the translations which came at first to Arabic through French versions...were often heavily cut and bowdlerized. In Dumas’s influential version, the character of Fortinbras was omitted, and the opening scene on the battlements was completely cut. English literary influences were later arrivals, and interpreted locally with anti-colonial implications (Muhammad Hamdi’s 1912 edition of Julius Caesar described the author as “William Shakespeare, the democratic English poet and playwright”). If Arab audiences viewed Hamlet as a heroic figure, it was at first mainly as a fighter against colonial tyranny, engaged in a struggle against the usurper. This was the role that leaders such as Nasser originally adopted: only later in their political careers did they themselves become the tyrants, the “Claudius” figures against whom the younger generation had to act.
Fascinating. And what of more contemporary mountings of the play?
In the wake of defeat in the war of 1967 and the death of Nasser in 1970, modern versions of the play have tended to the ironic or satirical, such as The al-Hamlet Summit, which features an Islamist Hamlet, and Ophelia as a suicide bomber. Margaret Litvin notes that recent productions are despairing, portraying a prince stripped of eloquence and rendered ineffectual, perhaps because tyranny had become so unashamed that unmasking it was pointless. As Litvin comments, the purpose of “The Mousetrap” was to awaken fear and guilt in the murderer. But if the tyrant has no conscience, if Claudius simply brazens it out, what can theatre hope to do? This richly detailed survey may stimulate thoughts of future Hamlets in unfamiliar guise, as events in the Arab world proceed apace.
Future Hamlets? Something tells me an Egypt in the grip of MuBro/Salafist rule will be far less receptive to the infidel Bard's Danish Prince. (They don't react all that well to Danish 'toons, either.)
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