March 2009
Beginner
240 pages
3h 30m
English
“The road to success is alwaysunder construction.”
–Arnold Palmer
WHEN SHAKESPEARE WROTE Hamlet’s great soliloquy, “To be or not to be,” he not only defined human ambiguity, he also foreshadowed the uncertain future of the play. No other drama has been more often recycled, reimagined, reinterpreted, or rethought by successive generations of critics and dramaturges.
Shakespeare’s acolytes reinvented Hamlet by masking the play’s hero with all sorts of disguises, reflecting their eras and their endlessly varying interpretations of the drama. The vacillating Danish prince has been variously cast as an oedipal English son, a singing Indian rajah, a Japanese Noh noble, a manly daughter, and an effeminate man played by ...