Looking for Hamlet, 1603
January 15, 2021YouTube
Covid-19 has put a damper on Lord Denney’s Players’ ability to perform live, but it hasn’t dampened their enthusiasm for exploring Shakespeare’s textual curiosities. Looking for Hamlet, 1603, the company’s seventh production, is a full-length documentary film about the earliest text of Shakespeare’s most well-known play, where Hamlet utters not, “To be or not to be, that is the question,” but “To be or not to be – ay, there’s the point.” Scholars find so many significant differences in this early text when they compare it to its later versions that they have long challenged its authenticity. How did such a curious version of Hamlet come to be, and what should we make of it?
The film, produced by students in the Autumn 2020 semester of ENGL 4520.02: Special Topics in Shakespeare, premiered on the Department of English’s YouTube channel on Friday, January 15, 2021. After the show, viewers were invited to a Zoom talkback with the cast and crew.
“Working on this documentary as part of the LDP class was both daunting and exhilarating. The chance to synthesize the extensive material we tackled as a class into a visual format was the thing that drew me to this class, and while challenging at times, the intellectually curious and collaborative environment we worked in made for a very rewarding experience. With respect to my role in the play, acting during a pandemic was very different, given that our faces were almost entirely covered, but I think we addressed the challenges of our pandemic performance extremely well. I think everyone displayed great adaptability, and this format actually opened up a lot of avenues for out-of-the-box thinking. This documentary was the creative outlet that we needed during this Covid-dominated semester.”
- Renna Pappalardo (Marcellus).