Women as Hamlet
Performance and Interpretation in Theatre, Film and Fiction

A study of actresses playing the role of Hamlet on stage and screen.

Tony Howard (Author)

9780521117210, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 30 July 2009

344 pages, 20 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 2 cm, 0.51 kg

' … a supremely successful achievement … an exceptionally good and timely volume. In its ambition, diversity of primary material, international range, and clear and accessible style, it will be an inspiration to scholars for many years to come.' The Review of English Studies

The first Hamlet on film was Sarah Bernhardt. Probably the first Hamlet on radio was Eve Donne. Ever since the late eighteenth century, leading actresses have demanded the right to play the role - Western drama's greatest symbol of active consciousness and conscience. Their iconoclasm, and Hamlet's alleged 'femininity', have fascinated playwrights, painters, novelists and film-makers from Eugène Delacroix and the Victorian novelist Mary Braddon to Angela Carter and Robert Lepage. Crossing national and media boundaries, this book addresses the history and the shifting iconic status of the female Hamlet in writing and performance. Many of the performers were also involved in radical politics: from Stalinist Russia to Poland under martial law, actresses made Hamlet a symbol of transformation or crisis in the body politic. On stage and film, women reinvented Hamlet from Weimar Germany to the end of the Cold War. This book aims to put their half-forgotten achievements centre-stage.

List of illustrations
Preface
1. Introduction: The drama of questions and the mystery of Hamlet
Part I. The Women in Black: 2. Playing Hamlet, writing the self
3. 'Is this womanly?'
4. Virile spirits: Sarah Bernhardt and her inheritance
Part II. Case Studies: Hamlet, the Actress and the Political Stage: 5. 'I am whom I play': Asta Nielsen
6. 'Why are you looking at me like that?': Zinaida Raikh
7. Behind the arras, through the Wall: Poland 1989
8. Hamlet from the margins: Spain, Turkey, Ireland
Part III. Repression and Resurgence: 9. Films and fictions: Hamlet, men's eyes and the ages of woman
10. Women's voices in the cathedral of culture
11. Beyond silence, imagination
Index.

Subject Areas: Shakespeare studies & criticism [DSGS], Theatre studies [AN]