I want to play Hamlet. Hamlet is considered the greatest role for an actor to play and why because I am a woman should I be denied? The idea of female Hamlets is actually not a new one. It has been around for quite some time. In the 1700s, Sarah Siddons is documented as the first female to play Hamlet, however I have my suspicions that there were damsel dames before her.
Siddon’s performance of Hamlet would grapple very little with femininity in the character of Hamlet himself. She would instead, do a very jaw dropping thing, with a direct simple costuming choice- not to wear breeches. At the same time she did not as later productions featuring female Hamlets did- feature her features. In fact it was androgyny that was trying to be obtained. It was almost as if she was saying yes I am a female but no that is not the point of this show, now let’s move on with it shall we?!
One has to pause and consider what it is exactly the audience was asked to move on to! What Sarah Siddons asked her 18th century audience to do by presenting an androgynous Hamlet, is quite extraordinary. This type of interpretation moves says to the audience – Hamlet is beyond gender. Hamlet is a character with deep emotional introspection and according to Harold Bloom defines what is to be human.( Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of a Human) It leads one to wonder does the character’s human introspection go far beyond culturally created genders?
Most famous of all females to play Hamlet is of course the great Sarah Berhardt. In 1900 she would take off the corset and cast on the “nighted color” of Hamlet (Act 1 sc. 2). Also a cool little tidbit is she was the first visually captured Hamlet male or female alike! Check it out at the bottom of this post. Aside from its value for film history it holds much value for female representations of Hamlet. The audience is able to see how Sarah Bernhardt unlike Sarah Siddons steers very clear from androgyny. She is trying to portray Hamlet as a man.
Turning the text though, why does it work? How is that audiences for centuries have been able to suspend their disbelief? “Frailty thy name is woman!”so cries Hamlet in a soliloquy where he tortures himself with the recent marriage of his mother Gertrude to his Uncle. However when he speaks the line, is the frailty he refers to really at Gertrude or is perhaps is he speaking to in himself? Does he so fear an inability to act that he turns towards and projects his fears onto her and her gender? Such inability to make decisions has long been proscribed as a female characteristic. Ironically an inability to act, as well as sexual rashness is both associated with women within Shakespeare and society. Hamlet has a lot of traits that would be assigned to females as opposed to male characters in Shakespeare. Unlike other Shakespearean heroes Hamlet, walks slowly. He is perhaps the wisest of all the characters in Shakespeare. Wise enough to questionably even play his own fool. He has more in common with Rosalind, Cleopatra and Viola than he does with Pertruchio, Lysander and even Iago. Maybe this is what we see when a female performs Hamlet? However like most things with Shakespeare, I like to postulate that Shakespeare’s greatest character is beyond gender. And able to be played by male, female fish or fowl.
4 comments:
I liked this post a lot.
It would be interesting to see Hamlet played by a girl or turned in to a girl in general. I think if Hamlet was played by a woman you could really start to draw lines between him and Electra (from the Libation Bearers by Aegisthus).
i like how you brought in that Hamlet represents what is human in all of us. I think though you can even bring out a perspective through Hamlet that pertains specifically to the child in all of us, the one who definitely does not know the whole story of everything and is left in the dark to tug at strings.
I do have one thought though comparing Hamlet to a female, i'm guessing you know the end of this play and being such, If Hamlet has so many female traits then what is it saying that because he chickens out several times before doing the act (it is an important decision no doubt) everyone dies in the end? If he was less feminine would he have done the same thing?
I enjoyed reading this post. I think the play Hamlet is Shakespeare's masterpiece and the character himself the most psychologically complex. Playing the role of Hamlet is surely and intense experience. I like how you believe Hamlet is a character "beyond gender" and you have a very solid argument supporting this statement.
Great post as usual Gi! I personally love switching gender roles in performance, especially in Shakespeare. I didnt know any background information on females playing Hamlet. Its surprising that a woman played Hamlet as early as the 1700's. I definitely agree that Hamlet has typically female tendencies and would really like to see a female Hamlet in performance.
I enjoyed your post and really like the idea of Hamlet, not just being played by a woman, but Hamlet as a woman. It is interesting to contemplate the idea of the avenging daughter instead of the son. Would scholars be so fixated on Hamlet's indecisiveness if he were a she?
I never considered Hamlet's character in terms of gender. Is his hesitancy and contemplative nature feminine or the product of a dysfunctional home life where what is seen is not to be trusted? It is interesting that Ophelia is asked by her brother and father in many ways to be more like Hamlet. She is not to act rashly; she is consider. What is Shakespeare's meaning here, I wonder?
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