Philip Edwards deals succinctly with the exhaustive commentary and controversy which Hamlet has provoked in the manifestation of its tragic energy. Robert Hapgood has contributed a new section on prevailing critical and performance approaches to the play in this updated edition. He discusses recent film and stage performances and actors of the Hamlet role as well as directors of the play. His account of new scholarship stresses the role of memory in the play and the impact of feminist and performance studies upon it. First Edition Hb (1985): 0-521-22151-X First Edition Pb (1985): 0-521-29366-9
Author(s): Philip Edwards
Series: The New Cambridge Shakespeare
Edition: Updated
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2003
Language: English
Pages: 272
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
1 Suggested Elizabethan staging of the Ghost scenes (1.4 and 1.5). Drawing by C. Walter Hodges
2 Henry Irving as Hamlet and Ellen Terry as Ophelia in the 'nunnery' scene (3.1), as painted by Edward H. Bell, 1879
3 Suggested Elizabethan staging of the play-within-the-play (3.2). Drawing by C. Walter Hodges
4 'Now might I do it pat' (3.3.73). One of a series of lithographs of the play published by Eugène Delacroix in 1844
5 Possible Elizabethan staging of the graveyard scene (5.1). Drawing by C. Walter Hodges
6 'Do you not come your tardy son to chide?' (3.4.106). Redrawn by Du Guernier for the 1714 edition of Rowe's Shakespeare
7 J. P. Kemble as Hamlet, by Sir Thomas Lawrence (Royal Academy, 1801)
8 'Go on, I'll follow thee' (1.4.86). Forbes Robertson as Hamlet in a 1913 film
9 The burial of Ophelia (5.1). Modern-dress production at the London Old Vic, 1938
10 Kenneth Branagh's film of Hamlet 1996, with Branagh in the title role between Claudius (Derek Jacobi) and Gertrude (Julie Christie)
11 Simon Russell Beale as Hamlet, with Yorick's Skull, National Theatre, 2001
Preface
Abbreviations and Short Titles
Introduction
Source and date
The play's shape
The play and the critics
The action of the play
The Platform
'I know not seems'
The Ghost
The Antic Disposition
Rogue and Peasant Slave
'To be or not to be'
Play, Prayer, Murder
The Closet Scene
To England
The Return
The Silence of the Ghost
Hamlet and the actors
Names
Recent stage, film and critical interpretations, by Robert Hapgood
Film and stage interpretations
Critical interpretations
Note on the text
List of characters
HAMLET
Act 1
1
2
3
4
5
Act 2
1
2
Act 3
1
2
3
4
Act 4
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Act 5
1
2
Reading list
Bibliographies
Histories and Analyses of Criticism
Anthologies of Criticism
Stage History
