Francisco and Bernardo do Hamlet

Authors

Helen Ostovich McMaster University

Abstract

Quinnopolis vs. Hamlet, performed at the Shakespeare Association of America in 2006 in Philadelphia, is a buffoonish production that manages to convey, almost despite the audience's disbelief, a profound sense of the grief and loss projected by Shakespeare's Hamlet. A two-man show, the play more than compensates for its small cast by revealing multiple emotional fractures, complex motivations, and impending or enacted violence, both psychic and physical. The result is a profound sense of the Hamlet-world and its impact on Hamlet the prince, Hamlet the role, and Hamlet as attempted by particular actors.

Author Biography

Helen Ostovich, McMaster University

Helen Ostovich, Professor of English in the department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University, is the editor of Early Theatre and author of several articles and book chapters on Shakespeare and Jonson. She has edited six of Jonson's plays, most recently for the Cambridge Works of Ben Jonson, and is working on two plays by Richard Brome for the Brome electronic edition, and All's Well that Ends Well (with Karen Bamford and Andrew Griffin) for Internet Shakespeare Editions. She is a general editor of the Revels Plays and the general editor of the Queen's Men's Plays in Performance, a series in progress that will be published on Internet Shakespeare Editions and on DVD. Her Ashgate series, Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama, is about to publish its twelfth volume.