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.
Author(s): Kerrie Roberts
Series: Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 220
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Sticky bits, or not another theory on Hamlet
Notes on the text
PART I: Reading Gertrude
1. Not representing Gertrude
Sympathy for and dominance by Hamlet
Representing female characters
Representing women: the glance, the gaze, and the dominant point of view
2. The glance, the gaze, and Gertrude: Minimise or sexualise
The glance or the gaze
The glance: complex classifications
The gaze: Gertrude’s sexual sins
3. Resistant reading
The actress’s task: accessing the subjective
The feminist’s task: paying attention within the dominant point of view
Re-textualisation: re-writing the re-written text
Reading resistance
Gertrude’s subjectivity
4. Using the sticky bits
‘Being interrupted’: what is ‘flow’ when an actor is playing a character, such that this can be interrupted?
Sticky bits as psychosis
Ramifications
Solutions
PART II: Writing Gertrude
5. Shakespeare’s material: The history and the sources
Historical readings of texts
The early modern queen: what ‘queen’ signified for Shakespeare and his audience
Source myth: Gerutha, king’s daughter in the story of Amleth
6. Shakespeare’s Gertrude
Shakespeare’s adaptation of his sources
Gertrude’s status in the text of Hamlet
The subjectivity of ‘th’imperial jointress’
PART III: Performing a blood royal Gertrude
7. The blood royal Gertrude’s production history
Early history
Poel
Updike
8. Status and silence
Status on stage
Hamlet’s themes of status and power
Gertrude’s status and power
Conveying Gertrude’s higher status on stage
Performing silence
9. Performing the sticky bits with power
Sticky bits unstuck
Who is Gertrude, and what is her connection with the throne of Denmark?
The hasty marriage disrupting the mourning period
Dispossessing Hamlet
Power
Murder
Status as a weapon
Conclusion: Female sovereign power
Gertrude could be the hereditary queen
Royal responsibilities
Words: what is a queen?
The castrated queen
Gertrude’s power: resistance, rule, and failure
Finding oneself in what’s on offer on stage
Chaos
Appendix: Hamlet: a quick summary
Index
