Did Shakespeare Annotate this 16th Century Source for Hamlet?

Did Shakespeare Annotate this 16th Century Source for Hamlet?

by Tony Tambasco

The Guardian recently reported that independent researcher John Casson noted that marginalia in the British Library's copy of François de Belleforest’s Histoires Tragiques, a possible source for Hamlet, are likely to be Shakespeare's own notes, presumably to assist him in writing Hamlet. While an exciting possibility, there are several problems with Casson's reasoning.

"Who else was interested in this text in the late 16th century? There is only one person we absolutely know was interested in it, and that’s Shakespeare. No other person has been shown to definitely have an interest in this text," says Casson. But if we treat his first question as an honest one, the answer could be just about anyone. Casson's presumption is that, since we have a play by William Shakespeare from the 16th century for which a section of Histoires Tragiques may have been a source, no one else in the whole of early modern England (1), let alone the city of London, might have taken an interest in this book. With the path to royal succession in question, since it was clear that that Queen Elizabeth I would not herself have a child, being the foremost political question of the day, hat logic is simply incredible. Since one of the underlined passages that Casson uses to argue his point related directly to the question of succession, we can only stand his above question on it's head: with the fate of the nation at stake, who wouldn't be interested in questions of succession?

Casson also makes the point that these notes must pre-date Shakespeare's Hamlet because the notes make no mention of Shakespeare's play. "there is no mention of the play. If you were annotating after the play, you would put: ‘This was Shakespeare’s Hamlet; he refers to this.’ You wouldn’t be coy," he says. Which carries with it the dangerous presumption that just about anyone in early modern London could be relied upon to know or care about Shakespeare's Hamlet. Hamlet, for us, is one of the great works of Western Civilization, and Shakespeare the greatest dramatist of the same. For early modern Londoners, he was an actor and a writer, more or less equivalent to comic book authors, and certainly far less interesting than any of the wealthy aristocrats who were the real centers of power and fashion. Hamlet might have, at best, enjoyed the sort of response that a movie like Captain America: The Winter Soldier did upon its release, and in all likelihood wouldn't garner special attention from the political class or the traditional guardians of culture in early modern London.

And we also have to admit the possibility that, even if the annotator of this book was familiar with Hamlet, he might not have had it in mind when making these annotations. It is just as likely that a lawyer, having seen a production of a play called Hamlet, written by someone other than Shakespeare and now completely lost to us, was intrigued by the alien idea of king's succeeding to the throne in alternate ways than the English system, and becoming more intrigued by other aspects of the story, made his complete set of notes. This scenario is complete speculation, but it is no less speculative than Casson's.

Casson is an anti-Stratfordian, and believes the true author of Shakespeare's plays was the courtier Sir Henry Neville. That is simply not true, as better researchers than I have continually noted, and as Brian Vickers and John Mullan note in The Guardian article. But if Casson were correct, and Neville was the man behind Hamlet and the other plays, his entire argument might make more sense. Based on extent scenes in French from Shakespeare's plays (most notably Henry V), Shakespeare from Stratford, the actor and playwright, while clearly possessing some proficiency with the French language, probably did not know French well enough to use a book written in French as his primary source for anything, especially when an English translation was published just one year after the book Casson examines.

While Casson's theory is intriguing, it is based on the idea that no one else might have found the ideas in this particular section of Belleforest’s Histoires Tragiques especially noteworthy, and there's little reason to suppose that. Casson likewise assumes that anyone else would have necessarily been reading and noting Shakespeare's sources like a modern secondary school student working on a term paper, and given the status of plays in Shakespeare's London, that's pretty clearly not the case, either. There is simply insufficient grounds to presume that this is Shakespeare's book and the notes in Shakespeare's hand, and there is at least some extant evidence to the contrary.

If you're interested in reading Casson's article in the British Library's journal about his findings, which includes photographs of some of the pages in question, you can find that here: https://www.bl.uk/eblj/2016articles/pdf/ebljarticle72016.pdf. And if you're interested in reading an English translation of Belleforst's Histoires Tragiques that may serve as a source for Hamlet, you can find that here: http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/doc/Belleforest_M/complete/

Endnotes

1. Casson admits that the provenance of the copy of Histoires Tragiques is of an unknown provenance before being added to the British library by King George III.

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Tony Tambasco is the artistic director of Bad Quarto Productions. 

