These ideas, which became a cornerstone of Freud's psychological theories, he

named the "Oedipus Complex", and, at one point, he considered calling it the

"Hamlet Complex".[107] Freud considered that Hamlet "is rooted in the same soil

as Oedipus Rex." But the difference in the "psychic life" of the two civilizations

that produced each play, and the progress made over time of "repression in the

emotional life of humanity" can be seen in the way the same material is handled by

the two playwrights: In Oedipus Rex incest and murder are brought into the light as

might occur in a dream, but in Hamlet these impulses "remain repressed" and we

learn of their existence though Hamlet's inhibitions to act out the revenge, while he

is shown to be capable of acting decisively and boldly in other contexts. Freud

asserts, "The play is based on Hamlet’s hesitation in accomplishing the task of

revenge assigned to him; the text does not give the cause or the motive of this."

The conflict is "deeply hidden".[106]

Hamlet is able to perform any kind of action except take revenge on the man who

murdered his father and has taken his father's place with his mother—Claudius has

led Hamlet to realize the repressed desires of his own childhood. The loathing

which was supposed to drive him to revenge is replaced by "self-reproach, by

conscientious scruples" which tell him "he himself is no better than the murderer

whom he is required to punish".[108] Freud suggests that Hamlet's sexual aversion

expressed in his "nunnery" conversation with Ophelia supports the idea that

Hamlet is "an hysterical subject".[108][i]

Freud suggests that the character Hamlet goes through an experience that has three

characteristics, which he numbered: 1) "the hero is not psychopathic, but becomes

so" during the course of the play. 2) "the repressed desire is one of those that are

similarly repressed in all of us." It is a repression that "belongs to an early stage of

our individual development". The audience identifies with the character of Hamlet,

because "we are victims of the same conflict." 3) It is the nature of theatre that "the

struggle of the repressed impulse to become conscious" occurs in both the hero

onstage and the spectator, when they are in the grip of their emotions, "in the

manner seen in psychoanalytic treatment".[109]

Freud points out that Hamlet is an exception in that psychopathic characters are

usually ineffective in stage plays; they "become as useless for the stage as they are

for life itself", because they do not inspire insight or empathy, unless the audience

is familiar with the character's inner conflict. Freud says, "It is thus the task of the

dramatist to transport us into the same illness."[110]

John Barrymore's long-running 1922 performance in New York, directed by

Thomas Hopkins, "broke new ground in its Freudian approach to character", in

keeping with the post-World War I rebellion against everything Victorian.[111] He

had a "blunter intention" than presenting the genteel, sweet prince of 19th-century

tradition, imbuing his character with virility and lust.[112]

Beginning in 1910, with the publication of "The Œdipus-Complex as an

Explanation of Hamlet's Mystery: A Study in Motive"[113] Ernest Jones—a

psychoanalyst and Freud's biographer—developed Freud's ideas into a series of

essays that culminated in his book Hamlet and Oedipus (1949). Influenced by

Jones's psychoanalytic approach, several productions have portrayed the "closet

scene", where Hamlet confronts his mother in her private quarters, in a sexual

light.[m] In this reading, Hamlet is disgusted by his mother's "incestuous"

relationship with Claudius while simultaneously fearful of killing him, as this

would clear Hamlet's path to his mother's bed. Ophelia's madness after her father's

death may also be read through the Freudian lens: as a reaction to the death of her

hoped-for lover, her father. Ophelia is overwhelmed by having her unfulfilled love

for him so abruptly terminated and drifts into the oblivion of insanity. [115][116] In

1937, Tyrone Guthrie directed Laurence Olivier in a Jones-inspired Hamlet at The

Old Vic.[117] Olivier later used some of these same ideas in his 1948 film version of

the play.

