Hayman’s Missing Hamlet

Abstract

PAINTERS AND ILLUSTRATORS OF Hamlet choose to render the play scene (III. ii) more frequently than any other scene from the play, and these visual renderings are remarkably similar in their organization of figures and action, from the eighteenth century through to the present day. Francis Hayman's drawing for Hanmer's illustrated Shakespeare of 1744 (Figure 1) establishes the central conventions which are repeated so consistently into the twentieth century: the murder of Gonzago is placed back center stage, with two groups ranged on either side, Claudius, Gertrude, and Polonius on the one, Hamlet, Horatio, and Ophelia on the other. The position of the dumbshow, in the background with the two audiences in the foreground on either side, makes the scene doubly theatrical by calling attention to the play-within-the-play and to the role of the other characters as spectators-an interpretation certainly consonant with modem readings which seek to emphasize the metadramatic dimensions of Shakespeare's plays.' Another important detail which is repeated in later versions is the position of Hamlet with body extended, at Ophelia's feet, which serves to link the two separate audience groups. The position of the viewer of this illustration is that of the dramatic audience itself, and it is commonly believed that Hayman's design renders with verisimilitude the actual staging of the play at Drury Lane in this period.2 Such attention to contemporary staging is typical of eighteenth-century illustration and of Hayman's work in particular, since he was for many years a scene painter at Drury Lane. To demonstrate the continuity of Hayman's