The role of the Dramaturg is to provide the cast, director, production team, and audience with helpful knowledge, research, and context about the play so that they are – in turn – better equipped to do their jobs or enjoy the performance! CSC’s Dramaturg is Elaine Cox. Do you have a question about the show or an idea for future resource guides? Email Elaine.Cox@cincyshakes.com.

Check out all the “Closer Look” tabs for more information or access the entire dramaturgy guide online here.

ACT I

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, stands graveside mourning the death of her father, King Hamlet. Elsewhere others have moved on much quicker. Claudius, Hamlet's uncle, has married Hamlet's recently-widowed mother, Gertrude, becoming the new King of Denmark. Hamlet continues to mourn for her father's death and laments her mother's lack of loyalty. The Ghost of Hamlet’s Father appears to Hamlet and reveals that it was Claudius who killed him, and that Hamlet must now avenge her father’s death. But, in order to test if what the ghost says is true, Hamlet devises a plan to carefully watch and observe – and then act.

According to this plan, Hamlet begins to act strangely. Claudius and Polonius observe this change and summon Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, old friends of Hamlet to find out what's got into her. Their arrival also coincides with a group of travelling actors that Hamlet happens to know well – “The best actors in the world,” proclaims Polonius. With the Players’ help, Hamlet devises a plan to stage the play The Murder of Gonzago, which includes scenes that closely mimic recent events in Denmark. They decide the play will be performed the next night. Meanwhile, Claudius and Polonius spy on Hamlet, convinced her madness is due to Ophelia rejecting her. The two men spy on the young couple, but Hamlet suspects their presence and scorns Ophelia (Get thee to a nunnery!).

The Players perform their play for an audience of Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern, revealing that Claudius was King Hamlet’s murderer. Hamlet’s plan has worked.

ACT II

Angered by the play, Claudius orders that Hamlet is to be sent away. Hamlet confronts Gertrude over this turn of events, and hears someone in his mother’s room hiding behind a tapestry. She stabs the tapestry, and, in doing so, unintentionally kills Polonius, Ophelia’s father. The Ghost of King Hamlet reappears and warns his daughter not to delay revenge on Claudius or upset further upset her mother. Claudius has Hamlet sent to England. During her journey, Hamlet discovers Claudius has a plan to have her killed once she arrives. So, she returns to Denmark, sending her companions Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths in her place. Ophelia, both desolate at the loss of her father and seemingly rejected by Hamlet, goes mad and drowns.

On her way back to Denmark, Hamlet meets Horatio in the graveyard where Ophelia is buried. At the graveyard, Hamlet also confronts Laertes, Ophelia's brother, who has taken his father's place at the court. A duel is arranged between Hamlet and Laertes. During the match, Claudius conspires with Laertes to kill Hamlet. They plan that Hamlet will die either on a poisoned rapier or with poisoned wine. The plans go awry when Gertrude unwittingly drinks from the poisoned cup and dies. Then both Laertes and Hamlet are wounded by the poisoned blade, and Laertes dies.

Hamlet, in her death throes, kills Claudius. Hamlet dies, leaving only her friend Horatio to share the news with the Kingdom of Denmark.

Hamlet is one of the most famous literary characters of all time. Countless authors have analyzed her political, philosophical, and psychological triumphs and shortcomings for more than 400 years. Trying to decide the meaning of Hamlet is something like trying to decide the meaning of life; everyone has an opinion.

But, who is Hamlet really?

In his 1904 book Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, A. C. Bradley describes Hamlet as a play that includes eight violent deaths, adultery, a ghost, a mad woman, and a fight in a grave. It’s a horror story. But Bradley’s succinct summarization begs the question, why didn’t Hamlet obey the ghost at once, and save seven of those eight lives? The answer to this is NOT obvious fact that had Hamlet done so, the play would be ten minutes long. The answer lies in the soul of Hamlet.

If Hamlet’s greatest asset is her intelligence, then her biggest flaw is her indecision, resulting in an almost paralyzing intellect. This is not directly explained by Shakespeare, but gives you in the audience much to consider, inferring your own meanings and learning your own lessons. It is our hope that this adaptation of Hamlet brings new insight into an elusive character forced to make impossibly difficult choices and play a mind-boggling number of characters for a host of audiences.