In the Bloom's Shakespeare Through the Ages volume on Hamlet, editors Bloom

and Foster express a conviction that the intentions of Shakespeare in portraying the

character of Hamlet in the play exceeded the capacity of the Freudian Oedipus
complex to completely encompass the extent of characteristics depicted in Hamlet

throughout the tragedy: "For once, Freud regressed in attempting to fasten the

Oedipus Complex upon Hamlet: it will not stick, and merely showed that Freud did

better than T.S. Eliot, who preferred Coriolanus to Hamlet, or so he said. Who can

believe Eliot, when he exposes his own Hamlet Complex by declaring the play to

be an aesthetic failure?"[118] The book also notes James Joyce's interpretation,

stating that he "did far better in the Library Scene of Ulysses, where Stephen

marvellously credits Shakespeare, in this play, with universal fatherhood while

accurately implying that Hamlet is fatherless, thus opening a pragmatic gap

between Shakespeare and Hamlet."[118]

Joshua Rothman has written in The New Yorker that "we tell the story wrong when

we say that Freud used the idea of the Oedipus complex to understand Hamlet".

Rothman suggests that "it was the other way around: Hamlet helped Freud

understand, and perhaps even invent, psychoanalysis". He concludes, "The

Oedipus complex is a misnomer. It should be called the 'Hamlet complex'."[119]

Jacques Lacan

In the 1950s, Lacan's structuralist theories about Hamlet were first presented in a

series of seminars given in Paris and later published in "Desire and the

Interpretation of Desire in Hamlet". Lacan postulated that the human psyche is

determined by structures of language and that the linguistic structures

of Hamlet shed light on human desire.[120] His point of departure is Freud's Oedipal

theories, and the central theme of mourning that runs through Hamlet.[120] In

Lacan's analysis, Hamlet unconsciously assumes the role of phallus—the cause of

his inaction—and is increasingly distanced from reality "by

mourning, fantasy, narcissism and psychosis", which create holes (or lack) in the

real, imaginary, and symbolic aspects of his psyche.[120] Lacan's theories influenced

literary criticism of Hamlet because of his alternative vision of the play and his use

of semantics to explore the play's psychological landscape.[120]

Feminist

Ophelia is distracted by grief.[121] Feminist critics have explored her descent into

madness (artist: Henrietta Rae 1890).

In the 20th century, feminist critics opened up new approaches to Gertrude and

Ophelia. New Historicist and cultural materialist critics examined the play in its

historical context, attempting to piece together its original cultural

environment.[122] They focused on the gender system of early modern England,

pointing to the common trinity of maid, wife, or widow, with whores outside of that
stereotype. In this analysis, the essence of Hamlet is the central character's changed

perception of his mother as a whore because of her failure to remain faithful to Old

Hamlet. In consequence, Hamlet loses his faith in all women, treating Ophelia as if

she too were a whore and dishonest with Hamlet. Ophelia, by some critics, can be

seen as honest and fair; however, it is virtually impossible to link these two traits,

since 'fairness' is an outward trait, while 'honesty' is an inward trait.[123]

Hamlet tries to show his mother Gertrude his father's ghost (artist: Nicolai A.

Abildgaard, c. 1778).

Carolyn Heilbrun's 1957 essay "The Character of Hamlet's Mother" defends

Gertrude, arguing that the text never hints that Gertrude knew of Claudius

poisoning King Hamlet. This analysis has been praised by many feminist critics,

combating what is, by Heilbrun's argument, centuries' worth of misinterpretation.

By this account, Gertrude's worst crime is of pragmatically marrying her brother-

in-law in order to avoid a power vacuum. This is borne out by the fact that King

Hamlet's ghost tells Hamlet to leave Gertrude out of Hamlet's revenge, to leave her
to heaven, an arbitrary mercy to grant to a conspirator to murder. [124][125][126] This

view has not been without objection from some critics.[n]

Ophelia has also been defended by feminist critics, most notably Elaine

Showalter.[128] Ophelia is surrounded by powerful men: her father, brother, and

Hamlet. All three disappear: Laertes leaves, Hamlet abandons her, and Polonius

dies. Conventional theories had argued that without these three powerful men

making decisions for her, Ophelia is driven into madness.[129] Feminist theorists

argue that she goes mad with guilt because, when Hamlet kills her father, he has

fulfilled her sexual desire to have Hamlet kill her father so they can be together.

Showalter points out that Ophelia has become the symbol of the distraught and

hysterical woman in modern culture.[130]

Influence

See also: Literary influence of Hamlet

Hamlet is one of the most quoted works in the English language, and is often

included on lists of the world's greatest literature.[o] As such, it reverberates

through the writing of later centuries. Academic Laurie Osborne identifies the

direct influence of Hamlet in numerous modern narratives, and divides them into

four main categories: fictional accounts of the play's composition, simplifications

of the story for young readers, stories expanding the role of one or more characters,

and narratives featuring performances of the play.[131]

Actors before Hamlet by Władysław Czachórski (1875), National

Museum in Warsaw.