Rethinking Romance Genres with "Cupid's Revenge"

One of my joys in exploring the non-Shakespearean drama of the English Renaissance are the plays that play with genre. One can forgive Polonius (or even Corambis) for the extensive list of dramatic genres that players are to be congratulated for mastering: "the tragical-comical-historical-pastoral" (Hamlet, TLN 1479) suggests genre flips that can only be taxing for the playwrights and performers.

This kind of genre bending is rare for us today. We tend to know what kind of movie or television show we're going to get before we see it, and there is rarely any deviation from the formula. Which isn't to say that the formula can't be done well: I have previously written about my admiration for Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but as intelligent and politically relevant, even necessary, as The Winter Soldier may be, it still follows the basic action genre formula closely.

Most dramatic works establish what Colin Counsell calls "the law of the text" pretty early and stick to it. The law of the text establishes the ground rules for the the audience's interpretation of all elements of a play, so it's important for more plays to establish the law of the text early in the performance (Counsell 15). As an audience, we need to know how we should interpret signs and signifiers in order to enjoy the reading of the story: i.e. should we read that table as a representation of a table from the period in which the play takes place? Should we interpret it as a sign of wealth and status of the characters who use it? Should we read it as an artistic commentary on that wealth and status, or by extension, those characters? Is the cigar merely a cigar, or should we understand it to have signifying value beyond itself? And if so, how much weight should we give that significance, especially as relates to the signifying value of the object as an object?

This law of the text is usually imparted to us, as an audience, so seamlessly that we don't even realize it's happening, but when that law changes, our understanding of the world is turned on its head. Some films use this as a technique to great success: When Keeanu Reeves wakes up in a vat of goo in The Matrix, nothing that we've seen in the movie up to that point makes sense anymore. When Selma Hayek bites down hard on Quentin Tarantino's jugular in From Dusk Till Dawn, we're as surprised as George Clooney, Harvey Keitel, and Juliette Lewis to learn that this is a vampire movie. We're as confused as everyone else, and as a result, we can share in the immediacy and confusion of our protagonists.

It's easy for us to forget that Shakespeare was a fairly conservative writer, but it also shouldn't be too surprising: when you're the master of a formula, why deviate from it? Even as Shakespeare begins to incorporate some of the changing dramatic tastes into his later work (a masque in The Tempest, for example), his later work is most notable for how his verse develops to match the rhythms of natural speech and thought more closely. The real innovations in dramatic formula came from the next generation of playwrights, and Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher offer us an example of how the "up and coming" playwrights of the early 1600s were developing their own dramatic signatures with plays like Cupid's Revenge.

The law of the text that Cupid's Revenge establishes tells us that this is going to be a romantic comedy. A puritan princess is going to get her comeuppance by falling in love with a clown, the Duke will learn the perils of doting too much on his daughter, and his son will, through all of this, leave off his dallying and grow into the kind of king Lycia needs him to be. And then the bodies start hitting the floor, and Cupid changes from a "blind rascally boy that abuses every one's eyes because his own are out" (as Shakespeare describes him) to a dark and vengeful god whose blood-lust can bring down a country. By the time we've figured out what's happening in this play, the characters we suspected were our protagonists are already dead.

Beaumont and Fletcher wrote Cupid’s Revenge at a time when theatre was beginning to more closely resemble theatre as we know it than it was theatre as Shakespeare knew it, and Beaumont and Fletcher were key innovators in making that leap. Cupid’s Revenge comes right from that moment when Shakespeare was starting to hang up his pen, and English theatre was making an evolutionary leap. This "next generation" of playwrights knew they needed to do something to make their mark, and their formal experiments in drama, including genre bending, helped bring the theatre of the early modern period into something more recognizable to the modern era.

Works Cited

Beaumont, Francis and John Fletcher. Cupid's Revenge. London: 1615. EEBO.  Accessed August 2016. STC 1667.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Dir. Anthony Russo and Joe Russo. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictyures: 2014. Film.

Counsell, Colin. Signs of Performance. London: Routledge. 1996. Print.

From Dusk Till Dawn. Dir. Robert Rodriguez. Miramax: 1996. Film.

The Matrix. Dir. The Wachowski Brothers. Warner Bros.: 1999. Film.

