Hamlet’s Hereditary Queen: Performing Shakespeare’s Silent Female Power

221 Pages·2022·4.836 MB·English

by  Kerrie Roberts

’
HAMLET S HEREDITARY QUEEN
This book explores a fresh and insightful interpretation of Hamlet’s Gertrude as a pro­
minent and powerful figure in the play. It shows how traditional readings of this
character, both performance-based and scholarly, have been guided and constrained
by misogynistic perspectives on female power.
Bringing together the author’s wealth of insight from a theatre practitioner’s
perspective and combining it with a scholarly perspective, the book argues that
Gertrude need not be limited to sex and motherhood. She could instead be played
as Denmark’s blood royal Queen, her role in the play then being about female
political power. Gertrude’s royal status could play out on stage through a variety of
possible performance choices for stage design, stage business, acting processes, and
the actor’s presence – both speaking and silent.
Hamlet’s Hereditary Queen takes into consideration Shakespeare’s source myths, histor­
ical studies of the position of queens and the issues concerning them in early modern
England, Hamlet’s performance history, and the text itself. It questions traditional readings
of Hamlet,and offers detailed analyses of relevant scenes to demonstrate how Gertrude’s
Hamlet might play out on stage in the twenty-first century.
This is an engaging and insightful interpretation for students and scholars of theatre
and performance studies and Shakespeare studies, as well as theatre practitioners.
Kerrie Roberts has a background in teaching and in theatre. Hamlet’s Hereditary
Queen began in 2007 with performance practice and was later developed through
postgraduate study with the help of the University of Sydney’s Department of
Theatre and Performance Studies.
ROUTLEDGE ADVANCES IN THEATRE & PERFORMANCE
STUDIES
This series is our home for cutting-edge, upper-level scholarly studies and edited col­
lections. Considering theatre and performance alongside topics such as religion, politics,
gender, race, ecology, and the avant-garde, titles are characterized by dynamic inter­
ventions into established subjects and innovative studies on emerging topics.
Hamlet’s Hereditary Queen
Performing Shakespeare’s Silent Female Power
Kerrie Roberts
Sport and Performance in the Twenty-First Century
Kelsey Blair
Performance, Resistance and Refugees
Suzanne Little, Samid Suliman, and Caroline Wake
Entangled Performance Histories
New Approaches to Theater Historiography
Erika Fischer-Lichte, Małgorzata Sugiera, Torsten Jost and Holger Hartung with Omid Soltani
Rechoreographing Learning
Dance As a Way to Bridge the Mind-Body Divide in Education
Sandra Cerny Minton
Politics as Public Art
The Aesthetics of Political Organizing and Social Movements
Martin Zebracki and Zane McNeill
Lessons for Today from Shakespeare’s Classroom
The Learning Benefits of Drama and Rhetoric in Schools
Robin Lithgow
Notelets of Filth
An Emilia Companion Reader
Laura Kressly, Aida Patient, and Kimberly A. Williams
Transcultural Theater
Günther Heeg
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/
Routledge-Advances-in-Theatre–Performance-Studies/book-series/RATPS
’
HAMLET S HEREDITARY
QUEEN
’
Performing Shakespeare s Silent
Female Power
Kerrie Roberts
Designed cover image: © Getty
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Kerrie Roberts
The right of Kerrie Roberts to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Roberts, Kerrie (Playwright), author.

Title: Hamlet’s hereditary queen : performing Shakespeare’s silent female power /

Kerrie Roberts.

Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2023. |

Series: Routledge advances in theatre and performance studies | Includes

bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022033817 (print) | LCCN 2022033816 (ebook) |

ISBN 9781032193137 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032193144 (paperback) |

ISBN 9781003258612 (ebook) | ISBN 9781003258612_q(ebook) |

ISBN 9781032193137 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032193144 (paperback)

Subjects: LCSH: Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Hamlet. | Shakespeare,

William, 1564-1616--Characters. | Gertrude, Queen of Denmark (Fictitious

character) | Queens in literature. | Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Hamlet-­
Sources | Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Dramatic production. | LCGFT:

Literary criticism.

