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This essay is concerned with the verbal subjugation of women in Othello and Hamlet, and seeks to justify that Desdemona and Ophelia should be given a chance to speak – hence the soliloquies that are filed under ‘fiction’. However, in keeping with their domination by men in the plays, these soliloquies have to take place in an after-life space, where they have knowledge of their own stories and are allowed to finally speak without fear of the repercussions – the worst has happened and they are dead so there is nothing more to fear. The three main areas I will address are: firstly, the fact that sound and sight are closely linked to falling in love in these two plays, but that there is sometimes a gender divide between whether sight or sound is the more attractive sense. Secondly, the fact that Desdemona and Ophelia do not know a lot of their own story during their lives in the play impacts on their speech, and this lack of knowledge often prevents them from speaking at all. In my soliloquies I have assumed that they know full possession of the facts, and so have addressed this lack of knowledge in Ophelia and Desdemona’s new speeches rather than in this essay. Thirdly, while the importance of repressive cultural and religious norms cannot – and will not! – be ignored, I will argue that the silencing of these women has a lot to with their specific physical beauty, causing them to be objectified. In the introduction to her book Daughters Wives & Widows: Writings by Men about Women and Marriage in England, 1500-1640, Joan Larsen Klein asserts that ‘woman’s voice was usually confined to home, family and neighbours’1, and it is for this reason that I felt the need to give Desdemona and Ophelia a voice outside of this domestic sphere. Desdemona does not fit neatly into these domestic ideals of ‘subjection, obedience, silence, chastity’2, because she is part of ‘a soldier’s life’3 and therefore cannot conform to normal ideals of domesticity and maternity because she is living outside of them. In contrast, Ophelia is living under the patriarchal thumb of her father and the king, and to some extent Hamlet, so she has no space to form an identity of her own and has opinions imposed upon her. She conforms totally to ‘subjection, obedience, silence, chastity’, and therefore deserves time and space to speak her own mind without fear of the consequences. Women in Shakespeare’s time could not ‘speak their mind fully and openly in ordinary conversation’4 and so need a soliloquy to be able to speak freely.

Sound and sight in Othello and Hamlet are significant because there is often a gender split in how people’s senses cause them to fall in love. Broadly speaking, Desdemona and Ophelia are wooed with ‘words of so sweet breath composed’5 – sound not sight – whereas Hamlet and Othello fall in love with ‘the power of beauty’6 the visual rather than aural beauties that the women possess. This fascinates me because the women do not get much chance to speak in the play whereas the men clearly do. Silence was directly equated with virtue and chastity in Shakespeare’s time, ‘an open mouth and immodest speech [were] tantamount to open genitals and immodest acts’7, which shows that a talkative woman was perceived to be adulterous. Furthermore, ‘disallowed speech… is a sign of sexual transgression’8 so speaking without permission or directly contravening a husband’s or father’s order to remain silent advertised a supposed sexual transgression to the wider world. It is worth noting then, that despite Ophelia being accused of ‘wantonness’9 and Desdemona being directly called a ‘whore’10, neither woman is especially talkative. Although both written and spoken words are important in both plays, the fact that women are attracted to the ‘saying deed’11, whereas men are attracted to ‘the beautified’12 highlights the different ideals that cause problems in these relationships.

Desdemona does not speak a great deal onstage and yet Othello calls her ‘free of speech’13, and Ophelia who is silent for much of the play is warned against being ‘most free and bounteous’14. This imagery of freedom as a negative thing for women is continued for much of the two plays. Polonius says he will ‘loose my daughter’15, which suggests that Ophelia is a literal prisoner of her father’s whim; not only must she obey his command and act as bait in Polonius’s investigation into Hamlet’s madness, but she physically cannot go somewhere he does not want her to. She is more like a caged pet or hunting dog pursuing prey for a master than a woman with her own mind. Desdemona however is called ‘free of speech’ in a list of her good qualities, suggesting that Othello himself does not mind her being talkative – provided it stays within the realms of courtesy. While Othello is aware that his stories won Desdemona’s love, he also asserts that ‘she had eyes and chose me’16 which illustrates the importance that men place on the visual. Desdemona herself says that she ‘saw Othello’s visage in his mind’17 and that she loved his speech not his looks.

