After Pieter Claeszoon: Vanitas – Still-Life (ca. 1634, J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles, Ca, USA)
[Return to "Prompt Books" Overview]
By and large, 19th century productions continued the tradition of showing the play in versions tailored to suit the interpretation of their star performers. Thus, Edwin Booth's editor William Winter, for example, wrote in his own preface to the 1879 print edition of Booth's prompt book:
This version of "Hamlet," which, in its construction and embellishment, is unlike all others, has been made for practical use on the stage. It is shorter than the original by about one thousand lines. The passages excluded are those which, it is thought, might prove tedious in the representation, and which, therefore, may well be spared. Among them are the episode of Fortinbras, the colloquy between Polonius and Reynaldo, and the interview betwixt Hamlet and the Norwegian soldiers. Certain speeches which momentarily arrest the action of the piece – such as that of Horatio on the preparations for war, and that of Hamlet on the custom of revelry, in Denmark – have been rejected, as impediments to directness of dramatic effect. The excisions also include dialogues, such as those at the beginning of the fourth act, which are but the descriptive repetition of action that has already been shown, or the narration of incident that has been distinctly implied. Passages which do but amplify and reiterate ideas that have previously been made sufficiently clear for the practical purposes of the stage have likewise been discared. The servility of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, for example, is known well enough without their candied and fawning speeches to the king, after the play-scene; and both Hamlet's mental vacillation and the springs of it are plainly evident long before he reaches his monologue on the expedition of Fortinbras. In a few instances lines of the original have been transposed: in a very few instances words have been altered – but never to the perversion of the meaning. Coarse phrases have been cast aside, or softened, wherever they occur. In the fourth act, Marcellus, instead of Horatio, has been made to announce the madness of Ophelia, and to attend upon her – for the reason that had Horatio been aware of her calamity he must have communicated it to Hamlet prior to their encounter with the funeral procession in the church-yard. Care has been particularly taken to omit nothing that is essential to the exposition of Hamlet's madness, and of the mental condition that leads him to assume it. "Hamlet's wildness," says Coleridge, "is but half false: he plays that subtle trick of pretending to act, only when he is very near really being what he acts." The point is a subtle one, and of immense importance to the comprehension of the character. It has been steadily kept in view; and the clearness and fullness of all the characters implied have been studiously sought, in the necessary condensation of the piece. In brief, a conscientious effort has here been made to construct an acting version of "Hamlet" which yet should escape the reproach of having garbled the original. The theatrical copies of Shakespeare's plays," says Charles Cowden Clarke, "are so notoriously abridged that it is impossible, by them, to judge fairly of the poet's delineation of character, who never wrote a line that did not harmonize with, and tend to define, the portrait he was limning." – To meet the exigencies of the stage without sacrificing the beauties of the author, and to present Hamlet clearly without keeping him too long in the public eye, will not, at least, be thought an injudicious endeavor."
"To meet the exigencies of the stage without sacrificing the beauties of the author" is, of course, the very essence of the circle that must be squared by everyone embarking on a theatrical (or cinematic) production of this particular play. Yet, it is at the very least debatable whether the plot elements revolving around Fortinbras and the exchange between Polonius and Reynaldo are so easily expendable – particularly on the grounds of being "tedious in the representation" –, whether Horatio's explanations on the preparations for war and Hamlet's reflections on national customs and the stamp of the one defect so fatally tainting a man's reputation must (or even should) be rejected as "impediments to directness of dramatic effect," and whether the Prince's "bloody thoughts" monologue after the encounter with Fortinbras's army really does merely amplify or reiterate ideas already well-established at this point.
