Stage Directions in Hamlet: New Essays and New DirectionsHardin L. Aasand The subject of stage directions in 'Hamlet', those brief semiotic codes that are embellished by historical, theatrical, and cultural considerations, produces a rigorous examination in the fifteen essays contained in this collection. This volume encompasses essays that are guardedly inductive in their critical approaches, as well as those that critique modern productions that attempt to achieve Shakespearean effect through a modern aesthetic. The volume also includes essays that enunciate the production of stage business as a cultural interplay between productions and social agencies outside the theater. |
Contents
19 | |
33 | |
42 | |
Hamlets Stage Directions to the Players | 47 |
Explicit Stage Directions Especially Graphics in Hamlet | 74 |
The Case against Tidiness | 92 |
Tis heere Tis gone The Ghost in the Text | 101 |
To Soliloquize or Not to Soliloquize Hamlets To be Speech in Q1 and Q2F | 115 |
The Stage Directions Overt and Covert of Hamlet 51 | 140 |
Interpolations Extended Scenes and Musical Accompaniment in Kenneth Branaghs Hamlet | 161 |
Properties and Stage Business in Hamlet 34 | 170 |
Visual Representations of the Graveyard Scene in Hamlet | 189 |
Hamlet Yorick and the Chopless Stage Direction | 214 |
Afterword | 226 |
Contributors | 228 |
Index | 231 |
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Common terms and phrases
Aasand action actors appearance Arden audience Branagh Cambridge Capell characters Charles Fechter Chicago Shakespeare Theater Claudius Claudius's closet scene Clown commas contemporary Corambis critical Delacroix director dramatic early exits early texts edition editors effect Elizabethan engraving entrance essays father film Folger Shakespeare Library Folio Fortinbras Gertrude Gertrude's gesture Ghost grave Gravedigger graveyard scene groundlings Hamlet hand holding Yorick's skull Horatio illustration imagine indicate interpretation interrupted Jenkins John John Dover Wilson Kenneth Branagh King King's Kliman Laertes later lithographs London Lord madness Marcellus miniatures modern noise Ophelia Osric Oxford performance photograph picture play players Polonius Polonius's production promptbook punctuation Queen question readers reading Renaissance role Rosencrantz and Guildenstern says Second Quarto soliloquy speak speech spies stage business stage directions stage practice suggests textual theater theatrical traditional University Press visual wall portraits William Shakespeare Wilson Wilson Barrett words York
Popular passages
Page 58 - And let those that play your clowns, speak no more than is set down for them : for there be of them, that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too ; though, in the mean time, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered: that's villainous; and . shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.
Page 57 - ... accent of Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.
Page 28 - To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps Out of my weakness and my melancholy, As he is very potent with such spirits, Abuses me to damn me. I'll have grounds More relative than this: the play's the thing Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.
Page 49 - Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus ; but use all gently ; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.
Page 49 - That he should weep for her? What would he do Had he the motive and the cue for passion That I have? He would drown the stage with tears, And cleave the general ear with horrid speech, Make mad the guilty and appal the free, Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed The very faculties of eyes and ears.
Page 65 - I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen? Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come ; make her laugh at that. Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing. Hor. What's that, my lord? Ham. Dost thou think Alexander looked o' this fashion i
Page 53 - Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell, Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words, And fall a-cursing, like a very drab, A scullion!
Page 52 - To outface me with leaping in her grave? Be buried quick with her, and so will I. And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw Millions of acres on us, till our ground, Singeing his pate against the burning zone, Make Ossa like a wart! Nay, and thou'lt mouth, I'll rant as well as thou.
Page 62 - tis too true; How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience! The harlot's cheek, beautied with plastering art, Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it Than is my deed to my most painted word: O heavy burden!
Page 50 - I have taken note of it ; the age is grown so picked that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe.— How long hast thou been a grave-maker?