Classification: LCC PR2807 .R57 2023 (ebook) | LCC PR2807 (print) |

DDC 822.3/3--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022033817

ISBN: 978-1-032-19313-7 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-19314-4 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-003-25861-2 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003258612

Typeset in Bembo

by Taylor & Francis Books
CONTENTS

List of figures viii

Acknowledgements ix

Introduction: Sticky bits, or not another theory on Hamlet 1

Notes on the text 10

PART I

Reading Gertrude 15

1 Not representing Gertrude 17

Sympathy for and dominance by Hamlet 17

Representing female characters 21

Representing women: the glance, the gaze, and the dominant point of

view 24

2 The glance, the gaze, and Gertrude: Minimise or sexualise 31

The glance or the gaze 31

The glance: complex classifications 33

The gaze: Gertrude’s sexual sins 36

3 Resistant reading 54

The actress’s task: accessing the subjective 54
vi Contents
The feminist’s task: paying attention within the dominant point of

view 55

Re-textualisation: re-writing the re-written text 57

Reading resistance 58

Gertrude’s subjectivity 60

4 Using the sticky bits 67

‘Being interrupted’: what is ‘flow’ when an actor is playing a character,

such that this can be interrupted? 67

Sticky bits as psychosis 71

Ramifications 73

Solutions 76

PART II

Writing Gertrude 83

5 Shakespeare’s material: The history and the sources 85

Historical readings of texts 85

The early modern queen: what ‘queen’ signified for Shakespeare and

his audience 86

Source myth: Gerutha, king’s daughter in the story of Amleth 93

6 Shakespeare’s Gertrude 106

Shakespeare’s adaptation of his sources 106

Gertrude’s status in the text of Hamlet 108

The subjectivity of ‘th’imperial jointress’ 116

PART III

Performing a blood royal Gertrude 125

7 The blood royal Gertrude’s production history 127

Early history 127

Poel 128

Updike 129

8 Status and silence 137

Status on stage 137

Hamlet’s themes of status and power 138
Contents vii
Gertrude’s status and power 141

Conveying Gertrude’s higher status on stage 144

Performing silence 146

9 Performing the sticky bits with power 157

Sticky bits unstuck 157

Who is Gertrude, and what is her connection with the throne of

Denmark? 157

The hasty marriage disrupting the mourning period 161

Dispossessing Hamlet 163

Power 166

Murder 168

Status as a weapon 175

Conclusion: Female sovereign power 183

Gertrude could be the hereditary queen 183

Royal responsibilities 184

Words: what is a queen? 188

The castrated queen 190

Gertrude’s power: resistance, rule, and failure 191

Finding oneself in what’s on offer on stage 193

Chaos 194

Appendix: Hamlet: a quick summary 201

Index 206
FIGURES
5.1 Page 196 of Henninges’ 1598 Genealogy of the Kings of

Denmark (in Latin) 95

5.2 This section is extracted from the centre of Figure 5.1 96

5.3 Translations from the Latin for the key phrases in Figure 5.2 96
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks are due to the student directors whose project sparked my interest; to the casts
of the two readings of Gertrude’s Hamlet, my adaptation using this interpretation; to
the cast and crew of the 2011 production; to Dominic Mico and the Tuggeranong
Arts Centre, Canberra who sponsored the script development and the production
itself; to Patricia Rowling and the Sydney independent theatre company, Bard on the
Beach; to all my friends as well as the strangers who have listened to my obsession
since 2007; to the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies, University of
Sydney, whose staff all strongly supported me throughout; to Judy Edmonds, Alex
Eugene, Adrian Howe, Ursula Potter, and others who have read it at various stages; to
Sara Kestelman, Judith Rosmair, and Laura Ginters for permission to use their input;
and to Michael, without whom this project would not have happened.