Shakespeare, William. As You Like It. The Open Source Shakespeare. Fairfax: George Mason University. Web. Accessed 20 February 2017. <http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org>

--. Hamlet. The Open Source Shakespeare. Fairfax: George Mason University. Web. Accessed 20 February 2017. <http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org>

--. Twelfth Night. The Open Source Shakespeare. Fairfax: George Mason University. Web. Accessed 20 February 2017. <http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org>

Tambasco, Tony. "A Jig or a Tale of Bawdry." The Shakespeare Standard. 14 Sept. 2014. Web. Accessed 20 February 2017. <http://theshakespearestandard.com/notes-breach-jig-tale-bawdry/>

Who's Behind the Q1 Hamlet Anyway?

Usually, after I've directed one of these "bad quarto" plays, I come away feeling like I have a better sense of how the text was produced. Not like it's an opinion that counts for much, and not like I think my experiences as a director should count for legitimate scholarly evidence, but when someone asks me "so what do you think?" I usually have an answer for them.

The title page of the 1603 (Q1) Hamlet.

With Hamlet I'm stumped.

There are a lot of really good theories out there that sell me on one answer or another, except for that one thing: the Q2 of Hamlet was printed the following year. Nicholas Ling (the N.L. of the title pages) had a hand in both printings, so even the old fashioned stories of corrupt stationers and literary piracy require some X-Files level conspiracy theories about the secret machinations of the Stationers' Company to sell a book that, as Peter W.M. Blayney has demonstrated, would have been a financial gamble in the best of cases.

If we accept that the Q2 text of Hamlet has the closest link to Shakespeare's draft, and I don't think that's an unreasonable assertion, it's hard not to see Q2 as an immediate corrective to Q1. The Arden 3 editors argue that the Folio copy derives from the Q2 copy, and then the Q1 copy derives from the F copy, and if we imagine that Shakespeare, who was also trying to make a name for himself as a literary poet, saw his name appear in print with what he viewed as a deformed copy of his work, he might have felt the need to make a deal with Ling in an attempt to restore his reputation.

The title page from the 1604 (Q2) Hamlet.
Though the title page is blemished, the date
is visible in the bottom-center of the page. 

But this still doesn't tell us where the Q1 copy came from. Or why Ling would have printed the book a second time when he didn't know the text well enough to raise questions or stop publication the first time around.

Ultimately, Q2 is the best evidence we have for how we should treat Q1: but even then, we can't really be sure that Q2 derives from Shakespeare's manuscript. I think it's plausible that the printing of Q1 sparked Shakespeare's concern with his legacy as a poet, and perhaps inspired him to be the "literary dramatist" that Lukas Erne sees him as, but that's a stretch based, in part, on my feeling that, while Q2 might make for better reading, Q1 actually makes for a better play, and this would be the sole example of Shakespeare taking an active interest in his legacy as a literary playwright.

For all we know, it might have been Ling himself who was disappointed with the Q1 Hamlet, and sought out a better copy text for a subsequent printing. But that depends on Ling, or his readers, being familiar with the stage performance of Hamlet and not finding the printed book faithful enough to the stage production. Which would, in turn, mean that Q1 probably wasn't the version played on stage, but also doesn't explain scene 14, as well as some of the other markers that the Q1 Hamlet derives, at least in part, from some performance text somehow. If someone was memorially reconstructing the play, why bother to invent a scene that collapsed several scenes into one? And what about all the "Os" and "Ahs" that seem to be transcriptions of actors speaking the speech?

The title page from the 1605 printing of
the Q2 Hamlet. 

Lacking better evidence, I just can't say where Q1 came from. I don't know what it is, and I don't have enough information to venture a guess, and lacking any further evidence, all we can do is suppose.

But there are some things I do know: for everyone who found the Q1 text to be lacking in compared to the conflations they're more familiar with, we've had someone say that this version of the play makes a lot more sense to them; some audience members who had never heard of us or of textual variants before came back to see the show again; and a couple of kids who came to see the play seemed to enjoy it. For all that, I stand by my earlier assessment: the longer texts of Hamlet might make for better literature, but the "bad quarto," at least in terms of its structure, makes for a better play.

Whatever it's origins, I am certainly glad we've had the chance to explore these questions in performance, I am grateful to the company of Hamlet, The First Quarto, and for all of our audience members for making the journey with us.