English poet John Milton was an early admirer of Shakespeare and took evident

inspiration from his work. As John Kerrigan discusses, Milton originally

considered writing his epic poem Paradise Lost (1667) as a tragedy.[132] While

Milton did not ultimately go that route, the poem still shows distinct echoes of

Shakespearean revenge tragedy, and of Hamlet in particular. As scholar

Christopher N. Warren argues, Paradise Lost's Satan "undergoes a transformation

in the poem from a Hamlet-like avenger into a Claudius-like usurper," a plot

device that supports Milton's larger Republican internationalist project.[133] The

poem also reworks theatrical language from Hamlet, especially around the idea of

"putting on" certain dispositions, as when Hamlet puts on "an antic disposition,"

similarly to the Son in Paradise Lost who "can put on / [God's] terrors."[134]
Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, published about 1749, describes a visit to Hamlet by

Tom Jones and Mr Partridge, with similarities to the "play within a play". [135] In

contrast, Goethe's Bildungsroman Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, written

between 1776 and 1796, not only has a production of Hamlet at its core but also

creates parallels between the ghost and Wilhelm Meister's dead father.[135] In the

early 1850s, in Pierre, Herman Melville focuses on a Hamlet-like character's long

development as a writer.[135] Ten years later, Dickens's Great Expectations contains

many Hamlet-like plot elements: it is driven by revenge-motivated actions,

contains ghost-like characters (Abel Magwitch and Miss Havisham), and focuses

on the hero's guilt.[135] Academic Alexander Welsh notes that Great Expectations is

an "autobiographical novel" and "anticipates psychoanalytic readings

of Hamlet itself".[136] About the same time, George Eliot's The Mill on the

Floss was published, introducing Maggie Tulliver "who is explicitly compared

with Hamlet"[137] though "with a reputation for sanity".[138]

L. Frank Baum's first published short story was "They Played a New Hamlet"

(1895). When Baum had been touring New York State in the title role, the actor

playing the ghost fell through the floorboards, and the rural audience thought it

was part of the show and demanded that the actor repeat the fall, because they

thought it was funny. Baum would later recount the actual story in an article, but

the short story is told from the point of view of the actor playing the ghost.
In the 1920s, James Joyce managed "a more upbeat version" of Hamlet—stripped

of obsession and revenge—in Ulysses, though its main parallels are

with Homer's Odyssey.[135] In the 1990s, two novelists were explicitly influenced

by Hamlet. In Angela Carter's Wise Children, To be or not to be[100] is reworked as

a song and dance routine, and Iris Murdoch's The Black Prince has Oedipal themes

and murder intertwined with a love affair between a Hamlet-obsessed writer,

Bradley Pearson, and the daughter of his rival.[137] In the late 20th century, David

Foster Wallace's novel Infinite Jest draws heavily from Hamlet and takes its title

from the play's text; Wallace incorporates references to the gravedigger scene, the

marriage of the main character's mother to his uncle, and the re-appearance of the

main character's father as a ghost.

There is the story of the woman who read Hamlet for the first time and said, "I

don't see why people admire that play so. It is nothing but a bunch of quotations

strung together."

— Isaac Asimov, Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare, p. vii, Avenal Books, 1970

Performance history

Main articles: Hamlet in performance and Shakespeare in performance

The day we see Hamlet die in the theatre, something of him dies for us. He is

dethroned by the spectre of an actor, and we shall never be able to keep the usurper

out of our dreams.

