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Elizabethan Stagings of Hamlet: George Pierce Baker and William Poel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

William Hutson
William Hutson
Affiliation:
William Hutson isArtist-in-residence at Omaha Community Playhouse, Omaha, Nebraska.
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Extract

On 21 February 1900, William Poel staged the First Quarto Hamlet for a single performance in the Carpenters' Hall, London. On 5 and 6 April 1904, George Pierce Baker mounted a production of Hamlet with Johnston Forbes Robertson in Sanders Hall at Harvard University. The two productions shared a number of remarkable similarities. Both were attempts to stage the play in the Elizabethan manner; therefore, they departed from illusionistic traditions of the nineteenth century. Although there were distinct differences – for example, one had a cast of amateurs, one was professional; one was performed for the public, one for a university – each was an important step in the reformation of Elizabethan staging. The productions also reflected the pursuits of two men who, although they had similar ideas about Elizabethan drama, were motivated by different objectives.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1987 , pp. 253 - 260
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1987

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References

Notes

1. Poel, William, Shakespeare in the Theatre (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1913), p. 161.Google Scholar

2. Baker, George Pierce, The Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1907), pp. 263–4.Google Scholar

3. Baker, George Pierce, ‘Hamlet on an Elizabethan Stage’, Shakespeare Jahrbuch, XLI, 1905, p. 296.Google Scholar

4. Baker, , Shakespeare Jahrbuch, p. 296.Google Scholar

5. Ibid., pp. 296–8.

6. Baker, , The Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist, p. 87.Google Scholar

7. Baker, , Shakespeare Jahrbuch, p. 300.Google Scholar

8. Ibid., p. 301.

9. Ibid., pp. 300–1.

10. Ibid., p. 300.

11. Roberston, Johnston Forbes, A Player Under Three Reigns (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1925), P. 315.Google Scholar

12. Baker, , Shakespeare Jahrbuch, p. 299.Google Scholar

13. Poel's promptbook is an annotated copy of Hamlet, The First Quarto, 1603, edited by Griggs, William (London: Cassell and Company, Ltd, 1898).Google Scholar The only copy is located at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Griggs divided the Quarto into eighteen scenes and provided line numbers. The present reference is to scene 9, line 176.

14. Baker, , Shakespeare Jahrbuch, p. 298.Google Scholar

15. Ibid.

16. Times (London), 22 02 1900, p. 7.Google Scholar

17. Poel, , Shakespeare in the Theatre, p. 160.Google Scholar

18. Baker, , Shakespeare Jahrbuch, p. 298.Google Scholar

19. Cook, Dutton, Nights at the Play, A new of the English Stage (London: Chatto and Windus, 1883), II, p. 316.Google Scholar

20. Carter, Huntly, The New Spirit in Drama and Art (New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1913), pp. 139–40.Google Scholar

21. Baker, , Shakespeare Jahrbuch, p. 298.Google Scholar

22. Ibid., p. 296.

23. Poel, , Shakespeare in the Theatre, p. 166.Google Scholar