HAMLET’S APOCALYPSE

In November 2010, the Dark Lady Players are doing a workshop production of "Hamlet’s Apocalypse" at Manhattan Theatre Source. Tickets will be available at their website. Based on work by Shakespeare scholar Linda Hoff, we will show that the play is not a tragedy but a black comedy which parodies Doomsday in the Book of Revelation.

Ophelia is a parody of both the Virgin Mary and the Woman Crowned with the Sun; Gertrude is a parody of the Whore of Babylon; Laertes is Christ; King Claudius a parody of the 7 headed Beast. Hamlet has multiple allegories including the Beast from the Sea, (the original Anti-Christ), Emperor Nero (the first human Anti-Christ) and Martin Luther (the second anti-Christ).

But in this Apocalypse everything goes wrong, the Rule of God (that’s what Osric means) all goes wrong, and at the end instead of Jerusalem a city of gold, we get its comic equivalent from the Arabian Nights, a fort-in-brass.

Watch the slide presentation or read the forthcoming tv interview on Hamlet’s Apocalypse. A background article on the Jewish religious allegories in Shakespeare’s plays can be found here. Watch an interview with Hamlet.

The Dark Lady Players are grateful to the Ada G. and Stanley L. Halbreich Foundation for their grant to make this production possible as a work with potential social impact on inter-faith relationships.