Maurice Maeterlinck in La Jeune Belgique (1890).[139]

Shakespeare's day to the Interregnum

Shakespeare almost certainly wrote the role of Hamlet for Richard Burbage. He

was the chief tragedian of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, with a capacious memory

for lines and a wide emotional range.[140][141][p] Judging by the number of

reprints, Hamlet appears to have been Shakespeare's fourth most popular play

during his lifetime—only Henry IV Part 1, Richard III and Pericles eclipsed

it.[2] Shakespeare provides no clear indication of when his play is set; however, as

Elizabethan actors performed at the Globe in contemporary dress on minimal sets,

this would not have affected the staging.[145]

Firm evidence for specific early performances of the play is scant. What is known

is that the crew of the ship Red Dragon, anchored off Sierra Leone,

performed Hamlet in September 1607;[146][147][148] that the play toured in Germany

within five years of Shakespeare's death;[148] and that it was performed

before James I in 1619 and Charles I in 1637.[149] Oxford editor George Hibbard

argues that, since the contemporary literature contains many allusions and
references to Hamlet (only Falstaff is mentioned more, from Shakespeare), the play

was surely performed with a frequency that the historical record misses.[150]

All theatres were closed down by the Puritan government during

the Interregnum.[151] Even during this time, however, playlets known as drolls were

often performed illegally, including one called The Grave-Makers based on Act 5,

Scene 1 of Hamlet.[152]

Restoration and 18th century

Title page and frontispiece for Hamlet, Prince of Denmark: A Tragedy. As it is now

acted at the Theatres-Royal in Drury-Lane and Covent-Garden. London, 1776

The play was revived early in the Restoration. When the existing stock of pre-civil

war plays was divided between the two newly created patent theatre

companies, Hamlet was the only Shakespearean favourite that Sir William

Davenant's Duke's Company secured.[153] It became the first of Shakespeare's plays

to be presented with movable flats painted with generic scenery behind

the proscenium arch of Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre.[q] This new stage convention

highlighted the frequency with which Shakespeare shifts dramatic location,

encouraging the recurrent criticism of his failure to maintain unity of place.[155] In

the title role, Davenant cast Thomas Betterton, who continued to play the Dane

until he was 74.[156] David Garrick at Drury Lane produced a version that adapted

Shakespeare heavily; he declared: "I had sworn I would not leave the stage till I

had rescued that noble play from all the rubbish of the fifth act. I have brought it

forth without the grave-digger's trick, Osrick, & the fencing match".[r] The first

actor known to have played Hamlet in North America is Lewis Hallam Jr., in

the American Company's production in Philadelphia in 1759.[158]

David Garrick expresses Hamlet's shock at his first sighting of the ghost (artist:

unknown).

John Philip Kemble made his Drury Lane debut as Hamlet in 1783.[159] His

performance was said to be 20 minutes longer than anyone else's, and his lengthy
pauses provoked the suggestion by Richard Brinsley Sheridan that "music should

be played between the words".[160] Sarah Siddons was the first actress known to

play Hamlet; many women have since played him as a breeches role, to great

acclaim.[161] In 1748, Alexander Sumarokov wrote a Russian adaptation that

focused on Prince Hamlet as the embodiment of an opposition to Claudius's

tyranny—a treatment that would recur in Eastern European versions into the 20th

century.[162] In the years following America's independence, Thomas Apthorpe

Cooper, the young nation's leading tragedian, performed Hamlet among other plays

at the Chestnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia, and at the Park Theatre in New

York. Although chided for "acknowledging acquaintances in the audience" and

"inadequate memorisation of his lines", he became a national celebrity.[163]

19th century
A poster, c. 1884, for an American production of Hamlet (starring Thomas W.

Keene), showing several of the key scenes

From around 1810 to 1840, the best-known Shakespearean performances in the

United States were tours by leading London actors—including George Frederick

Cooke, Junius Brutus Booth, Edmund Kean, William Charles Macready,

and Charles Kemble. Of these, Booth remained to make his career in the States,

fathering the nation's most notorious actor, John Wilkes Booth (who later

assassinated Abraham Lincoln), and its most famous Hamlet, Edwin

Booth.[164] Edwin Booth's Hamlet at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in 1875 was

described as "... the dark, sad, dreamy, mysterious hero of a poem. [... acted] in an

ideal manner, as far removed as possible from the plane of actual

life".[165][166] Booth played Hamlet for 100 nights in the 1864/5 season at The

Winter Garden Theatre, inaugurating the era of long-run Shakespeare in

America.[166]

