Performing trauma in the Arabic appropriations of Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Abstract

This essay provides a close textual reading of three Arabic appropriations of Shakespeare’s Hamlet through the lens of trauma theory. The Arab Hamlet renditions tackled in this study constitute only illustrations of traumatized subjects in the Arab Hamlet canon which has been widely discussed as stimulations for political action. The featured plays include Nabyl Lahlou’s Ophelia is Not Dead, Morocco, 1969; Mamdūḥ ‘Adwān’s Hamlet Wakes up Late, Syria, 1976; and Jawād Al-Assadī’s Forget Hamlet, Iraq, 1994. While this study draws on trauma theory and its tropes such as mourning, melancholia, and traumatic memory, it attempts to extend the theory’s scope to non-Western cases by showing the causes of the characters’ trauma, whether it is individual or collective, and how such traumatized subjects cope with their traumas.