“Base Respects of Thrift”: Hamlet and Slings & Arrows

This article explores competing visions of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in the Canadian television series Slings & Arrows (2003-2006). I argue that Slings & Arrows displays both adulation and irreverence toward Shakespeare’s text, putting it to new uses even as it considers critically the place of the theater in contemporary culture. My argument sees the series’ depiction of “base” material things—especially those connected to the body—as of special importance for its strategy to explore both the place of the text and crucial themes of Shakespeare’s tragedy. In its behind-the-scenes theatrical world, Slings & Arrows makes use of ignoble materiality (everyday objects and the human body with all its flaws, rather than economic advantage) in order to hint at the transcendent. Even as Slings & Arrows depicts the danger that the text can be reduced to just a material object or a commodity, it also shows, for the actors of the New Burbage Festival as well as for the television audience, how Hamlet might also be a spur to meaningful action and a source of living artistic integrity.