In the United Kingdom, the actor-managers of the Victorian era (including

Kean, Samuel Phelps, Macready, and Henry Irving) staged Shakespeare in a grand

manner, with elaborate scenery and costumes.[167] The tendency of actor-managers

to emphasise the importance of their own central character did not always meet

with the critics' approval. George Bernard Shaw's praise for Johnston Forbes-

Robertson's performance contains a sideswipe at Irving: "The story of the play was
perfectly intelligible, and quite took the attention of the audience off the principal

actor at moments. What is the Lyceum coming to?"[s]

In London, Edmund Kean was the first Hamlet to abandon the regal finery usually

associated with the role in favour of a plain costume, and he is said to have

surprised his audience by playing Hamlet as serious and introspective.[169] In stark

contrast to earlier opulence, William Poel's 1881 production of the Q1 text was an

early attempt at reconstructing the Elizabethan theatre's austerity; his only

backdrop was a set of red curtains.[50][170] Sarah Bernhardt played the prince in her

popular 1899 London production. In contrast to the "effeminate" view of the

central character that usually accompanied a female casting, she described her

character as "manly and resolute, but nonetheless thoughtful ... [he] thinks before

he acts, a trait indicative of great strength and great spiritual power".[t]

In France, Charles Kemble initiated an enthusiasm for Shakespeare; and leading

members of the Romantic movement such as Victor Hugo and Alexandre

Dumas saw his 1827 Paris performance of Hamlet, particularly admiring the

madness of Harriet Smithson's Ophelia.[172] In Germany, Hamlet had become so

assimilated by the mid-19th century that Ferdinand Freiligrath declared that

"Germany is Hamlet".[173] From the 1850s, the Parsi theatre tradition in India

transformed Hamlet into folk performances, with dozens of songs added.[174]

20th century
Apart from some western troupes' 19th-century visits, the first professional

performance of Hamlet in Japan was Otojirō Kawakami's 1903 Shimpa ("new

school theatre") adaptation.[175] Tsubouchi Shōyō translated Hamlet and produced a

performance in 1911 that blended Shingeki ("new drama")

and Kabuki styles.[175] This hybrid-genre reached its peak in Tsuneari Fukuda's

1955 Hamlet.[175] In 1998, Yukio Ninagawa produced an acclaimed version

of Hamlet in the style of Nō theatre, which he took to London.[176]

Konstantin Stanislavski and Edward Gordon Craig—two of the 20th century's most

influential theatre practitioners—collaborated on the Moscow Art Theatre's

seminal production of 1911–12.[u] While Craig favoured stylised abstraction,

Stanislavski, armed with his 'system,' explored psychological motivation.[178] Craig

conceived of the play as a symbolist monodrama, offering a dream-like vision as

seen through Hamlet's eyes alone.[v] This was most evident in the staging of the

first court scene.[w][x] The most famous aspect of the production is Craig's use of

large, abstract screens that altered the size and shape of the acting area for each

scene, representing the character's state of mind spatially or visualising

a dramaturgical progression.[184] The production attracted enthusiastic and

unprecedented worldwide attention for the theatre and placed it "on the cultural

map for Western Europe".[185][186]

Hamlet is often played with contemporary political overtones. Leopold Jessner's

1926 production at the Berlin Staatstheater portrayed Claudius's court as a parody

of the corrupt and fawning court of Kaiser Wilhelm.[187] In Poland, the number of

productions of Hamlet has tended to increase at times of political unrest, since its

political themes (suspected crimes, coups, surveillance) can be used to comment on

a contemporary situation.[188] Similarly, Czech directors have used the play at times

of occupation: a 1941 Vinohrady Theatre production "emphasised, with due

caution, the helpless situation of an intellectual attempting to endure in a ruthless

environment".[189][190] In China, performances of Hamlet often have political

significance: Gu Wuwei's 1916 The Usurper of State Power, an amalgam

of Hamlet and Macbeth, was an attack on Yuan Shikai's attempt to overthrow the

republic.[191] In 1942, Jiao Juyin directed the play in a Confucian temple in Sichuan

Province, to which the government had retreated from the advancing

Japanese.[192] In the immediate aftermath of the collapse of

the protests at Tiananmen Square, Lin Zhaohua staged a 1990 Hamlet in which the

prince was an ordinary individual tortured by a loss of meaning. In this production,

the actors playing Hamlet, Claudius and Polonius exchanged roles at crucial

moments in the performance, including the moment of Claudius's death, at which

point the actor mainly associated with Hamlet fell to the ground.[193]
Mignon Nevada as Ophelia, 1910

