Madness in great ones
    must not unwatch'd go ...

Hamlet
by William Shakespeare
directed by R. Kevin Doyle

July 19 - August 8, 2003

Madness, murder and mayhem
follow the melancholy Prince
of Denmark as he seeks to avenge
his father's death.

Cast

Director’s note
In Shakespeare's life, and shortly after his death, there were three published versions of The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of  Denmarke. Two were stand alone volumes called quartos, and one was with a collection of all of Shakespeare's plays called the First Folio.

One of the two quartos was considered to be fairly inaccurate; sort of like a novel about a movie rushed into printing to capitalize on the movie's success. The second quarto is considered to be accurate to what Shakespeare wrote, as is the version published in the First Folio.

Of course, the problem is that the second quarto and the first folio are different in several regards. Also, there are a couple of passages in the first quarto that, for whatever reason, are considered more accurate than either of the other editions.

This means that scholars, in attempting to construct a definitive edition of Hamlet need to look at all three versions to create a copy of Hamlet that you would pick up in a book store. One popular publisher of Shakespeare, Arden, has even given up trying to create a definitive edition and will just publish all three versions of Hamlet later this year.

In addition, Shakespeare (or his publishers) didn't always use accurate spelling when they made their books. For example, there is a famous speech of Hamlet's that begins "Oh, that this too, too sullied flesh..." or maybe "too, too sallied flesh..." or, perhaps, "too, too solid flesh." Thus, between the different editions and the variant spellings, scholars can't quite agree on whether there is a definitive version of Hamlet or not. 

Over the years, scholars and directors have made a number of assumptions about the play that have come to be thought of as fact that are, in fact, bunk.  The Arden Shakespeare folks do a pretty good job of debunking many of these Shakespearean urban myths. 

For example, everyone knows that when Hamlet tells Ophelia to "get thee to a nunnery," that he is really referring to a whorehouse. Well, the folks at Arden did some research and found that, in Shakespeare's time, when people said "nunnery," they meant a place where nuns live. It wasn't until a hundred years later that scholars decided it meant the other.

Ultimately, a modern director staging Hamlet needs to wade through all of this material and figure out how to best make the play entertain a modern audience.  I believe that the best way to do this is to follow Dr. James Brandon's method of translating Kabuki theatre for an American audience: use the model and make it work.  My understanding of this is that a director should try to identify how the play worked for it's original audience and then try to make it work for the new audience in a similar way.  For this production, I used the Arden as my guide in determining how the play worked for an audience in Shakespeare's time.  Ultimately, I hope that our production works for you.  Thank you for coming and enjoy the show.