Ultimately, Hamlet is WHO and WHAT you want her to be. She commands to the Players –

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action. For anything so

o’erdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and

now, was and is to hold as ‘twere the mirror up to nature.

And as she instructs, so she also reflects. For centuries, audiences and academics have been inspired by different aspects of Hamlet’s character, no doubt influenced by their own circumstances. During the English Restoration, Hamlet was seen as a hero. Theatre critics in the 18^th Century focused on the neoclassical conception of the plot. Throughout the Romanic Period, Hamlet was seen as the epitome of tragic. And at the turn of the 20^th Century, followers of Freud projected their own Oedipal imaginings onto the play. There will certainly be audience members who assign belief to how CSC’s has cast, staged, and designed this particular production of Hamlet, and what that implies in 2022. Yet through it all, one thing has and will stay the same. Audiences want to get inside Hamlet’s head, to understand and find meaning in every action and reaction.

Cincinnati Shakespeare Company’s purpose is to “hold the mirror up to nature, fostering empathy in our audience, and feeding the dialogue in the larger community.” We hope this play feeds you and reflects back an authenticity that resonates and challenges.

- Elaine Cox

One fact about Hamlet that isn’t up for interpretation is the style in which it is written. Hamlet is a revenge drama: a play in which the dominant motive is revenge for a real or imagined injury (usually the death of a close family member or friend). In Hamlet’s case, she is seeking revenge on her uncle for the death of her father. 

The Revenge drama was a popular form of English tragedy in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras. The forbearer to this style of play were Senecan Tragedies, a set of ten ancient Roman tragedies, of which eight were likely written by the philosopher and politician Lucius Annaeus Seneca. To audiences in Renaissance England, these would have been the most well-known and produced tragedies in London and beyond. For example, Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, and Tourneur’s The Revenger’s Tragedy, with plots of ghosts, tyrannical kings, and revenge as driving motive, were all highly influenced by Seneca.

In fact, The Spanish Tragedy was arguably England’s most popular play of this revenge drama genre prior to Hamlet, and Shakespeare would have no doubt been deeply familiar with the storyline. However, while Shakespeare was influenced by earlier revenge dramas, he uses the conventions of the genre to ask a wider set of questions on mortality, public and private morality, political machinations, and the nature of art. 

In A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599, James Shapiro writes “In Hamlet, Shakespeare once again found himself drawn to the epochal, to moments of profound shifts, of endings that were also beginnings… Born into a world in which the old religion had been replaced by the new, and like everybody else, living in nervous anticipation of the imminent end of Elizabeth’s reign and the Tudor dynasty, Shakespeare’s sensitivity to moments of highly significant change was both extraordinary and understandable.” Shakespeare’s own anxieties permeate Hamlet from the first scene to the last.

- Elaine Cox

In Shakespeare's time, men played all roles in the theater, both female and male. Women began to be seen onstage only after Charles II specifically granted his permission in issuing a royal patent to two theater companies in London. It was not until 1660 that English audiences began to see women perform on stage.

In 1775, English actress Sarah Siddons received critical praise for her portrayal of Hamlet, and she continued to play the role until she was 47 years old. In 1820, Sarah Bartley became the first female Hamlet in America at the Park Theater in New York. And in 1899, Sarah Bernhardt’s Hamlet premiered at the Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt in Paris. Lucky for us, there’s a recording of Bernhardt’s performance from 1900, making her the first female Hamlet ever captured on film. 

The first time CSC staged Hamlet, actress and Company co-founder Marni Penning started in the titular role. Jerry Stein of the Cincinnati Post described her turn as Hamlet: “This performance goes beyond genes. It is an examination of the soul.”

Read on to hear Sara Clark’s experience as Hamlet.