Notable stagings in London and New York include Barrymore's 1925 production at

the Haymarket; it influenced subsequent performances by John

Gielgud and Laurence Olivier.[194][195] Gielgud played the central role many times:

his 1936 New York production ran for 132 performances, leading to the accolade

that he was "the finest interpreter of the role since Barrymore".[196] Although

"posterity has treated Maurice Evans less kindly", throughout the 1930s and 1940s

he was regarded by many as the leading interpreter of Shakespeare in the United

States and in the 1938/39 season he presented Broadway's first uncut Hamlet,

running four and a half hours.[197] Evans later performed a highly truncated version

of the play that he played for South Pacific war zones during World War II which

made the prince a more decisive character. The staging, known as the "G.I.

Hamlet", was produced on Broadway for 131 performances in

1945/46.[198] Olivier's 1937 performance at The Old Vic was popular with

audiences but not with critics, with James Agate writing in a famous review in The

Sunday Times, "Mr. Olivier does not speak poetry badly. He does not speak it at

all."[199] In 1937 Tyrone Guthrie directed the play at Elsinore, Denmark with

Laurence Olivier as Hamlet and Vivien Leigh as Ophelia.

In 1963, Olivier directed Peter O'Toole as Hamlet in the inaugural performance of

the newly formed National Theatre; critics found resonance between O'Toole's

Hamlet and John Osborne's hero, Jimmy Porter, from Look Back in Anger.[200][201]

Richard Burton received his third Tony Award nomination when he played his

second Hamlet, his first under John Gielgud's direction, in 1964 in a production

that holds the record for the longest run of the play in Broadway history (137

performances). The performance was set on a bare stage, conceived to appear like

a dress rehearsal, with Burton in a black v-neck sweater, and Gielgud himself tape-

recorded the voice for the ghost (which appeared as a looming shadow). It was

immortalised both on record and on a film that played in US theatres for a week in

1964 as well as being the subject of books written by cast members William

Redfield and Richard L. Sterne.

Other New York portrayals of Hamlet of note include that of Ralph Fiennes's in

1995 (for which he won the Tony Award for Best Actor)—which ran, from first

preview to closing night, a total of one hundred performances. About the

Fiennes Hamlet Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times that it was "... not

one for literary sleuths and Shakespeare scholars. It respects the play, but it doesn't

provide any new material for arcane debates on what it all means. Instead it's an

intelligent, beautifully read ..."[202] Stacy Keach played the role with an all-star cast

at Joseph Papp's Delacorte Theatre in the early 1970s, with Colleen Dewhurst's

Gertrude, James Earl Jones's King, Barnard Hughes's Polonius, Sam Waterston's

Laertes and Raul Julia's Osric. Sam Waterston later played the role himself at

the Delacorte for the New York Shakespeare Festival, and the show transferred to

the Vivian Beaumont Theatre in 1975 (Stephen Lang played Bernardo and other

roles). Stephen Lang's Hamlet for the Roundabout Theatre Company in 1992

received mixed reviews[203][204] and ran for sixty-one performances. David

Warner played the role with the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in 1965. William

Hurt (at Circle Rep Off-Broadway, memorably performing "To Be Or Not to Be"

while lying on the floor), Jon Voight at Rutgers, and Christopher Walken (fiercely)

at Stratford CT have all played the role, as has Diane Venora at the Public

Theatre. Off-Broadway, the Riverside Shakespeare Company mounted an

uncut first folio Hamlet in 1978 at Columbia University, with a playing time of

under three hours.[205] In fact, Hamlet is the most produced Shakespeare play in

New York theatre history, with sixty-four recorded productions on Broadway, and

an untold number Off-Broadway.[y]

Ian Charleson performed Hamlet from 9 October to 13 November 1989, in Richard

Eyre's production at the Olivier Theatre, replacing Daniel Day-Lewis, who had

abandoned the production. Seriously ill from AIDS at the time, Charleson died

eight weeks after his last performance. Fellow actor and friend, Sir Ian McKellen,

said that Charleson played Hamlet so well it was as if he had rehearsed the role all

his life; McKellen called it "the perfect Hamlet".[206][207] The performance garnered

other major accolades as well, some critics echoing McKellen in calling it the

definitive Hamlet performance.[208]

21st century

Benedict Cumberbatch began playing Hamlet at the Barbican Theatre in August

2015.