However, there is a serious suggestion in Othello that Desdemona’s ‘nature [errs] from itself’18, because, as John Swan wrote in Speculum Mundi in 1635,‘I know not which lead more unnatural lives, obeying husbands, or commanding wives’19. Desdemona is referred to as ‘our great captain’s captain20’, suggesting that she rules Othello, but more than that, that as a soldier he obeys her (as a ‘superior office’) without question or complaint, or even much thought. This would have been viewed as dangerous because women were seen as ‘the pathetic obverse of the male‘21 and as ‘inferior or lesser or incomplete man’22 and the implication then is that women should recognise their natural subordination to men. Although Desdemona does not speak a great deal, what she does say causes trouble: by being ‘half the wooer’23 and dropping hints she gets what she wants – Othello – which leads to her own destruction. To my mind, it is doubtful wherther Othello would have dared propse to Desdemona without such keen encouragement from her, and consequently her words are vital to the play. However, it is worth pointing out that it is her father, Brabantio, who accuses her of being ‘half the wooer’ and all of her ‘hints’ are only reported to the audience, by men. Desdemona herself only speaks in her own defence at the her father’s command.

Margaret Cavendish says that ‘we oftener enslave men than men enslave us. They seem to govern the world, but we really govern the world, in that we govern men’24. Iago says that Othello’s ‘soul is so enfettered to her love that she may make, unmake, do what she list, even as her appetite shall play the god with his weak function’25 and Othello says of Desdemona that she ‘might lie by an emperor’s side and command him tasks’26, which again highlights the danger of her feminine wiles making Othello love her when she should be guided and lead by him; ‘a good wife is the crown of her husband’27. Her ‘appetite’ suggests that she is fickle and easily moved, and his ‘weak function’ is a feminine trait and makes him seem less of a man (to a Shakespearian audience) – certainly less fit to command an army, and it casts aspersions on his manhood and ability to perform sexually. However, religious teachings of the time say that ‘whatsoever they say of the imprudence of women, if men would take sometimes advice of those whom God hath given them for helps in the government of their affairs, happily it had succeeded better with them’28, which suggests that Desdemona being ‘captain’29 of Othello should not necessarily be seen as such a bad thing. Many of the books written for women around this time time offered contradictory advice, which means that women were expected to be guided by their husbands and play things by ear, as it were, not learn them by rote.

The use of mirror imagery was a common trope in Renaissance writing for women: ‘the link between women and the mirror is… ancient commonplace’30. The woman should be a mirror wherein her husband can see reflected her grace and humility – and he will consequently love her and not be physically violent. Many ‘handbooks’ on marriage and maidenly life suggest reflecting your own goodness is the best way to cause your husband/brother etc to be good. However, in Hamlet and Othello this idea gets subverted. Ophelia cannot help but mirror Hamlet and follow him into madness, because she is so suppressed by patriarchal norms. She is so used to asking men what she should think and how she should act that she copies like a child – indeed Polonius tells her at one point ‘think yourself a baby’31. While I do not think that Ophelia’s madness is a direct result of Hamlet’s madness, I strongly believe that Ophelia is impressionable and biddable, and that Hamlet’s madness opens up madness as a possible route for her to escape down, something that she would perhaps not have fallen prey to without Hamlet. She is prevented from any kind of will of her own, and so becomes a mirror to those around her: she reflects the advice and views of her father and brother in rejecting Hamlet’s letters and presence, and eventually the madness of Hamlet effects her too, rather than her good qualities reflecting onto the men. Desdemona however, perhaps feels that as Othello’s mirror she cannot simply be submissive and gentle because Othello has to command an army. Desdemona therefore has to be cunning and strong, a tactician and solider, a ‘fair warrior’32 rather than ‘gentle’ in order to best serve her husband.

