appearance of the Ghost there is a sense of inevitability in Hamlet’s fate. As he progresses through the play, he undergoes an acceptance of his own mortality. Hamlet’s acceptance and “readiness” for death was something which the designer for Boyd’s production, Tom Piper, built into the characters’ costuming:
Laertes changes from light, golden boy to black avenger. Hamlet begins as a black avenger and ends up in light grey, a sort ofEveryman colour, because on his return in Act 5, Hamlet becomes more accepting, more at peace in a sense. Grey tones also give a sense of being half in and half out of the world. It’s as though, at the end, Hamlet is beginning to accept that he’s about to join the world of the ash people—the gravedigger is also in grey. 66
Greg Hicks, who played the startling Ghost, also played the Player King and the First Gravedigger: “It’s a great treble because there are resonances of Hamlet’s father in each one of the roles, especially the gravedigger.” 67
Michael Boyd’s doubling of roles provided a sense of the dead being present among the living and looking after their loved ones in spirit:
When I asked her [Meg Fraser, who played Ophelia] to play the second gravedigger too it was because I thought there was something very moving in the fact that, in that benign scene, Hamlet was with people who loved him: his father and Ophelia. 68
Meg Fraser commented on this comforting but macabre idea: “I also play the second gravedigger—Ophelia digs her own grave!… And now I wear the same make-up for both parts because it’s about making connections rather than being naturalistic.” 69
The references to grief and death were markedly used in the set for the Adrian Noble production in 1992:
The unweeded garden of Elsinore exists downstage in Bob Crowley’s design. The right arm of the subterranean ghost pushes through like the arm in John Boorman’s
Deliverance
, and Ophelia plucks her flowers here shortly before the gravediggers prepare her tomb. If Denmark is a prison, it is also, finally, a graveyard. The stage is littered with pink garlands and funeral mounds. 70
As indicated, the Ghost in this production emerged from a garden, which formed the front part of the stage, and was later used for Ophelia’s madness scene and the burial.
What you are left with after Hamlet’s return from England is a landscape of grief. By the end the whole stage is a huge graveyard, not literally with tombstones, but just dead flowers everywhere. 71
Love and Madness
Hamlet
evokes the long-distance loneliness and isolation of three lost, young things—Hamlet, Laertes and Ophelia—caught up in a political and personal revenge that’s the death of them. (Nicholas de Jongh) 72
The parallel stories of two families and how their children cope with the death of their fathers is central to the plot of
Hamlet
. Hamlet’s dilemma after seeing the Ghost lies in the fact that he is too aware of the possible consequences of his actions. The intelligence of his imagination is such that he knows that the Ghost’s request for revenge has two possible outcomes for him: death or madness. As hot-blooded avenger he will provoke the punishment of the state, whereas not to act—to withdraw—would only compound and multiply his already unbearable grief and frustration to a state of madness. Both of these options are against his nature and his sensibility. However, Shakespeare demonstrates their tragic consequences in the reactions of Polonius’ children, Laertes and Ophelia.
Most actors, although they may reach a peak of frenzy, do not play Hamlet as genuinely mad. In Ron Daniels’ 1989 production, however, the disintegrating mind of Hamlet was evidenced in Elsinore’s state of collapse.
Set in what appears as an exclusive sanatorium with extensive views over the North Sea, Ron Daniels’s production presents a group of cheerfully contented inmates who all fall victim to a killer disease.… Antony
Laertes changes from light, golden boy to black avenger. Hamlet begins as a black avenger and ends up in light grey, a sort ofEveryman colour, because on his return in Act 5, Hamlet becomes more accepting, more at peace in a sense. Grey tones also give a sense of being half in and half out of the world. It’s as though, at the end, Hamlet is beginning to accept that he’s about to join the world of the ash people—the gravedigger is also in grey. 66
Greg Hicks, who played the startling Ghost, also played the Player King and the First Gravedigger: “It’s a great treble because there are resonances of Hamlet’s father in each one of the roles, especially the gravedigger.” 67
Michael Boyd’s doubling of roles provided a sense of the dead being present among the living and looking after their loved ones in spirit:
When I asked her [Meg Fraser, who played Ophelia] to play the second gravedigger too it was because I thought there was something very moving in the fact that, in that benign scene, Hamlet was with people who loved him: his father and Ophelia. 68
Meg Fraser commented on this comforting but macabre idea: “I also play the second gravedigger—Ophelia digs her own grave!… And now I wear the same make-up for both parts because it’s about making connections rather than being naturalistic.” 69
The references to grief and death were markedly used in the set for the Adrian Noble production in 1992:
The unweeded garden of Elsinore exists downstage in Bob Crowley’s design. The right arm of the subterranean ghost pushes through like the arm in John Boorman’s
Deliverance
, and Ophelia plucks her flowers here shortly before the gravediggers prepare her tomb. If Denmark is a prison, it is also, finally, a graveyard. The stage is littered with pink garlands and funeral mounds. 70
As indicated, the Ghost in this production emerged from a garden, which formed the front part of the stage, and was later used for Ophelia’s madness scene and the burial.
What you are left with after Hamlet’s return from England is a landscape of grief. By the end the whole stage is a huge graveyard, not literally with tombstones, but just dead flowers everywhere. 71
Love and Madness
Hamlet
evokes the long-distance loneliness and isolation of three lost, young things—Hamlet, Laertes and Ophelia—caught up in a political and personal revenge that’s the death of them. (Nicholas de Jongh) 72
The parallel stories of two families and how their children cope with the death of their fathers is central to the plot of
Hamlet
. Hamlet’s dilemma after seeing the Ghost lies in the fact that he is too aware of the possible consequences of his actions. The intelligence of his imagination is such that he knows that the Ghost’s request for revenge has two possible outcomes for him: death or madness. As hot-blooded avenger he will provoke the punishment of the state, whereas not to act—to withdraw—would only compound and multiply his already unbearable grief and frustration to a state of madness. Both of these options are against his nature and his sensibility. However, Shakespeare demonstrates their tragic consequences in the reactions of Polonius’ children, Laertes and Ophelia.
Most actors, although they may reach a peak of frenzy, do not play Hamlet as genuinely mad. In Ron Daniels’ 1989 production, however, the disintegrating mind of Hamlet was evidenced in Elsinore’s state of collapse.
Set in what appears as an exclusive sanatorium with extensive views over the North Sea, Ron Daniels’s production presents a group of cheerfully contented inmates who all fall victim to a killer disease.… Antony
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