- Stephanie Vella

When you're an actor and someone offers you the opportunity to play the largest role in the most famous play by the most popular dramatist in the English language…you say yes. When you're a woman and someone offers you that chance…you say hell yes. And most people you encounter are cool with that. Probably because it's just not that new of an idea. Women have been playing Hamlet since the 1700s. But the question you inevitably have to answer is "will you play it 'as a man' or 'as a woman'"?

Both are valid and both are interesting, but there's something important right now in playing Hamlet as a woman. Think about it! If you were to present me with a character who idolizes their father, has a complicated relationship with their mother, needs to talk through every problem, struggles with imposter syndrome, and takes the bulk of a three and a half hour play to do ONE THING…I'd guess you were talking about a woman.

But in searching for a real answer to that implied question, "why does it matter now to see Hamlet played by a woman, as a woman?" we first have to go back a bit in time…

To hear the rest of Sara Clark’s thoughts on playing Hamlet as a woman in her viral TEDtalk, “Hamlet, thy name is Woman,” visit https://www.ted.com/talks/sara_clark_hamlet_thy_name_is_woman?language=en.

All productions of Hamlet cut the text. Without cuts, Hamlet would take five hours to perform! Careful students of Shakespeare and fans of Hamlet will notice quite a few differences in this production. If you prefer to be surprised, STOP READING NOW! Come back after the show to see if you picked up on the five biggest changes!

Here are the most significant changes to the script:

1. To Be or Not To Be

To be, or not to be. That is the question,

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them.

Shakespeare’s most famous soliloquy – arguably the most famous soliloquy in all of literature – traditionally appears in Act III. The audience will quickly learn that’s not the case in this production.

Our play opens with Hamlet at her father’s funeral, where she stands alone contemplating his untimely death and what it means for her own life moving forward.

To die, to sleep, To sleep, perchance to dream, ay, there’s the rub:

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil

Must give us pause: there’s the respect

That makes calamity of so long life.

In the original text, this speech comes about half-way through the play, as Hamlet is wrestling with his grief over his father's murder, becoming increasingly consumed with a desire for revenge. However, in our version adapted by Sarah Lynn Brown, Hamlet’s most famous monologue serves to clarify her state of mind at the top of the play.

Therefore,

O that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew,

Speaks to Hamlet’s loneliness and foreshadows the desperation to come.

While some Hamlet purists might find it blasphemous to move this moment from Act III, experimenting with the opening of Hamlet and the placement of “To be or not to be” is nothing new. In the 1603 “Bad Quarto”, the speech lives in Act II, Scene ii. It’s not until the Second Quarto, published in 1604, that “To Be” finds a home in Act III, Scene i.

2. Ophelia’s Many Borrowed Lines

Do some of Ophelia’s lines in Act II sound familiar?

As Ophelia’s relationship with Hamlet begins to unravel, she takes cues from several other female characters: Lady Macbeth from Macbeth, Constance from King John, and Queen Margaret from Richard III. One of the easiest to pick out is Ophelia’s declaration: “Come, come, come… give me your hand. What’s done cannot be undone.” This line is take from Lady Macbeth’s breakdown scene in Act V of Macbeth. By Act V, the Macbeths are both consumed with shame over the deaths of Duncan and Banquo. They know what they’ve done is wrong, and their guilt prevents them from fully enjoying the power they craved. While Macbeth’s guilt causes him to commit further murders to cover up his initial crimes, Lady Mac’s guilt drives her to insanity, and, ultimately, suicide. An unfortunate foreshadowing for our Ophelia.

Later in the same scene, Ophelia recalls famous lines from King John and Richard III to provide additional context to what she (and Gertrude) is thinking and feeling. Some of Shakespeare’s original lines for Ophelia remain, but are strengthened by borrowing from Constance and Queen Margaret, in addition to the Lady Macbeth lines referenced above. When Ophelia states, “I am not mad. I would to heaven I were,” she invokes Constance from King John (Act III, scene iv), in which Constance mourns the loss of her husband and son. Despite her crazed appearance, she is sound of mind. However, suicide is the only imaginable end to her misery. At least in death, she could see her son again.

