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Four Arab Hamlet Plays, edited by Marvin Carlson and Margaret Litvin with Joy Arab (New York: Martin E. Segal Theatre Centre Publications, 2015). 299 pages.
Contents:
Ophelia Is Not Dead by Nabyl Lahlou (1969, trans. Khalid Amine) Hamlet Wakes up Late by Mamduh Adwan (1976, trans. Margaret Litvin)
A Theatre Company Found a Theatre and Theatred 'Hamlet' by Nader Omran (1984, trans. Joy Arab in collaboration with Michael L°Cicero from an initial translation by George Potter)
Forget Hamlet by Jawad al-Assadi (2000, trans. Margaret Litvin) Essay: Gamlet is Russian for Hamlet by Mahmoud Aboudoma (2006, trans. Margaret Litvin)
The bibliography of dissertations and studies devoted to Hamlet is twice the size of Warsaw's telephone directory. No Dane of flesh and blood has been written about so extensively as Hamlet. Shakespeare's prince is certainly the best known representative of his nation. Innumerable glossaries and commentaries have grown round Hamlet, and he is one of the few literary heroes who live apart from the text, apart from the theatre. His name means something even to those who have never seen or read Shakespeare's play. In this respect he is rather like Leonardo's Mona Lisa.... Too many people ... have tried to solve the mystery of that smile. It is not just Mona Lisa that is smiling at us now, but all those who have tried to analyze, or imitate that smile.1
Jan Kott's definition of Hamlet as a timeless international cult places it at the heart of a longstanding tradition: age cannot wither [it] nor custom stale [its] infinite variety! Its virtual and real size, by now, surpass the Warsaw phonebook. Hamlet's smile, or sigh, is a cue for readers, critics and writers to propel the Hamletmachine. The Danish prince knows no borders. He can be seen in cowboy boots and jallabiyya transcending his Danish endemism and defying coordinates as a representative of a cultural globalization unifying east, west, north and south. Peter Brook's celebration of Kott's genius in interpreting Shakespeare suggests the nonendemic origin of many international Hamletologists: 'So it is quite naturally up to a Pole to point us the way'.2
This book is not just an anthology of plays on Hamlet. It is an attempt to guide the readers through forked paths: criticism, writing...