Hamlet's Heirs

Hamlet's Heirs
Author: Linda Charnes
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2006-09-27
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 113450599X

Speaking to readers in a voice that is adventurous rather than authoritative, innovative rather than institutional and speculative rather than orthodox, Linda Charnes’ provocative study of Shakespeare’s legacy in contemporary American and British politics explores the following themes: namesake princes and presidents stolen thrones and elections plutocrats and insurgents campaign trails and war-mongering waning monarchy and imperilled democracy revengers, early modern and postmodern. Linked by focused readings of Hamlet and the Henriad, the essays follow Shakespeare’s two most famous royal sons, the Princes Hamlet and Hal, as they haunt contemporary political psychology in the early years of a new millennium, and especially in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. Between devolution in Britain and the new ‘doctrine’ of pre-emptive strike in the United States, our contemporary Hamlets and Hals epitomize a debate – as fraught now as in Shakespeare’ day – about the cost of spin-doctoring legacies. In exploring how current political culture inherits Shakespeare, Hamlet’s Heirs challenges scholarly assumptions about historical periodicity, modernity and the uses of Shakespeare in present day contexts.

Hamlet

Hamlet
Author: Harold Bloom
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
Total Pages: 462
Release: 2008
Genre: Criticism
ISBN: 1438112505

In Shakespeare's powerful drama of destiny and revenge, "Hamlet", the troubled prince of Denmark, must overcome his own self-doubt and avenge the murder of his father. Contains a selection of the finest criticism through the centuries on "Hamlet", as well as a biography on Shakespeare.

Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness

Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness
Author: Rhodri Lewis
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 390
Release: 2020-05-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0691210926

An acclaimed new interpretation of Shakespeare's Hamlet Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness is a radical new interpretation of the most famous play in the English language. By exploring Shakespeare's engagements with the humanist traditions of early modern England and Europe, Rhodri Lewis reveals a Hamlet unseen for centuries: an innovative, coherent, and exhilaratingly bleak tragedy in which the governing ideologies of Shakespeare's age are scrupulously upended. Recovering a work of far greater magnitude than the tragedy of a young man who cannot make up his mind, Lewis shows that in Hamlet, as in King Lear, Shakespeare confronts his audiences with a universe that received ideas are powerless to illuminate—and where everyone must find their own way through the dark.

Hamlet's Arab Journey

Hamlet's Arab Journey
Author: Margaret Litvin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2011-10-03
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1400840104

For the past five decades, Arab intellectuals have seen themselves in Shakespeare's Hamlet: their times "out of joint," their political hopes frustrated by a corrupt older generation. Hamlet's Arab Journey traces the uses of Hamlet in Arabic theatre and political rhetoric, and asks how Shakespeare's play developed into a musical with a happy ending in 1901 and grew to become the most obsessively quoted literary work in Arab politics today. Explaining the Arab Hamlet tradition, Margaret Litvin also illuminates the "to be or not to be" politics that have turned Shakespeare's tragedy into the essential Arab political text, cited by Arab liberals, nationalists, and Islamists alike. On the Arab stage, Hamlet has been an operetta hero, a firebrand revolutionary, and a muzzled dissident. Analyzing productions from Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Kuwait, Litvin follows the distinct phases of Hamlet's naturalization as an Arab. Her fine-grained theatre history uses personal interviews as well as scripts and videos, reviews, and detailed comparisons with French and Russian Hamlets. The result shows Arab theatre in a new light. Litvin identifies the French source of the earliest Arabic Hamlet, shows the outsize influence of Soviet and East European Shakespeare, and explores the deep cultural link between Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser and the ghost of Hamlet's father. Documenting how global sources and models helped nurture a distinct Arab Hamlet tradition, Hamlet's Arab Journey represents a new approach to the study of international Shakespeare appropriation. Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.

Hamlet’s Hereditary Queen

Hamlet’s Hereditary Queen
Author: Kerrie Roberts
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2022-12-30
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1000821358

This book explores a fresh and insightful interpretation of Hamlet’s Gertrude as a prominent and powerful figure in the play. It shows how traditional readings of this character, both performance-based and scholarly, have been guided and constrained by misogynistic perspectives on female power. Bringing together the author’s wealth of insight from a theatre practitioner’s perspective and combining it with a scholarly perspective, the book argues that Gertrude need not be limited to sex and motherhood. She could instead be played as Denmark’s blood royal Queen, her role in the play then being about female political power. Gertrude’s royal status could play out on stage through a variety of possible performance choices for stage design, stage business, acting processes, and the actor’s presence – both speaking and silent. Hamlet's Hereditary Queen takes into consideration Shakespeare’s source myths, historical studies of the position of queens and the issues concerning them in early modern England, Hamlet’s performance history, and the text itself. It questions traditional readings of Hamlet, and offers detailed analyses of relevant scenes to demonstrate how Gertrude’s Hamlet might play out on stage in the twenty-first century. This is an engaging and insightful interpretation for students and scholars of theatre and performance studies and Shakespeare studies, as well as theatre practitioners.

Hamlet

Hamlet
Author: William Shakespeare
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2014-10-15
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 147678843X

Hamlet is Shakespeare’s most popular, and most puzzling, play. It follows the form of a “revenge tragedy,” in which the hero, Hamlet, seeks vengeance against his father’s murderer, his uncle Claudius, now the king of Denmark. Much of its fascination, however, lies in its uncertainties. Among them: What is the Ghost—Hamlet’s father demanding justice, a tempting demon, an angelic messenger? Does Hamlet go mad, or merely pretend to? Once he is sure that Claudius is a murderer, why does he not act? Was his mother, Gertrude, unfaithful to her husband or complicit in his murder? The authoritative edition of Hamlet from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers, includes: -The exact text of the printed book for easy cross-reference -Hundreds of hypertext links for instant navigation -Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play -Newly revised explanatory notes conveniently linked to the text of the play -Scene-by-scene plot summaries -A key to the play’s famous lines and phrases -An introduction to reading Shakespeare’s language -An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the play -Fresh images from the Folger Shakespeare Library’s vast holdings of rare books -An annotated guide to further reading Essay by Michael Neill The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is home to the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare’s printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit Folger.edu.

Hamlet: A Critical Reader

Hamlet: A Critical Reader
Author: Ann Thompson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2016-04-21
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1472571398

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.

Hamlet: The State of Play

Hamlet: The State of Play
Author: Sonia Massai
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2021-03-25
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1350117749

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.

SHAKESPEARES HAMLET IN AN ERA OF TEXTUAL EXHAUSTION

SHAKESPEARES HAMLET IN AN ERA OF TEXTUAL EXHAUSTION
Author: Sonya Freeman Loftis
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 379
Release: 2017-11-27
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1351967452

"Post-Hamlet: Shakespeare in an Era of Textual Exhaustion" examines how postmodern audiences continue to reengage with Hamlet in spite of our culture’s oversaturation with this most canonical of texts. Combining adaptation theory and performance theory with examinations of avant-garde performances and other unconventional appropriations of Shakespeare’s play, Post-Hamlet examines Shakespeare’s Hamlet as a central symbol of our era’s "textual exhaustion," an era in which the reader/viewer is bombarded by text—printed, digital, and otherwise. The essays in this edited collection, divided into four sections, focus on the radical employment of Hamlet as a cultural artifact that adaptors and readers use to depart from textual "authority" in, for instance, radical English-language performance, international film and stage performance, pop-culture and multi-media appropriation, and pedagogy.