language for political ends: is this a contrast that you explored in your production?

  Daniels: It seems to me that in Shakespeare, content perfectly defines the form. The words Shakespeare chooses to give Polonius and how he
constructs his sentences are a precise indication of who Polonius is as a human being. Claudius' concerns are the affairs of estate--he is a man of action, a consummate political (and sexual) animal who, with the exception of his one moment of soul-searching (which he deals with with a good deal of brusque impatience), demonstrates little if any interest in the workings of his own heart. The language he uses perfectly reflects this "objective" posture, whereas Hamlet's "subjective" language reveals his continuing obsession with himself and with the struggles raging deep within him. What other character in Shakespeare agonizes about his own state of mind so relentlessly?

  Caird: I'm not sure I agree with that statement. Hamlet is incredibly clever with language, both in his political and introspective utterances. He manipulates people every bit as successfully as Claudius does. You could say that he handles Polonius much better than Claudius, who seems at a loss for words in the face of Polonius' loquacity.

  It's also not true to say that Claudius isn't introspective. One of the turning points of the plot is a profound introspection from Claudius. The scene in the chapel where he questions his actions and is in despair about the state of his soul is about as introspective as you can imagine anybody ever being. I think almost all characters in Shakespeare manipulate language, because they are Shakespeare's creatures; they do what Shakespeare himself does in creating them.

  I think the more interesting question is why does Claudius try to manipulate Hamlet when he could quite easily kill him? He has killed Hamlet's father, he has made himself king, he has married Hamlet's mother ... if he's such a brutal machiavellian politician, why doesn't he just kill Hamlet? The answer is that he kills his brother so that he can become him. It's an attempted act of transformation. That's why he tries genuinely, desperately, to persuade Hamlet that everything is the same as it used to be. His father may be dead but he has a new father now. It's Hamlet's incapacity to accept this new status quo that throws Claudius into confusion and ultimately forces him into the position of having Hamlet killed. But it takes more than half the play for Claudius to be forced to this point.