So, too, any alteration of the play's language must necessarily, at the very least, qualify as interpretation, if not necessarily "perversion" of the meaning (including but not limited to the omission or "softening" of language considered too coarse by Victorian standards): further passages not specifically mentioned in the introduction and either already omitted from the printed text or are crossed out in the prompt book's handwritten annotations include Claudius's extreme courtesy towards Laertes and downright flattery of Polonius ("You cannot speak of reason to the Dane and lose your voice. What wouldst thou beg, Laertes, that shall not be my offer, not thy asking? The head is not more native to the heart, the hand more instrumental to the mouth, than is the throne of Denmark to thy father. What wouldst thou have, Laertes?"); Gertrude's reference to her and Claudius's "o'erhasty marriage;" virtually the entire exchange between Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern prior to the "sent for" business; the two schoolfellows' explanation that the Players have left the city because of their recent undesirable competition by "an eyrie of children, little eyases;" Hamlet's greeting of the Player Queen of just one such child (presumably, because a woman actress would have been cast as the Player Queen in a 19th century production, though the Royal Shakespeare Company's cast lists of late 19th century productions of the play suggest that this was by far not always the case); even more of Pyrrhus and Hecuba than in Davenant's and Betterton's version; Polonius's reflection that "'Tis too much prov'd, that with devotion's visage and pious action we do sugar o'er the Devil himself," and Claudius's response ("O, 'tis too true! How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience! The harlot's cheek, beautied with plast'ring art, is not more ugly to the thing that helps it than is my deed to my most painted word. O heavy burthen!") immediately prior to To be, or not to be; the line "And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them" from Hamlet's admonitions to the Players; a substantial part of Hamlet's crude taunts of Ophelia before and during the "play within the play" (which is itself abbreviated, too, and at the end of which Claudius, not Polonius, orders the Players to "Give o'er the play," and all references to the King's extreme mental torment are eliminated); as in Davenant's and Betterton's version, Hamlet's resolution "My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites – how in my words somever she be shent, to give them seals never, my soul, consent" before his visit to his mother's bedchamber; Act III, Scene 3 in its entirety (in response to the assassination of President Lincoln, which would have made that scene unconsciounable for Booth to act?); large parts of Hamlet's reproaches of Gertrude; again as in Davenant's and Betterton's version, the heart and core of Hamlet's comments on worms in his interrogation by Claudius after Polonius's death, Gertrude's grieving words about her "sick soul" prior to speaking to the now-distracted Ophelia, and all sexually ambiguous parts of Ophelia's mad songs and prophecies, beginning with "Then up he rose and donn'd his clo'es;" Claudius's summary of the woes that have befallen Ophelia – and the court – in recent months ("O Gertrude, Gertrude, when sorrows come, they come not single spies. But in battalions!," etc.); Laertes's reference to the rumours about his illegitimate birth; Claudius's offer to give up his throne "if by direct or by collateral hand" he were found involved in Polonius's death; all of Act IV, Scene 6; large parts of the conspiracy scene; once more as in Davenant's and Betterton's version, Gertrude's reference to orchids (long purples) as flowers "that liberal shepherds give a grosser name, but our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them," and of Ophelia as a mermaid-like creature in her account of Ophelia's death; and finally, Hamlet's account of the exchange of his own death warrant for that of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern; large parts of Hamlet's apology to Laertes as well as Laertes's response that, although "satisfied in nature" by Hamlet's apology, in [his] terms of honour [he] stand[s] aloof, and will no reconcilement; after the duel's third round both Osric's "Nothing neither way" and Laertes's subsequent "Have at you now!," and last but not least, Gertrude is led off stage once the poison has taken effect in her body – we see her suffer and know that she will die, but we are spared the sight of her final agony.
If the cuts and alterations made by Davenant and Betterton, by David Garrick, and by Sir Henry Irving, respectively, did not remain without prejudice on their audiences' perception of Hamlet and the play's other major characters, then surely this thought applies at least as much to the alterations reflected in Edwin Booth's prompt book; and as debatable as the reasoning that such changes do not effect the play's understanding at all are the grounds stated in the prompt book's introduction why these alterations were made in the first place: Just as large parts of the text are certainly not simply superfluous, so, too, for example, it appears highly questionable whether Horatio can (or should) simply be substituted by Marcellus as the person approaching Gertrude prior to Ophelia's mad scenes, on the grounds that if Horatio had known about the maid's death he surely would have told Hamlet about it before they reached the cemetery. For Horatio must, after all, have been aware that the news of the maid's distraction – caused not least by Hamlet's own actions – would be a considerable blow to the Prince; hardly the kind of tidings a loyal friend like Horatio would have wanted to spring upon Hamlet immediately after their meeting upon his return to Denmark. If however, for example, Horatio had rejoined the Prince only shortly before their arrival at the graveyard (as suggested, inter alia, in Grigorij Kosintzev's movie version), isn't it just as likely that a suitable opportunity simply had not yet presented itself, and that Horatio for this very reason – and also because he may have known about Ophelia's madness, but not her death, which may well have occurred just because he had abandoned his commission to give her good watch in order to rejoin Hamlet – is just as shocked by the approaching burial procession as Hamlet, but that Shakespeare saw no point (or would have considered it out of character for Horatio) to likewise have him express his feelings verbally? The mere sequencing of the end of Act IV and the beginning of Act V suggests this interpretation: Ophelia goes mad – Horatio receives Hamlet's letter and asks the sailors to bring him to the Prince forthwith – Gertrude tells Claudius and Laertes of Ophelia's death – Hamlet and Horatio come upon the graveyard – Ophelia is buried. (Of course if, like the drafters of Booth's prompt book, you omit Act IV, Scene 6, you are missing a crucial element in the timing of the play's last scenes.) – In any event, to simply replace the scholarly Horatio by Marcellus, a sentinel with neither the social nor the intellectual standing to match that of the other (nobly-born) principals, as Ophelia's guardian and as someone who would dare approach the Queen on the subject of the maid's madness in the first place, is arguably more than merely a minor instance of interpretation; and indeed, as the prompt book's handwritten annotations reverse the name of Gertrude's interlocutor to Horatio in the passage in question, it is at least possible that the substitution did not occur in all productions involving Booth.
[Return to "Prompt Books" Overview]
Copyright 2002 – 2009: Ulrike Böhm, all rights reserved.