I keep returning to this dialogue from Isabella Hammad’s novel Enter Ghost (2023). This is what Mariam, the director of an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in the West Bank, says,
"[A]ny Hamlet in London is haunted by all the ghosts of the Old Hamlets… So I don’t want you to bow down to some grand idea of a far-off English Shakespeare… We’re free to play.”
Mariam makes a case for ‘many Hamlets’, perhaps echoing notable Shakespeare critic Marjorie Garber — “Every age creates its own Shakespeare.”
Add to this what Harold Bloom says of Hamlet —
Hamlet is… “how meaning gets started, rather than repeated, but also of how new modes of consciousness come into being.”
Further add to this, what Martin Esslin says of Hamlet in ‘The Theatre of the Absurd’ — and this is one of my most cherished quotes —
“Libraries have been filled with attempts to reduce the meaning of a play like Hamlet… yet the play itself remains the clearest and most concise statement of its meaning and message, precisely because its uncertainties and irreducible ambiguities are an essential element of its total impact.”
Note the contradiction in Esslin’s words: Hamlet’s clearest and most concise meaning lies in its uncertainties and ambiguities, which allow for myriad interpretations.
Brilliant, isn’t it?
Do you know what else is brilliant? A book that captures this sentiment exactly: Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell — a heartbreaking, fantastic novel that imagines the short life of Shakespeare’s son Hamnet, whose name was given to the play that continues to inspire, age after age.
I leave you with a question: Can a play like Hamlet give meaning to a revolution?
Sonia, theatre actor and the protagonist of Hammad’s novel, says,
“Our play needed the protests, but the protests did not need our play.”