Youth in Revolt

One of the first things most scholars and editors note that differentiates the first quarto of Hamlet from the second quarto or the Folio is that the first quarto Hamlet is younger than his more well known counterparts. In the first quarto, the gravedigger (1 Clown) describes Yorrick's skull as "a skull hath been here this dozen year," whereas in Q2 that same skull is "a scull now hath lyen you i'th earth 23. yeeres." and in F "this Scul, has laine in the earth three & twenty years." Given that in all cases, Hamlet's says that Yorrick carried him on his back when he was a child, (somewhere between the ages of 5 and 8 probably), we can assume that Q1's Hamlet is in his late teens, whereas the more familiar Hamlet is in his late 20s. And suddenly Hamlet starts making a lot more sense.

In any version of Hamlet, not only the eponymous Dane, but also Leartes, Ofelia, Ro(ssencraft or -zencrantz), and G(ilderstone or -uildenstern) all go through some wild mood swings and make some highly questionable life choices. These all make a lot more sense if they're in their late teens than their late 20s: they have less life experience to draw on period, and their brains are still wired for child-like ways of perceiving the world. They act suddenly and passionately, and their experience of a flawed world clashes with their youthful fantasies, and they kick against that.

It wasn't long after I started thinking of the implications of a youth-driven Hamlet that I started turning to another another great work of youth in revolt for inspiration: The Catcher in the Rye. The more I thought about it, the more Hamlet and Holden seemed to have in common. Both rail against seeming and phoniness, both treat the wisdom of their elders as dubious at best, both are in the company of unreliable friends, and both let their fantasies of perfection be the enemies of good.

In casting Hamlet, The First Quarto I also made the conscious choice to cast the King as the very younger brother of old King Hamlet - this is someone who Prince Hamlet can only view as closer in age to a brother, and lacking in the avuncular authority that someone closer in age to old King Hamlet would implicitly have. The only adults in the room are the Queen, trying to recapture her youth by marrying the younger and less disciplined version of her husband, and Corambis, who though intelligent, struggles with the fogginess of his advancing age.

Everyone in this production of Hamlet is struggling with maturity, and transitioning from one state of being to another: even players have to travel, and not even the dead can rest easy. Again and again I find that the more things change, the more these plays still have the power to speak to us as we and our world changes around us.

Bad Quarto Productions' Hamlet, The First Quarto runs now through April 10th at 353 W. 48th St. in New York. For tickets please visit http://BadQuartoHamlet.bpt.me and for more information please visit http://www.badquarto.org.

Playing Hamlet

Playing Hamlet is, above all, intimidating. This is an old cliché, but like all of the oldest clichés, it has stuck to the collective consciousness for a reason: it is true. Hamlet gives us one of the most interesting considerations of suicide and the ending of life of any character in Western literature. Hamlet is Shakespeare to most. Not as Prospero is William Shakespeare the artist/magician; rather, Hamlet embodies the struggle between the self-fashioning philosophies of the Renaissance with the order and heroism of the Medieval that animates, to my mind, the very heart of Shakespeare’s work. “What is I?” has always seemed like Shakespeare’s most persistent question, and Hamlet is that question made flesh and interesting and dramatic.

Hamlet (Alex Dabertin) prepares to kill the
King (John Walbolt) in Bad Quarto's Hamlet

How do I embody all that? Obviously I cannot, but I must try.

Most actors get to be supported in this mad, open, painful endeavor by a cast and director they meet in the flesh every day or a few times a week. They get to be grieved and sallied together, and the actor playing Hamlet can let himself be as much of an ensemble member as he is able, which, in my consideration, is the best thing any actor can do. I, on the other hand, must struggle almost alone.

Some romantic teenagers, some Hamlets, out there might think that I am lucky, that my near complete autonomy allows me to find my true Hamlet, a Hamlet more original and more real than any other. Unfortunately, an actor, at least this actor, is not an original creature—we imitate at start and move from there: reacting, pushing, and seeing what happens outside. Completely original emotional fabrication on the part of an actor has a name: “camp.” And Hamlet does the solitary actor no favors. All of Hamlet’s greatest soliloquies (or part soliloquy, depending on what text one uses), are direct reactions to what is happening onstage, and many of Hamlet’s most powerful emotional beats spur forth while he is surrounded, none of which I can practice ahead of time. It is the confusion around him that reflects and feeds his struggle.

