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  • Murder Most Foul: Hamlet through the Ages by David Bevington
  • Frank Nicholas Clary (bio)
Murder Most Foul: Hamlet through the Ages. By David Bevington. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Illus. Pp. xiv + 236. $45.00 cloth.

David Bevington argues that the history of Hamlet is "a kind of paradigm for the cultural history of the English-speaking world" (vii). Addressed to general readers, including students and theater enthusiasts, this book provides a selective survey of staging, criticism, and editing, assembled by one of the most eminent Shakespeareans of our time. Readers will find a wealth of information and insight in the examples and details that punctuate this history of Hamlet from its prehistory in Scandinavian legend to its afterlife in postmodern parodies, spin-offs, and spoofs.

In the preface, Bevington lists several general-readership books that he seeks to emulate, among them two by Stephen Greenblatt, one of the scholars to whom the book is dedicated. His gratitude to "confrères and predecessors" at the outset is not idle (ix). Collegiality "at the heart of scholarship" (ix), in fact, prompts him to recognize many others throughout the book, often in clusters. Citations of scholars, critics, actors, and editors, in addition to the titles of books and articles, are invitations along the way to pursue questions and to explore issues that arise. Murder Most Foul provides intelligent perspective on the reception and transmission of Hamlet in a variety of cultural formats over the centuries: stage productions, printed editions, reviews, critical commentaries, illustrations, and animated films.

A brief introduction describes the book's structure and its aim to verify Hamlet's continuing relevance, amid reinventions, to "the way we see ourselves" (6). In the chapters that follow, three are devoted to the prehistory and the earliest years of the Hamlet story. The four remaining chapters trace the afterlife of the play from the seventeenth century to the postmodern era. The prehistory is not news to scholars familiar with the theories that have been articulated over the years. Book-length studies and articles have offered accounts of the forms and variations in the story from oral legend to Saxo's Latin history and from its transformation in Belleforest's Histoires to its arrival as a play on the English stage. The provenance of the story in the earliest extant copies of Hamlet, Bevington notes, is still a matter of controversy. After briefly summarizing the story in Saxo, he rehearses the theories of its transmission down to Shakespeare, including the relationship between the Ur-Hamlet and a "now-lost manuscript dated 1710" (20), from which Der bestrafte Brudermord may have been derived. The chapter ends on speculations concerning biographical [End Page 244] matters that may be pertinent to Shakespeare's fascination with the story of Hamlet. General readers may find this chapter fascinating and choose to pursue newly stimulated research interests based on the possibilities left open in the account provided. Further information and pertinent titles are suggested in the appended notes. Like the citations throughout the book, the notes, the further reading section, and the index are useful to readers who will want to revisit the book after a first viewing.

The next two chapters address the staging circumstances and ideological contexts of Hamlet (1599-1601). The chapter on staging opens on a brief review of resources relevant to dating the original performance. The balance of the chapter offers details about performance, particularly as they apply in Hamlet, including casting and the material circumstances of production. Although Richard Burbage is known to have played the title role, other casting information is less certain. Bevington notes that, according to stage lore, Shakespeare played the Ghost, and he speculates that Robert Armin played the First Gravedigger, adding that the older boy actors probably played Gertrude and Ophelia. Details concerning scenery, props, and stage business are linked to specific references in the text. Among other things, he considers controversies related to the staging of the Ghost scene, the dumb show, and the graveyard scene, to clarify the implications of presentational staging and to emphasize the necessary suspension of disbelief required at the Globe. Bevington gives special emphasis to Hamlet's advice to the...

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