Actors, Directors, & Theater Professionals, Theater Biography - Producers, Directors, and Other Theater Professionals, Shakespeare - Plays, History, & Criticism, English Drama - 16th-17th Century - Elizabethan & Jacobean Eras - Shakespeare - Literary Crit
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Overview
Critics regarded Sarah Bernhardt's interpretation of Hamlet in 1899 as the revelation of Shakespeare's tragedy in France. The Bernhardt Hamlet is the first to investigate that production and to explain its context and its impact upon the cultural life of the time. Bernhardt's most significant innovation was her rejection of romantic sensibility in favor of the revenge tradition. In assuming a male role, she remained within the theatrical tradition of travesti that came to full fruition in the nineteenth century. Classically trained, the 54-year-old Bernhardt refashioned the Hamlet inheritance with insight, vigor, and originality.Editorials
Booknews
Reconstructs Sarah Bernhardt's 1899 interpretation of Shakespeare's tragic hero and shows how it became a major element in theater history. Explains the perception of the character Hamlet in both Britain and France at the time as a delicate and vacillating prince of romanticism whose contemplation impeded action and whose action was futile whenever he actually got around to any. Then she describes how Bernhardt re-manned him into the determined avenger whose roots were to be found in the Elizabethan theater of his birth. Includes contemporary photographs and drawings. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.Book Details
Published
June 17, 1996
Publisher
New York : P. Lang, c1996.
Pages
266
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780820423357