Stimpson notes that ‘women [are] objects of male desire and dependent on that desire for their status, livelihood, even their lives’33 which shows that women had to pander to male desire for self-preservation. Desdemona is at first reliant on her father for her status and livelihood, when she defects to Othello she has status as the general’s wife and the livelihood that goes with that, but, ultimately, Othello can and does take her life when he believes she has transgressed. Ophelia, too, is entirely reliant on her father and brother for protection, and when she tries to move away from them and believe that Hamlet loves her she is held back by her male relatives “for her own good”, and is driven mad and to ‘wilfully seek her own salvation’34. Perhaps the problem being portrayed here is that while it is fine for men to be ruled by women in small and insignificant matters in their private lives (‘ ’tis as I entreat you to wear gloves, or feed on nourishing dishes’35), when women’s control over men moves into a public space the men feel emasculated and have to reassert their dominance in the only way left – through superior physical strength, and, ultimately, violence.

Ophelia rarely speaks onstage, and when she does it is at her father’s command or for his ends. She answers a direct address to her as it right and courteous, but does not volunteer to speak further. A lot of Ophelia’s responses to male speech are questions, she is often unsure of how to answer and tentative in replies.36 Her other lines are mostly acquiences to her father’s will: ‘I shall obey’37, or vocal contemplations of her ineptitide: ‘I do not know, my lord, what I should think’38. In her madness she could gain a freedom from convention that allows her freeer speech, but she is only given songs and verses to speak that no-one understands. Ophelia’s wild appearance in IV.v discredits what she says anyway, her appearance undermines her speech because she is visually ‘mad’. She enters ‘distracted…her hair down, singing’39, so not only does she visually represent madness but she cannot speak, only sing. In Othello the same is true but this works in a different way: Desdemona’s appearance remains chaste and pure and virtuous even when Othello believes her to be a whore, she has ‘whiter skin…thank snow, and smooth as monumental alabaster’40. It is this gap between appearance and realtiy that enrages Othello and causes him to refuse to listen to Desdemona’s defence of herself, even when she directly says ‘I never did offend you in my life, never loved Cassio41’, whereas in Hamlet is it Ophelia’s mad appearance that means that people do not listen to her and take her looks as proof that ‘she is divided from herself and her fair judgement’42.

Both women are almost always referred to with the epithet ‘fair’, constantly drawing attention to their physical attractiveness. Desdemona’s ‘fairness’ clearly takes on another layer of meaning because it is a direct contrast to Othello’s ‘blackness’, but the audience/readers are explicitly told several times both Desdemona and Ophelia are beautiful, and this is why Othello and Hamlet fall in love with them. Roderigo in Othello comments on Desdemona’s ‘beauty’43, and Othello calls her ‘fair lady’44 and explains that he loves her because she exemplified a womanly virtue – pity. Du Bosc (again, writing slightly after Shakespeare’s time) elevates pity to great heights, and implies that it is a great virtue for women to feel pity but that it is also an intrinsic part of their nature: ‘pity is so natural to them, and their inclination is so powerfully carried to mercy, that even the Furies themselves could not choose but weep and lament the disaster of Orpheus’45. Gertrude says that Ophelia’s ‘good beauties’46 are the cause of Hamlet’s madness, as with Othello, Hamlet’s obsession with what he perceives to be the gap between sight and truth sends him mad. Ophelia is beautiful and seems virtuous yet he is convinced that she is a whore.

