Abstract
Although Shakespeare and his plays have been a frequent subject of videogame adaptations in the past, these have often been confined to either theatre-making games (which present the staging of Shakespeare plays using the mechanisms of strategy or simulation videogame genres) of education/trivia games that aim to familiarise players with Shakespeare’s texts. While references to Shakespeare abound in videogames, there have been relatively few attempts to directly adapt one of his plays into the form of an interactive videogame narrative, where the player controls one or more of the principal characters and can affect the outcome of the story. This paper will examine four videogame adaptations of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, whose differing approaches to player-agency and interactivity in relation to narrative of the classic play demonstrate the interactive potential of Shakespearean drama. While the player-driven overwriting or rewriting of the classic text may appear irreverent, it is, in each game, dependent on some conception the original play and the past tradition that it represents, which is translated into the contemporary medium of the videogame. This illustrates Jacques Derrida’s contention that the longevity and translatability of Shakespearean texts are due to their ‘spectral’ qualities, in that they allow the past to be re-examined through the lens of the present and vice versa.
Highlights
Shakespeare and New MediaIn Specters of Marx Jacques, Derrida (1994) argues that William Shakespeare operates as a uniquely transitional figure in European literature, emerging from the traditions of Old Europe but at a point where ‘time is off its hinges’—i.e., where social, political, philosophical and technological upheavals posed a challenge to established certainties
The MMORPG Arden 1: the World of William Shakespeare (Castronova 2007) allows players to interact with Shakespearean characters outside the context of their plays (Best 2011) and the experimental art game Deus Ex Machina (Automata UK 1984) delivers gameplay and narrative that is based on a single soliloquy, engaging thematically with its source, Twelfth Night, rather than through a direct adaptation of its plot (Cornfield et al 2018)
In contrast to the largely linear structures of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet: a Murder Mystery and Hamlet, or the Last Game Without MMORPG Elements, Shaders, and Product Placement, in which the player moves between non-interactive narrative segments and interactive gameplay, the two more recent videogame adaptations of Hamlet employ what might be broadly defined as ‘branching’
Summary
In Specters of Marx Jacques, Derrida (1994) argues that William Shakespeare operates as a uniquely transitional figure in European literature, emerging from the traditions of Old Europe but at a point where ‘time is off its hinges’—i.e., where social, political, philosophical and technological upheavals posed a challenge to established certainties. It manifests as an ever-shifting set of cultural expectations that surround the idea of Shakespeare as a representative or embodiment of a past literary tradition but does not and cannot command fidelity to any original meaning or interpretation This ‘Thing “Shakespeare”’ is always irreducible to and in excess of any single production or encounter and it can be argued that any engagement with a Shakespearean text results not in the knowledge of a true, singular, original Shakespeare, but in ‘Shakespeares’—diverse and different texts and performances, which cannot be clearly ordered into a linear sequence of before and after From Derrida’s perspective, Shakespearean plays are so frequently performed and adapted because they are ‘spectral’ works: their openness and mutability means that they can be can explored through the lens of the contemporary, but this affords the possibility of re-examining the contemporary through the lens of the past. It is necessary to discuss what how videogames may operate as adaptations of older media, so as to better understand the challenges (and instinctual reticence) that come with adapting Shakespeare’s works into videogame formats
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