Bad Quarto Productions force me to develop my part in a near vacuum and in that way make me work in almost the purest form of theatrical acting. I must first hone my breathing and my mental casting so that I can imagine many possible reactions to my lines and make all of the options supported. I must be aware that I am being observed and try to make myself a dynamic stage presence, and most of all, for Hamlet, I must make sure my images are crystal clear. It is the montage of my mental images, their juxtaposition, order, and duration, which embodies the sole creative portion of my acting process. The rest are following certain rules, at best creatively, yes, but overall line memorization and movement are basically rote activities—as modern convention mostly desires them to be. My mental life, however, is entirely mine, and in a Bad Quarto production, it is almost untainted

This is not a necessarily good thing. While, yes, this autonomy makes me feel good, it does not always mean that I see the forest for the trees, or even that I have seen the trees as they are at all. This monomania is the reason why directors exist, I find. Tony nudges me to look again at the text I am speaking: what is the cadence the verse wants me to use? Should I agree or go against the grain? What is happening? Why does Hamlet say these things? Actors need directors. Young actors need them more.

I have been so influenced by all the Hamlets I have seen, and all the classes I have taken on the Prince…and my own particular biases—such as the fact that my father died when I was very young and so have never really had the feeling Hamlet has, the fact that I sometimes hate men as a rule, particularly when they are cruel to women—that I could not see certain developments in the text. The most important of these interactions was directed around the “nunnery” scene.

I could find nothing but Hamlet’s unnecessary misogynist tirade against Ofelia. I could neither forgive him nor understand him. I almost did not want to. It was at this time that Tony took me by the hand and led me through my trepidation to an understanding that felt much more natural and real than I could before have hoped. That being said, Tony and I disagree sometimes too. Directors also need actors to deflate their own assumptions, too.

Influence has been a problem in another way in this process as well: the undue influence of the Second Quarto and Folio texts of Hamlet. Often I have found myself slipping into the more famous verse rather than the more contradictory lines of our working text. The example that most comes to mind is “that puzzles the will,” rather than “that puzzles the brain and confound the sense.” Easy enough to see why the mind gravitates towards the more common version, but that is no excuse. This textual sensitivity—and the directness of the first quarto—has been a boon, however. I must be more concerned about what the real goal of Hamlet’s words is because I must speak words I do not think of as Hamlet’s. In a way, that makes them more mine than any of my friends’ previous turns as Hamlet.

I have very little more to say about Hamlet. I am still nailing down all of my lines; I am still finding out what I will be when I am on stage; I am still in process. This is a good place to be…but it is terrifying. I want to be so perfectly settled that no one can tell I am human, that would make me feel safe. It would be terrible theater, but I could do my job.

In the end, I will have to be terrified onstage, which, I think and hope, will allow me to touch the most visceral aspect of Hamlet’s life as we see it onstage: his terror and confusion. Hamlet is smarter than pretty much everybody onstage, but too often that translates into him being shown as some Bugs Bunny like infallible being. I do not want that. I want my Hamlet, if nothing else, to be achingly human, afraid, and confused, as I feel he should be. I now can only do the work to make sure that my terror is not hollowly mine but Hamlet’s as well.   

Meet the Company of Bad Quarto's Hamlet!

Get to know the company of Bad Quarto's upcoming production of Hamlet, The First Quarto!

Alex Dabertin (Hamlet) is an actor, writer, and director who recently graduated from Columbia University, and he is so, so incredibly excited to be a part of Bad Quarto's Hamlet. He has nothing but gratitude for the whole amazing Bad Quarto crew. Recently he was seen in Bad Quarto's Taming of a Shrew, and The Brewing Department's Othello. You can find him on Facebook as "Alex Niles Dabertin" and on tumblr as "postmodernnosferatu."

Beatriz Browne (Ofelia, Braggart Gentleman) is very excited to be returning to her second production with Bad Quarto. Beatriz is a Brazilian actress and graduate of AMDA. Since graduation in 2015, she has been working extensively in film, television and theater. Past credits include: The Taming of A Shrew, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Marat/Sade, and more. With a passion for Shakespeare, she cannot wait to explore the text and put it to work with her fellow cast members. Big thanks to her family for the constant support, and to Tony for believing in her work.

