Countercanonizing Romantic Hamlets: Dr Who’s Lowbrow Hamlet And Its Contradictory Nature

Abstract

It was in the 19th century that critics and intellectuals were busy constructing hierarchy about what kind of Hamlet was good and which one was bad. The example of good one was Wanderer above the Sea of Fog in Caspar David Friedrich’s painting the message of which conveyed Kantian self-reflection, expressed through the wanderer’s gazings into the murkiness of the sea of fog. Since then romantic Hamlets Coleridge, Young Werther, Kemble, Kean, Irving, Olivier, Branagh have made a similar climb perching upon the psychic ramparts of Elsinore. But the pendulum suddenly swang the other way as RSC took us on another speculative voyage catering for younger tastes attracted to Hamlet by the popularity of Tennant’s Doctor Who. Though high and low binary is out of date now RSC deliberately entered into the world of lowbrow Shakespeare by choosing quarto text, neoclassical revenge tragedy concept, method acting, and postmodern design concept, all of which could be justified in its own way. No recent stage production/film has attracted the excitement and nearly unanimous critical praise as Tennant’s Hamlet but the result was another manifestation of the contradictory nature of Shakespeare both institutionally marginal and symbolically central.