Hamlet continues to be staged regularly, with such actors performing the lead role

as Simon Russell Beale, Ben Whishaw, David Tennant, Tom Hiddleston, Angela

Winkler, Samuel West, Christopher Eccleston, Maxine Peake, Rory

Kinnear, Oscar Isaac, Michael Sheen, Christian Camargo, Andrew Scott, Paapa

Essiedu and Michael Urie.[209][210][211][212]

In May 2009, Hamlet opened with Jude Law in the title role at the Donmar

Warehouse West End season at Wyndham's Theatre. The production officially

opened on 3 June and ran through 22 August 2009.[213][214] A further production of

the play ran at Elsinore Castle in Denmark from 25–30 August 2009.[215] The Jude

Law Hamlet then moved to Broadway, and ran for 12 weeks at the Broadhurst

Theatre in New York.[216][217]

In October 2011, a production starring Michael Sheen opened at the Young Vic, in

which the play was set inside a psychiatric hospital.[218]

In 2013, American actor Paul Giamatti won mixed reviews for his performance on

stage in the title role of Hamlet, performed in modern dress, at the Yale Repertory

Theater, at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut[219][220]

The Globe Theatre of London initiated a project in 2014 to perform Hamlet in

every country in the world in the space of two years. Titled Globe to Globe

Hamlet, it began its tour on 23 April 2014, the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare's

birth. As of 23 February 2016, the project had performed in 170 countries.[221]

Benedict Cumberbatch played the role for a 12-week run in a production at

the Barbican Theatre, opening on 25 August 2015. The play was produced
by Sonia Friedman, and directed by Lyndsey Turner, with set design by Es Devlin.

It was called the "most in-demand theatre production of all time" and sold out in

seven hours after tickets went on sale 11 August 2014, more than a year before the

play opened.[222][223]

Tom Hiddleston played the role for a three-week run at Vanbrugh Theatre that

opened on 1 September 2017 and was directed by Kenneth Branagh.[224][225]

In 2018, The Globe Theatre's newly instated artistic director Michelle Terry played

the role in a production notable for its gender-blind casting.[226]

Film and TV performances

Main article: Hamlet on screen

See also: Cultural references to Hamlet

The earliest screen success for Hamlet was Sarah Bernhardt's five-minute film of

the fencing scene,[z] which was produced in 1900. The film was an early attempt at

combining sound and film, music and words were recorded on phonograph

records, to be played along with the film.[228] Silent versions were released in 1907,

1908, 1910, 1913, 1917, and 1920.[228] In the 1921 film Hamlet, Danish

actress Asta Nielsen played the role of Hamlet as a woman who spends her life

disguised as a man.[228]
Laurence Olivier's 1948 moody black-and-white Hamlet won Best Picture and Best

Actor Academy Awards, and is still, as of 2017, the only Shakespeare film to have

done so. His interpretation stressed the Oedipal overtones of the play, and cast 28-

year-old Eileen Herlie as Hamlet's mother, opposite himself, at 41, as Hamlet.[229]

In 1953, actor Jack Manning performed the play in 15-minute segments over two

weeks in the short-lived late night DuMont series Monodrama Theater. New York

Times TV critic Jack Gould praised Manning's performance as Hamlet.[230]

The 1964 Soviet film Hamlet (Russian: Гамлет) is based on a translation by Boris

Pasternak and directed by Grigori Kozintsev, with a score by Dmitri

Shostakovich.[231] Innokenty Smoktunovsky was cast in the role of Hamlet.

John Gielgud directed Richard Burton in a Broadway production at the Lunt-

Fontanne Theatre in 1964–65, the longest-running Hamlet in the U.S. to date. A

live film of the production was produced using "Electronovision", a method of

recording a live performance with multiple video cameras and converting the

image to film.[232] Eileen Herlie repeated her role from Olivier's film version as the

Queen, and the voice of Gielgud was heard as the ghost. The Gielgud/Burton

production was also recorded complete and released on LP by Columbia

Masterworks.
Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet, with Yorick's skull (photographer: James

Lafayette, c. 1885–1900).