Kitty Mortland (Queen Gertred) recently appeared in Richard II and Romeo and Juliet with Hamlet Isn't Dead, Measure for Measure with Hudson Warehouse, and As You Like It with Folding Chair Classical Theatre. Originally from Chicago, she appeared there in Down & Derby (The New Colony), Devour (20% Theatre Chicago), and the Jeff Nominated The Bad Seed: The Musical (Corn Productions). Kitty also played the title character in Hamlet: The Series, available on YouTube. When not on stage, Kitty is also a singer/songwriter who has played venues across the Chicagoland area including the Elbo Room, the Underground Lounge, and Reggie's Rock Club. DFTBA.

James Overton (Ghost, Player Duke, Fortenbrasse). This will be James Overton's second time working with Bad Quarto Productions and he couldn't be more excited! He last appeared with Bad Quarto as Lord/Simon in, The Taming of a Shrew and more recently as Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night at the Secret Theatre. James recently graduated from Bennington College where he concentrated in Drama and Music Composition before moving to New York City last summer to pursue his career. He is an accomplished singer, guitarist, and ukulele player. He is a natural blonde.

Roz Cavallaro (Rossencraft, 1st Sentinel, 2nd English Ambassador) is thrilled to be a part of another Bad Quarto production. Some of her previous credits include, Phylema in The Taming of a Shrew, Ensemble in Julius Caesar, Rosalind/Ensemble in Conditions of Love (a devised Shakespeare and Sondheim piece featured in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival), Bella in Big Love, Solita in Capture by Emily Dinova, and Hera in The Nemesis Effect by S.E. Taylor.

Arif Silverman (Marcellus, Player Duchess) graduated from Oberlin College with a degree in theater this past May. His film Bless Me, Apollo recently saw its premiere at Dixon Place in January. Other recent credits include: All’s Well That Ends Well (Shakespeare on the Sound), Nolie Min Tangible (Dixon Place), Spirits to Enforce (Cleveland Public Theater), The Bacchae (Edinburgh Fringe Festival), The Taming of the Shrew (Pulse Ensemble Theater) & Heart to Heart (American Globe Theater).

Dani Martineck (Gilderstone, Gravedigger) is a New York-based actor, writer, and lab manager. Dani recently appeared in Swiftly Tilting Theatre Project's Twelfth Night (Viola) and played five seasons with Tennessee Stage Company's Shakespeare on the Square. Favorite Shakespeare credits include Hamlet (Rosencrantz) and Taming of the Shrew (Grumio).

Sophia Kokonas (Corambis, priest, ambassador) grew up in Chicago and after taking some acting classes in the city she decided to move to NYC to train at the Atlantic Theater Company's Conservatory program. There she had some of the best acting teachers in New York and discovered that Shakespeare, Moliere, and Chekhov are all she ever wants to do in life. Sophia is so excited to have been cast in Bad Quarto's production of the Hamlet and thanks everyone who made this production possible!

Owen Moss Hayden (Barnardo, Montano, the Player Murderer, Voltemar) is in his first production with Bad Quarto. Past credits include: Edgar Willoughby in The Poet (Manhattan Rep), Hotspur in Henry IV, part I (Hampshire Shakespeare), and Petruccio in Taming of the Shrew (Theater Under The Stars). He thoroughly believes flying by the seat of
his pants is the best way to travel.

Andre Silva (Leartes) is a New York based actor. He recently finished an intensive course at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA). He has been seen in Bad Quartos production of The Taming of a Shrew and The Second Shepherds Play, and in Daniel Adams production of Three Sisters at the Alchemical Theater Laboratory. He has just finished filming his first indie feature film, Jay Mancini, and also has several short films being submitted to film festivals around the country. He is delighted to be a part of this cast and wants to thank his friends and family for their ever growing support! www.AndreSilva.info

Rachel Matuse (Horatio) is thrilled to be returning to work with Bad Quarto Productions in Hamlet. Most recently she was involved in their production of The Taming of a Shrew. She is a graduate of the George Washington University, and recently trained with the Shakespeare Theatre of NJ, where she performed as Marcus in Titus Andronicus. Other notable credits include Olivia in Twelfth Night, Nurse Ratched in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Stella in Streetcar. Rachel is a proud teaching artist with George Street Playhouse, and has a particular passion for socially progressive theater. Thank you to her family and friends, and enjoy the show!