Just a few lines later, Ophelia refers to Gertrude as a “Painted Queen,” a phrase Queen Margaret utters to Queen Elizabeth and the Duchess of York in Richard III. Taken from Act IV, scene iv, Elizabeth asks Margaret to teach her how to curse, and Margaret advises her to first experience as much bitterness and pain as Margaret herself has. Margaret has seen much suffering – specifically the death of her husband King Henry VI and her son Prince Edward.

QUEEN MARGARET I call'd thee then poor shadow, painted queen;

Where is thy husband now? where be thy brothers?

Where are thy children? wherein dost thou, joy?

Who sues to thee and cries 'God save the queen'?

Where be the bending peers that flatter'd thee?

Where be the thronging troops that follow'd thee?

Decline all this, and see what now thou art:

For happy wife, a most distressed widow;

For joyful mother, one that wails the name;

For queen, a very caitiff crown'd with care;

For one being fear'd of all, now fearing one;

For one commanding all, obey'd of none.

3. Eliminating Fortinbras

Poor Fortinbras. Often referred to as “Young Fortinbras,” he is the nephew of “old” Fortinbras, the King of Norway. Like Hamlet, he has recently lost his father in a conflict between Norway and Denmark, in which his father was killed by Hamlet’s father. Fortinbras’ mission to recover lost territory and avenge the death of his father is the backdrop to much of the action in Hamlet. In the play’s final moments, Hamlet names Fortinbras of Norway as the probable heir to the Danish throne.

But not in our version!

Many modern adaptations of Hamlet eliminate the Fortinbras subplot – as does ours. However, we’ve kept the Hamlet’s “How all Occasions” monologue, which traditionally occurs in Act IV, scene iv, as Hamlet reacts to Fortinbras’ quest to reclaim his land. Hamlet is shocked that a war would be waged over something as seemingly insignificant as a bit of land. By comparison, at this point in the play, Hamlet has much greater things to avenge – her father’s death at the hands of her uncle. Hamlet, angry with herself for having thus far failed to extract revenge on Claudius, declares that her thoughts be bloody.

Our version keeps the core tenants of this monologue. Though, with no Fortinbras to react against, it is spoken after Claudius commands Hamlet go to England.

It is also worth noting that the elimination of Fortinbras presents the question of who will rule over Denmark at the play’s end? Who do you think will assume the throne?

4. Sonnet between Hamlet and Ophelia

There are many couples in Shakespeare’s writing. Anthony and Cleopatra. Beatrice and Benedick. Romeo and Juliet. Arguably the most successful marriage in Shakespeare’s works is that of the Macbeths, although their mutual ambition ends up being their demise.

The fleeting love affair between Hamlet and Ophelia is, for different reasons, a poor example of a successful courtship. Ultimately Ophelia is driven mad by Hamlet’s inconsistency. However, at least in the salad days of their relationship, Hamlet was capable of at least one good love poem.

In Shakespeare’s original text, Polonius reads Hamlet’s sonnet to Ophelia aloud to Gertrude and Claudius. In our version, Hamlet and Ophelia recite the text in alternating lines, creating a lovely scene of affection.

5. Soliloquy intercut with Hamlet and Claudius

Hamlet is not the only character in Shakespeare’s play who uses a soliloquy to share her thoughts with the audience. Claudius also gives us a detailed insight into his thoughts, for the first time, in what is typically a private, prayerful moment in Act III.

O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven,

It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t–

A brother’s murder.

Our version intercuts this soliloquy with an inner monologue of Hamlet’s own. The two characters alternate, revealing their motivations, regrets, and plans.

- Elaine Cox

FRIENDS OF THE COMPANY

“With one ‘we thank you,’ many millions more…”

• The Winter’s Tale, Act I, Scene ii

Cincinnati Shakespeare Company extends thanks to the following individuals and organizations for their generous support. The following gifts were received by Cincinnati Shakespeare Company February 1, 2021 – February 15, 2022. Giving Levels are exclusive of Capital Campaign donations. Every effort has been made to ensure accuracy. If you see a discrepancy, please accept our sincere apology and contact Elaine Cox at 513-381-2273, ext. 3200.

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