Hamlet (33 page)

Design choices seem crucial in establishing the atmosphere of the first act of
Hamlet
,
with its movement between the guards outside on the platform, the formal exchanges at court, where

7.
The domestic setting of Ron Daniels’ 1989
Hamlet:
Elsinore as a mansion instead of a castle.

Hamlet’s black costume sets him so conspicuously apart, and the private conversations of Polonius and his children: what was the process whereby you arrived at a vision for the look and style of the opening scenes?

Daniels:
Our basic approach was that this was to be a “domestic” Hamlet. My earlier [1984] production, with Roger Rees in the title role and with designs by Maria Bjornson, had been set somewhere in the vast expanses between heaven and earth—a “cosmic” and imposing Hamlet set literally among the clouds, some of which were painted on a vast transparent curtain above the stage and others on the huge ramp which finally parted to reveal Ophelia’s grave beneath it. Though retaining a few of these elements [the encounter between Hamlet and the Ghost took place literally in the sky, on a platform suspended high above the stage], the 1989 production, designed by
Antony McDonald, was to be much more intimate, rooted in personal relationships, a tragedy set in the heart of a family as well as of a state: the action was to take place in a mansion, a home, really, perched on the edge of a cliff high above the turbulent sea.

Caird:
My designer, Tim Hatley, and I didn’t think of the opening scenes as a separate issue. We were more concerned with creating a performance space for the whole play. In
Hamlet
one needs a graveyard, a battlement, a fencing ground, a cloister, and so on. I was also keen to give the whole play a suffocatingly religious setting.

In my production the two main design images were graveyard and travel, based on the “undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns.” There were stone flags on the floor, many of them engraved with the names of the dead, alcoves from which the ghostly characters of the play emerge as if to re-enact an old story, and a large pile of old and dusty luggage out of which all of the settings of the play could be made. The set was part cathedral, part castle, part graveyard, part attic.

Boyd:
We wanted a space which could create tension, allow eavesdropping, open out as Claudius’ grip on Hamlet and Denmark weakens, and generally encourage swift and fluid movement of scenes and actors. A rational, cold space for Claudius’ “modern,” “reforming” court. A black circular palisade, with no visible exits or entrances, the only visible way into the world from outside was from the audience, and was used exclusively by the Ghost and Players.

Hamlet’s language is famously introspective and self-questioning, while King Claudius is very adept at controlling language for political ends: is this a contrast that you explored in your production?

Daniels:
It seems to me that in Shakespeare, content perfectly defines the form. The words Shakespeare chooses to give Polonius and how he constructs his sentences are a precise indication of who Polonius is as a human being. Claudius’ concerns are the affairs of estate—he is a man of action, a consummate political (and sexual) animal who, with the exception of his one moment of soul-searching (which he deals with with a good deal of brusque impatience), demonstrates little
if any interest in the workings of his own heart. The language he uses perfectly reflects this “objective” posture, whereas Hamlet’s “subjective” language reveals his continuing obsession with himself and with the struggles raging deep within him. What other character in Shakespeare agonizes about his own state of mind so relentlessly?

Caird:
I’m not sure I agree with that statement. Hamlet is incredibly clever with language, both in his political and introspective utterances. He manipulates people every bit as successfully as Claudius does. You could say that he handles Polonius much better than Claudius, who seems at a loss for words in the face of Polonius’ loquacity.

It’s also not true to say that Claudius isn’t introspective. One of the turning points of the plot is a profound introspection from Claudius. The scene in the chapel where he questions his actions and is in despair about the state of his soul is about as introspective as you can imagine anybody ever being. I think almost all characters in Shakespeare manipulate language, because they are Shakespeare’s creatures; they do what Shakespeare himself does in creating them.

I think the more interesting question is
why
does Claudius try to manipulate Hamlet when he could quite easily kill him? He has killed Hamlet’s father, he has made himself king, he has married Hamlet’s mother … if he’s such a brutal machiavellian politician, why doesn’t he just kill Hamlet? The answer is that he kills his brother so that he can become him. It’s an attempted act of transformation. That’s why he tries genuinely, desperately, to persuade Hamlet that everything is the same as it used to be. His father may be dead but he has a new father now. It’s Hamlet’s incapacity to accept this new status quo that throws Claudius into confusion and ultimately forces him into the position of having Hamlet killed. But it takes more than half the play for Claudius to be forced to this point.

Boyd:
We saw the play being driven by the possible actions of a usurped prince in a dangerous court, rather than by a “given” of Hamlet’s state of mind. We chose to celebrate Hamlet’s brilliant control of language under extreme pressure rather than relax into a “state” of introspection. This felt more active, true and exciting. That said, as the production matured, Toby [Stephens, playing Hamlet]
was able to give more space to the lyrical wonder in Hamlet’s thought, without losing the prevailing sense of danger.

