Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Studies in Hamlet, 1901–1955
- English Hamlets of the Twentieth Century
- The Date of Hamlet
- Hamlet and the Court of Elsinore
- Hamlet’s ‘Sullied’ or ‘Solid’ Flesh: A Bibliographical Case–History
- Hamlet at the Globe
- Hamlet Costumes from Garrick to Gielgud
- Hamlet at the Comédie Française: 1769–1896
- The New Way with Shakespeare’s Texts: An Introduction for Lay Readers. III. In Sight of Shakespeare’s Manuscripts
- Shakespeare in the Bibliotheca Bodmeriana
- An Unpublished Contemporary Setting of a Shakespeare Song
- Garrick’s Stratford Jubilee: Reactions in France and Germany
- Shakespeare and Bohemia
- International Notes
- Shakespeare Productions in the United Kingdom: 1954
- The Tragic Curve: A Review of two Productions of Macbeth
- The Year's Contributions to Shakespearian Study 1 Critical Studies
- 2 Shakespeare’s Life, Times and Stage
- 3 Textual Studies
- Book Received
- Index
- Plate Section
Hamlet at the Globe
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2007
- Frontmatter
- Studies in Hamlet, 1901–1955
- English Hamlets of the Twentieth Century
- The Date of Hamlet
- Hamlet and the Court of Elsinore
- Hamlet’s ‘Sullied’ or ‘Solid’ Flesh: A Bibliographical Case–History
- Hamlet at the Globe
- Hamlet Costumes from Garrick to Gielgud
- Hamlet at the Comédie Française: 1769–1896
- The New Way with Shakespeare’s Texts: An Introduction for Lay Readers. III. In Sight of Shakespeare’s Manuscripts
- Shakespeare in the Bibliotheca Bodmeriana
- An Unpublished Contemporary Setting of a Shakespeare Song
- Garrick’s Stratford Jubilee: Reactions in France and Germany
- Shakespeare and Bohemia
- International Notes
- Shakespeare Productions in the United Kingdom: 1954
- The Tragic Curve: A Review of two Productions of Macbeth
- The Year's Contributions to Shakespearian Study 1 Critical Studies
- 2 Shakespeare’s Life, Times and Stage
- 3 Textual Studies
- Book Received
- Index
- Plate Section
Summary
How Hamlet was given at the Globe is a somewhat troublesome inquiry, not because it makes any particularly difficult demands, but because there are in the original texts so few specific demands of any kind. Its directions authorize no discoveries by a curtain or any scene in the balcony. One textual allusion, it is true, has been held to hint at use of the latter. Hamlet (IV, iii, 39) says of Polonius’s body, “you shall nose him as you go vp the staires into the Lobby.” But to argue that the lobby thus referred to is the one in which II, ii and III, i were played, or that such a reference means the balcony, seems to confuse a ‘dramatic’ with a ‘theatrical’ allusion. The fact is that Hamlet could if necessary be given almost anywhere, even on an arena stage, with less distortion than most Elizabethan plays. Differences of opinion on the way it was presented come mostly from our own different assumptions and inferences.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Shakespeare Survey , pp. 49 - 53Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1956