Desdemona has a ‘greedy ear’47 according to Othello, and is over-bold and neglectful of her household duties, in order to hear all of his story. Desdemona mostly speaks when she is bidden directly by her father or the Duke apart from when she begs not to be sent to her father’s house while Othello is at war with the Turks in Cyprus. For a woman who doesn’t get much chance to speak or defend herself, it is interesting how obsessed Desdemona is with Othello’s speech and story, she is willing to ‘with haste dispatch’48 her chores and housekeeping in order to return and hear him speak further. Ophelia’s ears are also mentioned; she is warned against having ‘too credent ear’49, for fear that Hamlet’s speeches of love, which are ‘forward not permanent, sweet not lasting’50 will cause her to open her ‘chaste treasures’51. Laertes’s dire warnings about the inconstant nature of mens’ love strike rather an odd cord because although the urging to keep her virginity is commonplace and inextricably linked to family honour, there is no sign that Ophelia has any intention of transgressing, indeed she exemplifies the ‘maiden never bold’52 which Brabantio believes Desdemona to be. So submissive is Ophelia that she asks ‘what should I think?’53 of her father, rather than attempting to build an opinion for herself. The title quotation refers to Ophelia54, she is also told ‘you do not understand yourself’55 without any chance to speak in her own defence.

When Ophelia does try to defend herself, in III.i, she is reduced almost exclusively to questions and prayers. Hamlet disabuses her of the idea that he loves her ‘you should not have believed me…I loved you not’, and tries to confuse her by refusing to accept back the love-tokens he has previously given her. Ophelia tries to defend herself ‘you know right well you did’ but Hamlet verbally attacks her and is explicitly and inappropriately sexual in his language: ‘why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?…I’ll give thee this plague for thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice…’56 which is territory Ophelia is not happy in. Hamlet then returns to his preoocupation with the visual, syaing ‘god hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another’57. He not only universalises Ophelia to represent all women but then says that their duality and wantonness ‘hath made me mad’58. Ophelia has a relatively long speech (a whole 12 lines!) where she, too, equates Hamlet’s visual madness with his mental state, ‘the glass of fashion and the mould of form…quite, quite, down!’59. However, she is also aware of what he says, even though it is like ‘sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh’60, and it is only when Hamlet is mad (as in the reported scene when he appears in her chamber ‘all unbraced’61) that physical appearance becomes important to Ophelia. Furthermore, the visual is related to herself more than to her feelings about Hamlet, she says ‘O woe is me, t’have seen what I have seen, to see what I see!’62 which demonstrates that madness can be ‘read’ on the body despite it being in the mind. Therefore, perhaps Desdemona should be able to ‘read’ in Othello’s body that he has bid ‘farewell to tranquil mind’63, but moreover, Othello should be able to read in Desdemona’s body that she is chaste.

When women do not speak, however, other problems ensue. Silence is assumed to hide what is known in the mind, and the separation between thought and speech, between speech and meaning is another factor in the destructive events of these plays. Furthermore, it means that when women do try to speak in their own defence men are not ready to listen, with deadly consequences. Emilia dies ‘speaking as I think’64 in order to exonerate Desdemona, but she does die, also killed by her husband for disobedience, after demanding that he ‘speak, for my heart is full’65. As Desdemona lies dying Emilia entreats her ‘speak again!…O sweet mistress, speak!’66 but it is too late, and Desdemona choses to acquit Othello with her last words, the ultimate submission to male authority. Emilia tries to force Iago to admit his sins, to speak himself, but when he refuses she speaks for him, and says although it is ‘proper I obey him’67 these are exceptional circumstances and she must speak to make sure Iago is punished for his crime. Iago ‘will neber more speak word’68 when an explanation is most needed, highlighting the disparity between what people choose to say and what people choose to hear.

