COURSE OUTLINE (2013) AND PRIMARY TEXTS
Week 1: Introduction to 'Hamlet and its afterlife'.
Week 2: Hamlet on stage and screen: an introduction to production, adaptation and performance
from 1600 to today.
Anthony B. Dawson, Shakespeare in Performance: ‘Hamlet' (Manchester, 1995)
Robert Hapgood, Shakespeare in Production: 'Hamlet' (Cambridge, 1999).
[extract from Hapgood in coursepack]
Week 3: The history of editing Hamlet.
Barbara Mowat, ‘The form of Hamlet’s fortunes’, Renaissance Drama XIX (1988), 97-125.
Ann Thompson, ‘Teena Rochfort Smith, Frederick Furnivall, and the New Shakspere Society’s
four-text edition of Hamlet’, Shakespeare Quarterly 49 (1998), 125-39.
[Mowat and Thompson in coursepack]
Week 4: Close reading of Hamlet: a discussion of the play’s linguistic complexity.
Margaret W. Ferguson, ‘Hamlet: letters and spirits’, from Patricia Parker and Geoffrey Hartman
(eds.), Shakespeare and the Question of Theory (1985).
George T. Wright, ‘Hendiadys and Hamlet’, PMLA 96 (1981), 168-93.
[Ferguson and Wright in coursepack]
Week 5: Rereading Hamlet in the critical tradition: the case of feminist criticism.
Ellen J. O'Brien, 'Revision by Excision: Rewriting Gertrude' in Shakespeare Survey 45 (1992),
27-35
Jacqueline Rose, 'Sexuality in the Reading of Shakespeare: Hamlet and Measure for Measure' in
John Drakakis (ed.), Alternative Shakespeares (London, 1985), 95-118
Elaine Showalter, 'Representing Ophelia: Women, Madness and the Responsibilities of Feminist
Criticism' in Patricia Parker and Geoffrey Hartman (eds.), Shakespeare and the Question of
Theory (London, 1985), 77-94.
[O'Brien, Rose and Showalter in coursepack]
Week 6: Reading week
Week 7: Rewriting Hamlet: sequels, prequels and 'off-shoots'.
St. John Hankin, The New Wing at Elsinore (1901)
Margaret Atwood, 'Gertrude Talks Back' in Good Bones (1992)
Shel Silverstein, 'Hamlet as Told on the Street' (1998)
(Plus any other student choices)
[Hankin, Atwood and Silverstein in coursepack]
Week 8: Essay consultations: preliminary discussion of student projects.
Weeks 9-10: Case studies in the afterlife of Hamlet. Classes will be based around student
projects. Possibilities might include:
(a) Particular productions and films (including ones currently available in London).
(b) International Hamlets: particular examples of productions, films, novels, critical debates,
from outside the Anglo-American tradition.
(c) Recent Hamlet fictions: novels by e.g. Iris Murdoch, Angela Carter, John Updike, Carole
Corbeil, Alan Isler.
(d) Hamlet in current critical debates.
(e) Hamlet in illustration, caricature, cartoon.
Week 11: Concluding discussion.
SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
Further Editions of Hamlet
New Cambridge, ed. Philip Edwards, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1985
Oxford, ed. G. R. Hibbard, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1987
New Variorum, ed. Howard H. Furness, Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1877
Production (General)
Hardin L. Aasand (ed), Stage Directions in ‘Hamlet’, Associated University Presses, London,
2003
Pascale Aebischer, Shakespeare’s Violated Bodies: Stage and Screen Performances, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 2004
Bernice W. Kliman, ‘Hamlet’: Film Television and Audio Performances, Associated University
Presses, London, 1988
John A. Mills, ‘Hamlet on Stage: the Great Tradition, Greenwood Press, New York, 1985
Marvin Rosenberg, The Masks of ‘Hamlet’, University of Delaware Press, Newark, Delaware,
1992
Criticism (General)
Margreta de Grazia, ‘Hamlet’ without Hamlet, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007
David Farley-Hills (ed.), Critical Responses to ‘Hamlet’, 1600-1900, 4 vols, AMS Press,
London, 1995R. A. Foakes, ‘Hamlet’ versus ‘Lear’', Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993
Stephen Greenblatt, Hamlet in Purgatory, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2001
John Lee, Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ and the Controversies of Self, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2000
Shakespeare Survey 45: 'Hamlet and Its Afterlife', Cambridge, 1992
Specific Performances
Rosamond Gilder, John Gielgud’s Hamlet, Methuen, London, 1937
Grigori Kozintsev, Shakespeare: Time and Conscience (translated by Joyce Vining), Dennis
Dobson, London, 1967
Andy Lavender, Hamlet in Pieces: Shakespeare Reworked by Peter Brook, Robert Lepage,
Robert Wilson. Nick Hern, London, 2001
Mary Z. Maher, Modern Hamlets and Their Soliloquies, University of Iowa Press, Iowa City,
1992 (2nd edition 2003)
Michael Pennington, ‘Hamlet’: A User’s Guide, Nick Hern, London, 1996
Charles H. Shattuck, The Hamlet of Edwin Booth, University of Illinois Press, Chicago, 1969
Gerda Taranov, The Bernhardt Hamlet, Peter Lang, London, 1996
Feminist Criticism
(These books typically contain one chapter on Hamlet)
Janet Adelman, Suffocating Mothers, Routledge, London, 1992
Philippa Berry, Shakespeare’s Tragedies: Feminine Endings, Routledge, London, 1999
Patricia Parker, Literary Fat Ladies, Routledge, London, 1987
Juliana Schiesari, The Gendering of Melancholia, Routledge, London, 1992
National / International Hamlets
Michael Hattaway, Boika Sokolova and Derek Roper (eds.), Shakespeare in the New Europe,
Sheffield Academic Press, Sheffield, 1994
David Johnson, Shakespeare and South Africa, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996
Zdenek Stribrny, Shakespeare and Eastern Europe, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2000
Yoshiko Ueno (ed.), Hamlet and Japan, AMS Press, London, 1995
Simon Williams, Shakespeare on the German Stage, Cambridge University Press, 2 vols,
Cambridge, 1990 and 1998
Novel (and other) Adaptations of Hamlet (criticism)
Kate Chedgzoy, Shakespeare’s Queer Children, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1995
Julie Sanders, Novel Shakespeares, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2001
Martin Scofield, The Ghosts of ‘Hamlet’: The Play and Modern Writers, Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, 1980
Alexander Welsh, Hamlet in his Modern Guises, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New
Jersey, 2001
The secondary literature on Hamlet is of course overwhelming. There is quite an extensive
Bibliography in the Arden 3 edition, but further specific recommendations can be made
available as required.