Hamlet: The Story

Hamlet, the son of the late Hamlet, King of Denmark, who died two months before the start of the play, is the melancholy Dane. Hamlet directs impassioned speeches to the audience (soliloquies) as he contemplates life, death, and the duality of good and evil within each person. The play is filled with court intrigue, romance, insanity, suicide, murder, ghosts, and concludes with a deadly fencing duel between Hamlet (Terence J. Burke) and Laertes (Joshua Camp).

Queen Gertrude - "Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off, and let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark. Do not for ever with thy vailed lids seek for thy noble father in the dust: Thou know'st 'tis common; all that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity."

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, hears from his friend Horatio (Frank Godinez) and the soldiers of the Watch, Bernardo (Nathan Boyer) and Marcellus (James Paraiso) that his father's ghost walks the night. Hamlet is informed by his father's ghost (Eric Hedberg) that Claudius (Martin White), Hamlet's uncle, murdered him. He demands that Hamlet avenge his death and also Claudius' hasty marriage to Gertrude (Eva Kvaas), Hamlet's mother and the late king's widow.

Hamlet first tests the truth of the Ghost's accusations with the help of a troupe of actors led by the Player King (James Steinberg) with the Player Queen (Claire White) and his friend Horatio (Frank Godinez), and then waits for the right moment to avenge his father's murder.

King Claudius - "And can you, by no drift of circumstance, get from him why he puts on this confusion, grating so harshly all his days of quiet with turbulent and dangerous lunacy?"Hamlet pretends to be mad, causing the elder statesman Polonius (Marty Greenberg) to eavesdrop on Hamlet as he meets with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (Nathan Boyer and James Paraiso), school aquaintances whom Claudius has sent to spy on Hamlet. Polonius also spies on a meeting with Ophelia (Anna McMillan), Hamlet's intended bride whom he now rejects and on an arranged meeting with Gertrude. After Hamlet kills the eavsdropping Polonius (thinking that it is Claudius hidden behind the curtain), the king sends Hamlet to England with secret instructions that Hamlet is to be put to death. Hamlet exchanges the letters and gives the,"Put the bearer of this message to death" letter to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who have betrayed him.

Laertes arrives to avenge his father's death, only to find his sister reduced to madness. After she dies by drowning, Laertes renews his resolve to get revenge. Hamlet secretly returns from England and comes to grips with life and death in a powerful graveside scene with the Gravedigger (Steve McLaughlin) just before Ophelia's body is brought to her grave. Claudius plans a fencing match between Laertes and Hamlet. To ensure Hamlet's death. Leartes places a strong poison on his rapier tip while Claudius has a backup poison pearl in a wine cup to give his nephew should Laertes fail. All at court gather for the famous duel, joined by Ladies in Waiting, Claire White, D. J. McLaughlin, Leslie Miller, and Patty Fay. The match turns into a deadly duel between Hamlet and Laertes.

Director's Notes
Why A Modern Language Text Of Shakespeare?

“Clearness is the most important matter in the use of words.” Quintilian

It is my firmly held belief that the sense of Shakespeare’s words must be predominant over sound. We are not going to a symphony but to a play. A play consists of words, and words convey meaning. Arthur Miller enunciated a maxim that we applaud, “Theater is the art of the present tense par excellence.” If we must retire to our study after a Shakespearean play to peruse twenty notes to the page in order to understand the meaning, we are missing the true beauty and immediacy of the theatrical experience. Shakespeare’s language is over 400 years old. There was no dictionary or book of English grammar in his time. Many words used by him are now archaic or obsolete; also many of the same words used today conveyed different meanings to the Elizabethan audience.

It is ironic that Shakespeare’s works have been translated into more than 80 foreign languages all in the modern idiom. In this production, numerous archaic and obsolete words have been changed to modern equivalents. For example, in Hamlet, phrases such as “bissom rheum” have become “blinding tears” and “who would fardels bear to grunt and sweat under a weary life” is a metaphor that alludes to the peasants who became stooped and bent from carrying heavy bundles of sticks called fardels. By changing “fardels” to “burdens”, the metaphor becomes understandable to the modern audience. “Conscience” had multiple meanings in Shakespeare’s time. In “conscience does make cowards of us all,” the meaning is “thinking or self-knowledge.” In “catch the conscience of the king,” the meaning is “moral guilt or sense of right or wrong.” In Romeo and Juliet, “Wherefore art thou Romeo?” means “Why are you Romeo?” Friar Lawrence has the line “O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies In herbs …” “Mickle” is an archaic word that means “a large or great amount” By changing the line to “O, great is the powerful grace that lies in herbs...” the line is immediately understandable.

The play has been edited in order to create a production that lasts a little over two hours. Research by E. K. Chambers, Alfred Harbage, and Andrew Gurr indicate that the playing time would have been about two hours. Andrew Gurr states, “Playing with no intervals, the normal stretch of time identified as what people routinely paid for, including the jig that ended the performance, was two hours.”

We have tried to keep the staging as simple as it was in Shakespeare’s time. The plays were presented on a bare stage 43’ wide and 27’ deep with a background facade of usable exits and entrances with minimum portable set pieces and props brought on and off the stage.

The soliloquy is a speech that an actor directs to the audience to speak his thoughts aloud, usually when the actor is alone on the stage. If others are on the stage, they do not hear it. An aside is a short comment directed to the audience that the other characters do not hear. We hope that you enjoy our production.

Keith A. Anderson, Director

A special thank you to

Cabrillo Academy of the Sword

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