Thomas Overbury, writing just after Shakespeare in 1614 says that ‘she [the ideal wife] leaves the neat youth telling his luscious tales…yet her kindness is free enough to be seen, for it hath no guilt about it’69. This puts Desdemona in the wrong, she does not leave the Othello telling his exciting tales, she is entranced and attracted by them. However, the point about freedom of guiltless kindness is useful to an analysis of Desdemona’s character because it puts her rather forward defence of Cassio above suspicion, suggesting that Othello’s susceptibility to Iago’s slanderous speech has more to do with himself than with any transgression on Desdemona’s part. In the same way, Hamlet’s accusation of Ophelia that her “wantonness” ‘hath made me mad’70 is a ridiculous accusation given that everything we see of sane Ophelia on stage screams chastity, obedience and submissiveness. Hamlet and Othello, who were so beguiled by beauty and virtue early in the plays, are to blame for seeing things that are not there in their virtuous women. By placing too much importance on sight and not enough on their other sense, especially sound (Ophelia and Desdemona both attempt to defend themselves through speech) Othello and Hamlet directly cause the deaths of both women.

To conclude then, Ophelia and Desdemona cannot win. If they speak they are thought unchaste. If they remain silent they are called whores. If they try to defend themselves they are ignored. Speech is not the woman’s perogative in either Hamlet or Othello, and transgressive women are punished. In short, men’s perceptions of women and of what is appropriate behaviour for women
not only stifles women and removes from them their chance to speak, but also ultimately causes themselves harm. If Othello had listened to Desdemona’s denial that she was ever adulterous with Cassio, or indeed had remained true to his original speech that he will ‘see before I doubt’71 then he would not have committed murder and Desdemona would have lived. If Hamlet had not been so wrapped up in his own problems that he was aware of the damage her was doing to Ophelia’s mental health by rejecting her then her entreaties to him to explain himself might not have been in vein, and she might not have killed herself. If men listened when women spoke and did not discourage women from speaking then these plays would a lot less exciting, but Desdemona and Ophelia would not die, and, dare I say, the world would be a better place.

Cavendish, Margaret: Essay is Called What?, quoted in The Cultural Identity
of Seventeenth Century Woman.

Du Bosc, Jacques: The Complete Woman, France, 1632, quoted in
Daughters Wives & Widows.

Greenblatt, Stephen, with Cohen, W, Howard, J and Eisaman Maus, K (eds):
The Norton Shakespeare, Norton Books, New York and London, 1997.

Keeble, N. H (ed): The Cultural Identity of Seventeenth-Century Woman: a
reader, Routledge, London, 1994.

Klein, Joan Larsen (ed): Daughters Wives & Widows: Writings by Men about Women and Marriage in England, 1500-1640, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1992.

Newman, Karen: Fashioning Femininity and English Renaissance Drama, The
University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1991.

Overbury, Sir Thomas: A Wife, published in London, 1614, quoted in
The Cultural Identity of Seventeenth Century Woman.

Stimpson, Catherine R: Introduction to Fashioning Femininity.

Walen, Denise A: Unpinning Desdemona, Shakespeare Quarterly, 58.4, 2007,
pp.487-508. Viewed online at: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ shakespeare_quarterly/ v058/58.4walen.html

Hamlet, ADC Theatre, 13th January 2009.

DISCLAIMER: As you can see from this reviews page, and last play I saw was the RSC’s Hamlet. This may in a small way have set me up for disappointment with this play. I have tried to temper my judgment accordingly.

