The First Quarto of Hamlet and its Performance in London, 2010–11

Abstract

ABSTRACT Very little work has been done on how theatre directors employ, adapt and adopt the First Quarto of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in productions based on the “standard” Second Quarto and/or First Folio texts. This paper takes the productions at the National Theatre and the Globe Theatre directed by Nicholas Hytner and Dominic Dromgoole as case studies to explore how directors use Q1 in their texts. I examine the promptbooks of both productions for evidence of the First Quarto’s impact; I also study which editions of Hamlet the directors choose, as well as the way they talk about their texts and how newspaper critics respond. A director’s approach to and explanation of Q1 is heavily influenced by institutional background. Dromgoole, as Artistic Director of a theatre primarily dedicated to the study and performance of Shakespeare, frames Q1 within an academic discourse that increasingly saw the First Quarto as a text worthy of study. Hytner, by contrast, demonstrats much less of a desire to entertain academic trends then in vogue. The evidence suggests that directors do adopt parts of Q1 as they edit Hamlet for performance, particularly for the sake of condensing a play that could easily run for over three hours.