Hamlet - Stage Pastiches

Stage Pastiches

There have been various "derivative works" of Hamlet which recast the story from the point of view of other characters, or transpose the story into a new setting or act as sequels or prequels to Hamlet. This section is limited to those written for the stage.

The best-known is Tom Stoppard's 1966 play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead which retells many of the events of the story from the point of view of the characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as well as giving them a backstory of their own. The play was nominated for eight Tony Awards, and won four: Best Play, Scenic and Costume Design, and Producer; the director and the three leading actors were nominated but did not win. It also won Best Play from the New York Drama Critics Circle in 1968, and Outstanding Production from the Outer Critics Circle in 1969. Several times since 1995, the American Shakespeare Center has mounted repertories that included both Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, with the same actors performing the same roles in each; in their 2001 and 2009 seasons the two plays were "directed, designed, and rehearsed together to make the most out of the shared scenes and situations".

W.S. Gilbert wrote a comic play titled Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, in which Guildenstern helps Rosencrantz vie with Hamlet to make Ophelia his bride.

Lee Blessing's Fortinbras is a comical sequel to Hamlet in which all the deceased characters come back as ghosts. The New York Times reviewed the play saying it is "scarcely more than an extended comedy sketch, lacking the portent and linguistic complexity of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Fortinbras operates on a far less ambitious plane, but it is a ripping yarn and offers Keith Reddin a role in which he can commit comic mayhem."

Heiner Müller's cutting-edge drama "The Hamletmachine" was first produced in Paris by director Jean Jourdheuil in 1979 and swiftly became a classic of postmodern drama. Caridad Svich's 12 Ophelias (a play with Broken Songs) includes elements of the story of Hamlet but focuses on Ophelia. In Svich's play, Ophelia is resurrected and rises from a pool of water, after her death in Hamlet. The play is a series of scenes and songs, and was first staged at public swimming pool in Brooklyn. Heidi Weiss of the Chicago Sun-Times said of the play "Far more surreal and twisted than Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, 12 Ophelias is a reminder of just how morphable and mysterious Shakespeare's original remains." Other characters are renamed: Hamlet is Rude Boy, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are androgynous helpers known simply as R and G, Gertrude is the madam of a brothel, Horatio becomes H and continues to be Hamlet's best friend/confidante, and a chorus of Ophelias serves as guide. A new character, Mina, is introduced, and she is a whore in Gertrude's brothel.

David Davalos' Wittenberg is a "tragical-comical-historical" prequel to Hamlet that depicts the Danish prince as a student at Wittenberg University (now known as the University of Halle-Wittenberg), where he is torn between the conflicting teachings of his mentors John Faustus and Martin Luther. The New York Times reviewed the play saying "Mr. Davalos has molded a daft campus comedy out of this unlikely convergence," and nytheatre's review said the playwright "has imagined a fascinating alternate reality, and quite possibly, given the fictional Hamlet a back story that will inform the role for the future."