I’m a pretty open person (disagreements welcome – see what I did there?), and I have never yet walked out of a play or failed to return at the interval. There was one performance (‘Pastoral’ at the Warwick Arts Centre, since you ask) where I would have gladly legged it had I not been sitting dead centre, and this Hamlet almost rivaled that show for gratuitous nudity. Yes, that’s right folks, this was Shakespeare Done By Students, and from the word go it screamed pretention. On entering the auditorium, we were greeted by Hamlet sitting front and centre, flicking a lighter on and off. Oh dear. While I have no problem emphasising Hamlet’s emotional turmoil, this was more teenage angst than soul-destroying confusion. The set was another cause for concern before a word was spoken – a rather bizarre combination of planks, ropes, and a completely unjustified tank of water, which monopolised the stage and quickly became a distraction and inconvenience to the cast and audience. The platform of planks was, however, actually used to good effect during the show, although the ensemble uses of the props could have been more polished. The tank of water bothered me, though. Apart from some rather pompous programme notes from the director, David Brown, there was no justification for it. And, at the risk of sounding like a Maiden Aunt, there was certainly no need for Jack Monaghan’s Hamlet to strip to his itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny boxers and submerge himself during his ‘fishmonger’ conversation with director Brown’s Polonius. The ghost’s appearances were just plain bad. The text clearly states that Old Hamlet’s ghost appears looking exactly as he did when he died, in armour. To make the ghost a giant puppet, much larger than life-size, with a bare skull and rope spine, voiced by Derek Jacobi, was just ridiculous. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: if you are going to mess with Shakespeare, you’ve got to have a reason beyond your own vanity.

The problem with a student production is necessarily going to be the youth of the cast – although he was really very good, Patrick Warner’s Claudius struggled to bring the weight and power that the role demands due to his fresh face, and a good director would have taught him that it is possible to be angry or forceful without shouting. I found the decision not to dress Gertrude, Claudius or Polonius ‘old’ rather odd (in fact, all of the costumes were bland to the point of irritation), and it made the idea that Gertrude (Catriona Cahill) could be Hamlet’s mother or that Polonius could be Ophelia’s (Kate O’Connor) father risible. The relationship between Polonius and his children was poorly developed, which meant that Laertes’ (Joey Batey) impotent rage at his father’s death was melodramatic rather than moving.

I must concede though, that despite being tempted to flee during the interval, my companion was entranced – confused, but entranced – and the second half showed a marked improvement. The pace picked up, Monaghan suddenly found a compelling energy that had been absent in the first half, and Ophelia’s death in the tank went some way towards justifying its constant presence. Kate O’Connor’s (Ophelia) extreme youth helped her play the part, and she, unusually, played madness better than sanity. The ghost’s disastrous physical embodiment in the first half was happily forgotten, as Derek Jacobi’s thundering voice echoed “remember” around the auditorium, and there was a real freshness and excitement, as though no-one, including Hamlet, knew what he would do next.

Overall, though, I am still irritated when I think back on this production. Brown fell into the common trap of being besotted by ‘difference’ and the need to make this production his own, sadly in this case at the expense of quality. By all means, do Shakespeare in Russian with an all-male cast (Twelfth Night, Cheek by Jowl), but it’s got to be good, and it’s got to be justified. There was no textual explanation for Brown’s decisions that I could hear, particularly the choice to cast Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (Katy Bulmer and Helen Parker) as sexual, simpering women. I would dearly love to know the rationale behind the decision to have Hamlet partially blind them both in gruesome detail for their betrayal, too. That said, the gravedigger scene was very funny, the tank was used effectively in the second half, and the death scene was genuinely moving. It’s not his fault, but the fact that Horatio (Jacob Shephard) sounds exactly like Peter Serafinowicz in Black Books was quite distracting. Although this production redeemed itself somewhat in the second half, it was a confused mixture of fanciful ideas that failed to resonate with the actual play.

In the interests of balance, a review that is “all lovey and gushing” can be found here.

Hamlet, Novello, 3rd January 2009.

There must have been a touch of magic or hocus-pocus about this production, it was almost inhumanly good. Tennant leant a supernatural energy to a uniformly superlative cast. Hats (without rabbits) off to Greg Doran for coaxing such fine performances from such a talented group of actors. January 3rd was Tennant’s first performance in London, his return to the stage after back surgery before Christmas. When we bought our tickets on the morning, the RSC were still advertising Ed Bennett as Hamlet, and just before the house lights went down, the Producer announced Tennant’s return, to wild applause. After an initial tug of the heartstrings that Bennett had been effectively demoted to Laertes, the sheer brilliance of the production blew away any residual hard feelings. Bennett was a measured and intelligent Laertes, and it is fair to say that he seemed so comfortable in that role that it was hard to imagine him as Hamlet.

