Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

When Hamlet is seen for the first time in the first act, second scene of Shakespeare's play that bears his name, is he wearing black because he is just a spoiled boy having a tantrum because he didn't get to be king, or can we take him at his word that he is in deep grief? Excerpts from Rebecca Mead’s 6/6 New Yorker article on Robert Icke’s Hamlet stood out to me in part because of the emphasis on real rather than feigned grief, or “Hamlet as neurotically indecisive or Oedipally compromised”: [Photo by Jeff Brown for the Ney Yorker. Fair use.] ~~~~~ [...] Icke first staged “Hamlet” in 2017 [...] with Andrew Scott in the lead role [...]. Scott was then best known for his performance as Moriarty, on “Sherlock” [...] The production, in which Denmark was imagined as a chilling surveillance state, incorporated the use of video to powerful effect—the Ghost is initially observed on grainy security footage—and was heralded for its emotional veracity. Especially praised was the i...

In recent years, notable productions of Hamlet in the UK and Washington DC have highlighted the topic of Surveillance: The picture below is from Shakespeare Magazine, issue 14, July 2018, with Andrew Scott as Hamlet at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London. Scott played Moriarty in the BBC series, Sherlock, with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. —The king sends for Hamlet’s friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to act as spies. —In a particularly chilling scene, Polonius, whose son Laertes departed for France after listening to a long list of fatherly advice ending with “this above all: to thine own self be true,” sends a spy after his son to plant mildly scandalous rumors in order to discover news of his son’s scandalous exploits. —Ophelia agrees to act as bait while Claudius and Polonius eavesdrop. After 9/11/01, the USA and other governments used the events of that day to justify greatly increased spending on global surveillance, much of which violates rights to priva...