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Hamlet's Afterlives
Course code: ELCS6030
Tutor: Dr Novella Mercuri
Level: intermediate
Mode of Assessment: 2 assessed essays of 2000 words each
Term: taught in term 1
Course Description:
This course will focus on fiction, plays and films which, whilst directly inspired by Shakespeare’s Hamlet, also draw on the ancient Scandinavian legends that inspired Elizabethan versions of the story, and/or on the connection, which Shakespeare himself set up, between his student-prince and Wittenberg, the university of Luther, Melanchthon, Giordano Bruno and, last but not least, Dr. Faustus. These works are all interesting creative attempts to illuminate obscure points of Shakespeare's play, or to give a new, seminal interpretation of its meaning and its hero, and, through it, their view of the world.
Primary Texts:
- Anthony Burgess, ‘The Most Beautified’, in The Devil’s Mode, OUP, 1989
- David Davalos, Wittenberg: A Tragical-comical-historical in Two Acts, 2008
- Graham Holderness, The Prince of Denmark, Hatfield, 2002
- Saxo Grammaticus, Historia Danica, Book III (extracts on Moodle)
- John Updike, Gertrud and Claudius, Penguin Books, 2000
Films:
- Hamlet, dir. Sven Gade (Germany, 1920)
- Hamlet, dir. L. Olivier (GB, 1948)
- Hamlet, dir. G. Kozintsev (USSR, 1964
- Hamlet, dir. F. Zeffirelli (USA, 1990)
- Hamlet, dir. K. Branagh (USA, 1996)
Initial Secondary Bibliography:
- Davies, Anthony, & Wells, Stanley (eds.), Shakespeare and the Moving Image. The Plays on Film and Television, Cambridge, CUP, 1994
- Howard, Tony, Women as Hamlet. Performance and Interpretation in Theatre, Film and Fiction, Cambridge, CUP, 2007
- Kozintsev, Grigori, ‘Hamlet, Prince of Denmark’, in Shakespeare: Time and Conscience, London, Dobson Books Ltd., 1967
- Rothwell, Kenneth S., A History of Shakespeare on Screen. A Century of Film and Television, Cambridge, CUP, 1999
- Shapiro, James, 1599. A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, London, Faber and Faber, 2005
- Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor (eds.), Hamlet , Arden, 3rd series, 2006