Tennant, however, took that role and made it his own in a way that no understudy, however talented, could hope to emulate. His Hamlet was all nervous energy and pent-up grief, constantly teetering on the edge of mental breakdown. He has a gift uncommon amongst Shakespearean actors, especially in the RSC, of making the words fresh. Often with such well-known plays, you get the feeling that the audience are either mouthing along, or zoned out ready to tune back in when they hear ‘to be or not be’. With Tennant’s mercurial, twitchy Prince, the idea that he did not know what he was going to say next was beautifully captured, and he kept almost four hours of Shakespeare tripping along at a speed that made the evening fly by.

The simple mirrored set (backdrop and floor were both reflective) emphasised the dualities in the play, and the turmoil of Hamlet’s desires for inner peace and for revenge. His schizophrenic manias and intense calms gave his performance dramatic weight, and he played superbly off Patrick Stewart’s grave, disdainful and thoroughly unpleasant Claudius and Penny Downie’s fraught and highly-strung Gertrude. The bedroom scene was particularly striking, with Hamlet alternating between a desperate little boy and a manic, sexual, violent young man on the edge of madness. The death of Polonius (Oliver Ford Davies) was spectacularly simple: a single gunshot and a myriad of cracks appeared across the mirrored set. How’d they do that? Magic.

Ford Davies as Polonius was fantastic – a dangerously influential windbag whose own children were impatiently tolerant of his long-windedness. He was also very comic, and indeed Doran had brought the comedy out of the whole play. There were several laugh-out-loud moments, not what one expects from such a great tragedy. In fact, the humour was a stroke of genius, as it contrasted so strongly with the waste of life at the end, and it was perfectly judged to avoid farce. Sam Alexander and Tom Davey (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, respectively) were a superb double act, their comic potential enhanced by the stark difference in their heights – a real Little’n’Large pairing. Mariah Gale’s Ophelia was, again, beautifully, judged. She wrung every drop from an underwritten part, and given that the vast majority of her character’s development takes place off stage (sane in one scene, totally barmy by her next entrance) she brought a depth that the role often lacks, She also played madness well – this was one Ophelia that could not be written off a silly love-struck or grief-stricken girl – you felt as though she had the troubles of the world on her shoulders and after a short time the weight was too much to bear and she broke. The relationship between Bennett’s Laertes and Gale’s Ophelia was also a nice touch, and gave a depth to his murderous grief and rage.

I actually cannot fault this production. It was clear that the whole cast were delighted to have Tennant back – there was a feeling of settling back into a more familiar groove, but without any of the dullness or lack of energy that that suggests. Tennant’s wild energy and wit kept the whole cast on their toes, and there must have been magic in the air to make four hours fly by so fast. If Doran keeps conjuring performances like this, tickets will sell out faster than you can say “rabbits”.

Tim Walker in the Telegraph has written one of the most objectionably snobbish pieces I have read about the theatre in a long time. This may have something to do with the fact that I tend to avoid the Telegraph like the plague, but still. (You can read his piece here if you are of a masochistic bent, but choice quotes from it will appear below). He claims that Tennant’s casting as Hamlet was a blatant piece of ‘celebrity casting’. Fair enough, Tennant is a celebrity. The point that Walker resolutely misses is that the reason Tennant was cast as The Doctor is that he is a very good actor. Hence his casting as Hamlet. The RSC want good actors, Tennant is a good actor. In fact, his Hamlet was the best I have ever seen, and one of the best shows overall that I’ve seen in a long time. The fact that people wanted to see the play purely because ‘Dr. Who’ was in it shows a smallness of mind on their part, but good for the RSC for sticking to their ‘no refund’ policy in support of their well-rehearsed understudies. Ed Bennett was, by all accounts, very good, if lacking the exuberance and speed of Tennant’s Prince.