John Walbolt (King) is thrilled to be doing Shakespeare here in New York with Bad Quarto! Favorite credits include Feste in Twelfth Night, Frederic in The Pirates of Penzance, and Victor in Cabaret. John also develops free mobile Apps for performers, most notably Pocket Pitch for iPhone. Thanks to Mom, Dad, Grandma, Val, Farns, Peter, Jose, Jassy, UC Irvine and the Golden State Warriors! www.JohnWalbolt.com

Tony Tambasco (Director) is excited to be directing the first quarto of Hamlet, and to be the Artistic Director of Bad Quarto Productions. Some of his past credits with Bad Quarto include The Taming of a Shrew, The Cronicle Historie of Henry the Fift, The Ballad of Dido, and The Merry Devil of Edmonton. Some of his other favorite directing credits include Julius Caesar (Sweet Tea Shakespeare), As You Like It (The Weathervane Playhouse), An Experiment with an Air Pump (Clarkson University), and Closer (Catalyst Theatre Co.). Tony holds an MFA in directing and a M.Litt. in Shakespeare from The American Shakespeare Center / Mary Baldwin College. He is deeply grateful to everyone who has helped make Bad Quarto, and this production of Hamlet a success.

"That Same Skull, Sir."

Bad Quarto's production of Hamlet. Featuring
Alex Dabertin as Hamlet. Directed by Tony Tambasco.
http://BadQuartoHamlet.bpt.me

Rehearsals are well underway for our current production of Hamlet, and I couldn't be more excited. I've been wanting to direct Hamlet for some time, and I couldn't be more pleased to be working with this most excellent company on this most excellent play.

Something I've wrestled with in preparing this production was finding a unifying image that really stuck out to me. I tend to find that my best work as a director comes when I've got a clear image in my head that captures the essence of what the play is about: like the thesis of an essay, it helps keep you focused on the story you're trying to tell and faithful in the way you're telling it. And, conveniently, it tends to make for a good poster.

Hamlet was a challenge, though, because one of the most prominent images to me has always been of the world, and Denmark specifically, as " an unweeded garden // That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature // Possess it merely." I picture the Denmark of the beginning of the play as a the garden that old King Hamlet died in, left untended by King Claudius, and the implements for cleaning it grown rusty and dull with age. Hamlet spends the entire play sharpening his metaphorical machete until he is ready to clean house.

Clearly, I didn't go with that concept.

First and foremost, those lines I quoted above don't appear in the first quarto of Hamlet, so it wouldn't have been appropriate to use them. But beyond that, the image of the skull is so intimately connected to Hamlet, and to Shakespeare in general, that I felt like I couldn't ignore it. The image of Hamlet holding a skull and reciting his "To be or not to be" speech, a-textual as it is, has endured as an image of the master Shakespearean tragedian confronting Shakespeare's most difficult role.

John Gielgud as Hamlet. 

Of course, as we've already discussed, the "To be or not to be" speech is different in the first quarto, and no version of the text asks for Hamlet to be holding a skull in that moment. And, maybe most significantly of all, when Hamlet does confront Yorrick's skull, and his own mortality in a concrete way, he is in the company of Horatio, by then his only friend, and the gravedigger, who gives him practical lessons in the materiality of death, which is what ultimately prepares him to accept the "special providence in the fall of a sparrow," and that "the readiness is all."

When Hamlet looks at Yorrick's skull, he knows he's looking at himself, and that understanding of death allow him to become the angel of death, and complete the vengeance that his father commanded him to. Which reminded me of a Hobein painting from the early modern period....

Holbein's The Ambassadors. 1533

Holbein's The Ambassadors is probably familiar to anyone who took an art history class for that anamorphic skull sitting in the bottom of the painting. Death is always present, despite all the other accomplishments and honors that we see depicted in the painting, our own deaths are always with us, but we can only see our deaths from a certain point of view, which makes everything else in our lives fall out of focus. This is what Hamlet ultimately wrestles with when he confronts Yorrick's skull, and learns to understand death as the gravedigger does: not as something to be wondered at, but, as Horatio says, "custom hath made it in him seem nothing." Whilst everyone else in the court, especially the King, fixates on the temporal trappings of life, Hamlet sees our temporal life for what it is, and more than a mere memnto mori, becomes death itself.

Bad Quarto Productions is dedicated to performances of Shakespearean plays that honor Shakespeare's original staging conditions, and Hamlet has given us an opportunity to explore that as regards the imagery of Hamlet.