2 Many Hamlets

Hamlet 2

In Hamlet 2, when Dana Marschz proudly announces that he's finished his magnum opus, Hamlet 2, his wife Brie rightly responds, "But doesn't everyone die at the end of the first one?" True enough, but throughout literary history other writers haven't been deterred by such simple problems when coming up with sequels and other types of derivative works. In fact, the problem for anyone trying to make a real Hamlet 2 is that scores of other writers, filmmakers, poets and other artists have already had their way with Shakespeare's play. And moreover, Shakespeare didn't even own the concept to begin with. The Hamlet we have all come to love is actually just a shadow of a previous one.

"Sir, A Whole History"

Shakespeare didn't think up this story of a depressed Dane and his two-timing mom. It is believed that the story dates back to 10th century when an Icelandic poet by the name of Snaebjörn refered to a story about just such a young man. Two centuries later, the Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus narrated the story of "Amleth" whose father is killed by his brother Feng, who turns around and marries his mother Gerutha. In the 16th century, this gruesome tale was translated into French and then rewritten (possibly by Thomas Kyd) into a play called Ur-Hamlet which appeared in London in the 1580s. Lucky for Shakespeare, there no known copies of this version.

"…Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage"

After its star-studded premiere at the Globe theater around 1601, Hamlet had a bit of a rocky ride. When the British Parliament closed all theaters in 1642, Shakespeare's work could no longer be performed. Slowly the stages re-opened and by the 18th century, Shakespeare's plays made a comeback, albeit in a kinder, gentler form. When the great theatrical innovator David Garrick, for example, mounted Hamlet in the late 18th Century, Queen Gertrude, rather than dying from poison, simply gets up and leaves the room. Women dying in public was just bad form.

David Garrick in Hamlet

In the 19th century, Hamlet had become more symbol than man. Indeed every cause and nation found something in him to adopt or reject. For the English Romantic poets, Hamlet was the very model of introspection. "The character of Hamlet, as I take it, represents the profound philosopher," wrote Shelley. For the French, Hamlet was the poster boy for existentialism. Victor Hugo exclaimed that "Hamlet expresses a permanent condition of man. He represents the discomfort of the soul in a life unsuited to it." The Germans flip-flopped on the whole Hamlet thing. In 1844, the radical poet Ferdinand Freiligrath, trumpeted, "Germany is Hamlet," thus aligning his country's spirit with the dreamy, poetic nature of Shakespeare's character. By 1877, however, Germany had become a powerful united force under Bismark, and this new strength was reflected in 1877 German edition of Hamlet, which boldly stated on its title page "Once [and] for all that Germany is Not Hamlet."

If European cultures saw in Hamlet reflections of themselves, others saw it as something to screw with. In India, where Shakespeare was held up as the pinnacle of their oppressor's civilization, local writers simply rewrote the play. Nagendra Nath Chaudhuri's famous 1897 interpretation Hariraj (Hamlet), for example, turned this classic tragedy into a musical melodrama by adding song, dance and lots of bright local costumes.

"…this show imports the argument of the play"

In the 20th century, everybody wanted their way with poor Hamlet. From Freudian readings to feminist revisions to neo-Marxist analyses, Hamlet was everyone's whipping boy. And a new staging, or restaging, of Hamlet became a rite of passage for many directors and producers. In 1911, the Moscow Art Theater, under the creative leadership of the Russian theatrical theorist Constantin Stanislavski and the British avant-garde designer Edward Gordon Craig, mounted a watershed production in which Hamlet became a purely symbolic and formalist play.