Walker suggests that “theatre managers, when they pick a major television celebrity to appear in a play, draw people into their establishments who are likely not enjoy the experience”. This implies that it is impossible to enjoy both Dr. Who and Shakespeare. Nice work, Tim. Keep the television-watching riff-raff out of theatres. He continues that Dr. Who fans in the theatre “didn’t get so much as a “sorry” from the man [Director Greg Doran], or, indeed, any prospect of a refund”, but why should they? The RSC has a well-established understudy policy, and it is commendable that the cast were well rehearsed enough for Ed Bennett to step into such big shoes at such short notice. I went to see Hamlet on the 3rd of January, and when we bought tickets at 10a.m posters were up all around the box office saying that due to back injury, David Tennant had had to pull out, and it then listed the three undrstudies who moved up accoridngly (Hamlet’s, Laertes’s and Guildenstern’s). Nevertheless, I was excited and pleased to be able to get tickets so easily. When The Producer came on stage just before the house lights went down, and annopunced that Tennant was back, the whole place went crazy. While feeling suitably smug that we were able to move into plum seats that had been ostracised by people wanting to see Tennant (I presume, maybe they had Noro…), I also felt really quite sorry for Ed Bennett, waiting backstage and hearing the screams of joy that he would no longer be the Prince. I would have liked to have seen him play Hamlet, but he was a superb Laertes, and good luck to him.

The most objectionable part of Walker’s article was his assertion that: “Doran seemed to expect these people, not one of them a natural theatregoer so far as I could see, to sit through almost four hours of Shakespeare without so much as a glimpse of their hero”. By “these people” he means Dr. Who fans, but I’d like to know exactly he means by “not one of them a natural theatregoer as far as I could see”? How can he possibly tell? What does a ‘natural theatregoer’ look like? White, middle-class, well-dressed? I’m white and middle class but I went in jeans and borrowed gloves. Would I pass Walker’s narrow-minded and rather bigoted test to be seen as a ‘natural’? Now, I would argue that almost four hours of Shakespeare is a treat devoutly to be wished, especially if you have managed to sneak into comfy, dress circle seats, but I can understand that not everyone agrees with me. Fine. That does not make them any less of a ‘natural’ theatregoer – you don’t know what you like until you try it. Technially speaking, I am a ‘natural’ oper-goer, in that I’m from a middle-class background, have the money to afford the occasional ticket and have training in classical music. However, I’d rather see Shakespeare any day. I wonder if Walker’s antenae could detect that? The problem here is that, unfortunately, “as far as I could see” in Walker’s case, is not terribly far.

I’ve been hankering to see the RSC’s Hamlet since it before it launched in Stratford, and my wonderful friend J took me for my birthday. Originally, this plan meant queuing from hideous o’clock in the morning to get 16-25 tickets, but due to many foolish people returning their tickets because they wanted to see The Doctor not Hamlet, we breezed up at 10 and got two resticted view seats for a fiver – which we upgraded to front row of the dress circle during the interval because there were spare seats. This is a almost more a tragedy than was played out so superbly on stage, especially as the 3^rd of Jan when we saw it was actually the night of Tennant’s triumphant return (see the reviews section).

I kind of understand the impulse to go and see something purely because it has a celebrity in it – it would be hypocritical to claim total ignorance given that I currently have tickets for Twelfth Night with Derek Jacobi as Malvolio and Madame de Sade with Judy Dench – but there has to be more reason to want to go and see something. I paid a silly amount of money for tickets to Twelfth Night and Madame de Sade mainly because I think they’re going to be very very good, and a brilliant show is one of the things that makes me happiest.  The famous names are an added bonus – they are famous for a reason, after all – but I won’t be sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for the first glimpse of Jacobi or Dench, and I’m going to see new plays and Cambridge student theatre, too. It’s the whole ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ philosophy, don’t judge a play by its celebrity, judge it by the whole cast and production – after you’ve seen it not before!