Hamlet: The State of Play (Arden Shakespeare The State of Play)

"This collection brings together emerging and established scholars to explore fresh approaches to Shakespeare's best-known play. Hamlet has often served as a testing ground for innovative readings and new approaches. Its unique textual history - surviving as it does in three substantially different early versions - means that it offers an especially complex and intriguing case-study for histories of early modern publishing and the relationship between page and stage. Similarly, its long history of stage and screen revival, creative appropriation and critical commentary offer rich materials for various forms of scholarship. The essays in Hamlet: The State of Play explore the play from a variety of different angles, drawing on contemporary approaches to gender, sexuality, race, the history of emotions, memory, visual and material cultures, performativity, theories and histories of place, and textual studies. They offer fresh approaches to literary and cultural analysis, offer accessible introductions to some current ways of exploring the relationship between the three early texts, and present analysis of some important recent responses to Hamlet on screen and stage, together with a set of approaches to the study of adaptation"-- Provided by publisher Cover page 1 Halftitle page 2 Series page 3 Title page 4 Copyright page 5 CONTENTS 6 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 8 LIST OF TABLES 11 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS 12 PREFACE 17 SERIES PREFACE 18 Introduction Sonia Massai and Lucy Munro 20 1 Hamlet ’s Touch of Picture Kaara L. Peterson 46 Staged portraits 48 Setting the scene 53 Hamlet ’s afterlife 60 2 Remembering Ophelia Theatrical Properties and the Performance of Memory in Shakespeare’s Hamlet Kathryn M. Moncrief 70 3 ‘Tragedians of the City’ Hamlet and Urban Exile Kelly Stage 100 Urbanitas 102 Local-London-exile 106 Hamlet the Dane 112 4 Code Black Whiteness and Unmanliness in Hamle tDavid Sterling Brown 120 5 Character Fictionsin Hamlet Jay Farness 148 6 Q1 Hamlet and the Sequence of Creation of the Texts Charles Adams Kelly and Dayna Leigh Plehn 170 Variant texts 170 Memorial reconstruction: The evidence against audience reporters 176 The evidence against a cut version of Q2 as a possible Q1 source text 180 The evidence against F1 or a post-F1 text as a possible source of Q1 181 The evidence for the Brudermord text (BB) as an early text 186 Other evidence more easily reconciled with Q1 as a pre-Q2 text 187 7 The Hamlet First Quarto Traces of Performance? William Dodd 194 A. Openers/closers, attention-getters 204 E. Speech linkers 204 G. Subjective responses 205 I. Vocatives 206 8 ‘You May Wear Your Rue With a Difference’ Gertrude, Ghazala and the Sati in Haider Pompa Banerjee 218 India’s Hamlet 220 Unsettling Hamlet in Haider 222 Gertrude and Ghazala 224 9 ‘Most Eloquent Music’ (and Multiple Texts) The 2017 Glyndebourne Opera of Hamlet Neil Taylor and Ann Thompson 242 The plot 244 The words 250 Scene 1: The Funeral 250 Scene 4: The Conspiracy Theory 253 Scene 5: The Players 255 Conclusion: Hamlet in pieces 258 INDEX 262 "Hamlet remains the most-studied of all Shakespeare's great tragedies. This collection of newly-commissioned essays gives readers an overview of past critical views of the play as well as new writing about the play from today's leading scholars. The range of perspectives offered makes the book an invaluable companion to anyone studying the play at an advanced level. The final chapter on learning and teaching resources is particularly useful as a guide for further study."--