The Ghost appears to come from Roman Catholic Purgatory, whereas young Hamlet is studying at Wittenberg, a university synonymous with Martin Luther and Protestantism: did the religious controversies of the age play any part in your production?

Daniels:
These religious controversies are indeed fascinating but they are perhaps of more interest in the study than in the rehearsal room, where what matters is human behavior and motivation. What makes Hamlet, who perhaps understands that he is the protagonist of a revenger’s tragedy, incapable of carrying out his obligation to revenge his father’s death? What other imperative is short-circuiting his will to action? What is forcing him to deviate from the destiny imposed on him?

Caird:
Religion had a great deal to do with my interpretation but not religious controversies. The main reason I set the play in a dis-cernibly Renaissance period is that I don’t think the play works if it’s set in a post-Enlightenment world. The central characters are deeply concerned with the mortality of their souls. Without the religious and spiritual context in which Shakespeare was writing it’s hard to make sense of the play philosophically and intellectually.

I don’t think the difference between Protestantism and Catholicism is so crucial to the meaning of the play and Wittenberg itself is relatively unimportant. Ostensibly the company of players comes from Wittenberg, because one assumes that’s where Hamlet and Horatio must have met them. But that would make Wittenberg a town with troupes of child-actors taking over from adult companies and we know that wasn’t the case in Wittenberg. As always Shakespeare is using his own experiences and playing fast and loose with geography and chronology. Shakespeare’s Wittenberg is more like Oxford than a Lutheran university, and when the Players arrive on the scene it suddenly becomes London.

Boyd:
Shakespeare is clearly writing about the deep damage caused by the English Reformation, the suppression of the old Church, and the resulting schism in the country. Hamlet is of the new “Protestant” generation, but is forced to learn that “there are more things in heaven and earth … than are dreamt of” in the reformed thinking of Wittenberg. The fact that “the time is out of joint” runs through the middle of
Hamlet
and all of Shakespeare’s work.

8.
Greg Hicks: Michael Boyd’s terrifying Ghost from Purgatory.

Greg Hicks was truly supernatural—chalk white, nearly naked, agonized and burdened with a giant broadsword from a bygone heroic age, which he slowly dragged with painful Shinto precision across the metal grating on the floor. It was genuinely frightening and gave Toby Stephens a powerful problem to solve.

Was your Hamlet’s “antic disposition” always a performance or were there moments when he veered into genuine madness?

Daniels:
I don’t think the “antic disposition” was ever a performance. Certainly, Hamlet out-clowns Polonius in the Fishmonger scene, giving the foolish old man a taste of his own foolishness, and Hamlet’s fury and his pain in the nunnery scene are almost beyond his control. However, these are different responses, one humorous and the other unbearably violent, to specific instances within a larger continuum of despair, a despair that is utterly disabling.

9.
Mark Rylance as Ron Daniels’ pajama-wearing Hamlet, berating Gertrude (Clare Higgins) in the closet scene: she holds the pictures of the two brothers who became her two husbands.

For this production we used the Bad Quarto structure, in which the nunnery scene is placed well before the Fishmonger scene: the first time Hamlet appeared after the battlement sequence was when he came on stage, a forlorn, suicidal figure still dressed in his pajamas, to agonize over whether he should be or not be—a man in the throes of an unbearable inner crisis, genuinely “transformed” and very far from the “understanding of himself.”

Caird:
I see a lot of
Hamlets
where the actor plays the madness card in order to escape a proper investigation of the part. Of course it’s exciting for an actor to walk onto the stage looking or acting completely nuts, but there’s nothing in the language of the scenes to suggest madness at all. Hamlet doesn’t say anything mad. I came to the view, after rehearsing it and extrapolating all the sense I could from what Hamlet says in each of his scenes, that Hamlet is the only sane person in the play. Almost everyone else is to some extent mad, with the obvious exception of Horatio. Polonius says and does mad things. Ophelia, Gertrude, Claudius, Laertes … they all find themselves in truly mad situations and react madly to them. What’s
amazing about Hamlet is that in the circumstances in which he finds himself, he doesn’t go mad. Instead he gets saner and saner as the play continues. By the time he returns from England he’s extraordinarily balanced and wise. He has moments of rashness and anger in the play, one of which results in the death of Polonius, but I can’t think of a single thing he does in the play that would suggest for one moment that he’s mad.

Boyd:
Hamlet begins the play under great mental stress, but it is the world that is mad. He is in mourning and has been effectively usurped with the collusion of his mother, and yet is being forced to celebrate his mother’s wedding to his usurper.