The first Hamlet in color was a 1969 film directed by Tony Richardson with Nicol

Williamson as Hamlet and Marianne Faithfull as Ophelia.

In 1990 Franco Zeffirelli, whose Shakespeare films have been described as

"sensual rather than cerebral",[233] cast Mel Gibson—then famous for the Mad

Max and Lethal Weapon movies—in the title role of his 1990 version; Glenn

Close—then famous as the psychotic "other woman" in Fatal Attraction—played

Gertrude,[234] and Paul Scofield played Hamlet's father.

Kenneth Branagh adapted, directed, and starred in a 1996 film version

of Hamlet that contained material from the First Folio and the Second Quarto.

Branagh's Hamlet runs for just over four hours.[235] Branagh set the film with late

19th-century costuming and furnishings, a production in many ways reminiscent of

a Russian novel of the time;[236] and Blenheim Palace, built in the early 18th

century, became Elsinore Castle in the external scenes. The film is structured as

an epic and makes frequent use of flashbacks to highlight elements not made

explicit in the play: Hamlet's sexual relationship with Kate Winslet's Ophelia, for

example, or his childhood affection for Yorick (played by Ken Dodd).[237]

In 2000, Michael Almereyda's Hamlet set the story in contemporary Manhattan,

with Ethan Hawke playing Hamlet as a film student. Claudius (played by Kyle

MacLachlan) became the CEO of "Denmark Corporation", having taken over the

company by killing his brother.[238]

There have also been several films that transposed the general storyline

of Hamlet or elements thereof to other settings. For example, the

2014 Bollywood film Haider is an adaptation set in Kashmir.[239] There have also

been many films which included performances of scenes from Hamlet as a play-

within-a-film.

Stage pastiches

There have been various "derivative works" of Hamlet which recast the story from

the point of view of other characters, or transpose the story into a new setting or act

as sequels or prequels to Hamlet. This section is limited to those written for the

stage.
The best-known is Tom Stoppard's 1966 play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are

Dead, which retells many of the events of the story from the point of view of the

characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and gives them a backstory of their own.

Several times since 1995, the American Shakespeare Center has mounted

repertories that included both Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, with the

same actors performing the same roles in each; in their 2001 and 2009 seasons the

two plays were "directed, designed, and rehearsed together to make the most out of

the shared scenes and situations".[240]

W. S. Gilbert wrote a short comic play titled Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, in

which Hamlet's play is presented as a tragedy written by Claudius in his youth of

which he is greatly embarrassed. Through the chaos triggered by Hamlet's staging

of it, Guildenstern helps Rosencrantz vie with Hamlet to make Ophelia his

bride.[241]

Lee Blessing's Fortinbras is a comical sequel to Hamlet in which all the deceased

characters come back as ghosts. The New York Times reviewed the play, saying it

is "scarcely more than an extended comedy sketch, lacking the portent and

linguistic complexity of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are

Dead. Fortinbras operates on a far less ambitious plane, but it is a ripping yarn and

offers Keith Reddin a role in which he can commit comic mayhem".[203]

Caridad Svich's 12 Ophelias (a play with broken songs) includes elements of the

story of Hamlet but focuses on Ophelia. In Svich's play, Ophelia is resurrected and

rises from a pool of water, after her death in Hamlet. The play is a series of scenes

and songs, and was first staged at a public swimming pool in Brooklyn.[242]

David Davalos' Wittenberg is a "tragical-comical-historical" prequel to Hamlet that

depicts the Danish prince as a student at Wittenberg University (now known as

the University of Halle-Wittenberg), where he is torn between the conflicting

teachings of his mentors John Faustus and Martin Luther. The New York

Times reviewed the play, saying, "Mr. Davalos has molded a daft campus comedy

out of this unlikely convergence,"[243] and Nytheatre.com's review said the

playwright "has imagined a fascinating alternate reality, and quite possibly, given

the fictional Hamlet a back story that will inform the role for the future."[244]

Mad Boy Chronicle by Canadian playwright Michael O'Brien is a dark comedy

loosely based on Hamlet, set in Viking Denmark in 999 AD.[245]