Women as Hamlet: Performance and Interpretation in Theatre, Film and FictionThe first Hamlet on film was Sarah Bernhardt. Probably the first Hamlet on radio was Eve Donne. Ever since the late eighteenth century, leading actresses have demanded the right to play the role - Western drama's greatest symbol of active consciousness and conscience. Their iconoclasm, and Hamlet's alleged 'femininity', have fascinated playwrights, painters, novelists and film-makers from Eugène Delacroix and the Victorian novelist Mary Braddon to Angela Carter and Robert Lepage. Crossing national and media boundaries, this book addresses the history and the shifting iconic status of the female Hamlet in writing and performance. Many of the performers were also involved in radical politics: from Stalinist Russia to Poland under martial law, actresses made Hamlet a symbol of transformation or crisis in the body politic. On stage and film, women reinvented Hamlet from Weimar Germany to the end of the Cold War. This book aims to put their half-forgotten achievements centre-stage. |
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Women as Hamlet: Performance and Interpretation in Theatre, Film and Fiction Tony Howard No preview available - 2009 |
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acting actor actress American androgynous Angela Winkler artist Asta Nielsen audience Beauvoir body Braddon Budzisz-Krzyżanowska cast character Charlotte Cushman cinema Claudius costume critics cross-dressing culture death Delacroix Diane Venora director drama dreams dress Dublin Eleanor Eleanor's Victory emotional Espert Eva Le Gallienne explore eyes face Fanny Kemble father female Hamlet feminine feminism feminist figure film Fiona Shaw Fortinbras Fouere Gallienne gender Gertrude Ghost Girik girls Goncharova Horatio Ibid intellectual Juliet Kemble King Lady Laertes List of Blessings London look madness male Mary masculine Meyerhold modern mother murder never novel Nuria Espert Olesha Ophelia Papp passion performance played Hamlet Players political Polonius Press Prince production Queen quoted Raikh rehearsal role Romeo Rosencrantz and Guildenstern s/he Sarah Bernhardt scene sexual Shakespeare Siddons skull soliloquies stage star theatre theatrical thought Tour tragedy tragic travesti Venora voice Wajda Winkler woman women wrote York young
Popular passages
Page 164 - Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me. You would play upon me ; you would seem to know my stops ; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery ; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass : and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ ; yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe ? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me.
Page 101 - If it assume my noble father's person, I'll speak to it, though hell itself should gape, And bid me hold my peace.
Page 24 - If woman has always functioned 'within' the discourse of man, a signifier that has always referred back to the opposite signifier which annihilates its specific energy and diminishes or stifles its very different sounds, it is time for her to dislocate this 'within...
Page 35 - Angels and ministers of grace defend us! Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd, Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, Be thy intents wicked or charitable, Thou com'st in such a questionable shape, That I will speak to thee: I'll call thee Hamlet, King, father, royal Dane, O, answer me!
Page 68 - He has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence in her own powers, ,to lessen her self-respect and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.
Page 301 - The drama of woman lies in this conflict between the fundamental aspirations of every subject (ego)— who always regards the self as the essential— and the compulsions of a situation in which she is the inessential.
Page 93 - Mary Kelley, Private Woman, Public Stage: Literary Domesticity in NineteenthCentury America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984...
Page 68 - I was at first a little disappointed that my baby was not a man-child, ee^ca^on for the lot of woman is seldom happy, owing principally, I think, to the many serious mistakes which have obtained universal sway in female education.
Page 68 - We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.



