MST3K does Hamlet, a German version

I found a gem on Netflix the other day.  Mystery Science Theatre 3000 did a parody of Hamlet, but not just any Hamlet, a German version from the 1960's made for television.  It was obviously dubbed into English, but you can still see some directorial choices, like costume and set.

Aside from the hilarious jokes made of the show (like, "Hey, that line's from Hamlet!"), the movie was fun to watch.  Even my wife, who is not usually into Shakespeare, or German films, enjoyed it.  Here are a few of my thoughts as I watched.

The "too, too solid flesh" speech done as voiceover while the coronation party are departing, then becoming spoken when they are all gone.  This leads the audience to believe that Hamlet is constantly in his head, talking to himself, thinking too much.

There is a minimalist set, it looks like it was leftover from a stage production.  That was probably intentional, as they were probably trying to imitate a successful theatre production.

When the ghost speaks to Hamlet, we do not see the ghost, we hear him, but the camera is focused on Hamlet's face the whole time.  Interesting, does this imply that the ghost is merely in Hamlet's mind?  

The scene that Ophelia tells her father about, that Hamlet came to her ("As I was sewing in my closet....") they actually show.  A little creepy, actually.  Hamlet wanders in, shirt undone, hair all frizzled, and wide-eyed and stares at Ophelia, then slowly backs out of the room, which causes Ophelia to run off and find her father. There are no lines, no speech, just Hamlet staring at Ophelia, then walking away.

The "To be or not to be" speech starts out with Hamlet standing behind a wall, or a doorway, or a stairway (it's a black and white film and filmed with a lot of dark shadows so a lot of detail in the set are hard to make out).  Still, for the first half of the speech Hamlet's face is mostly blocked, you can't see his mouth, only his eyes.  Strange.

Ophelia, mad Ophelia, does not sing.  She just smiles and says her lines with a goofy grin.  Doesn't really look that mad, except that she's handing out weeds and calling it different flower names.

It was a fun film, mostly because of the commentary that MST3K provides, but I found it interesting looking at the elements of the German production.  I would recommend this movie to anyone looking for a good Shakespearean laugh!

Hamlet ist Deutsch: My Conclusions to Studying Hamlet in German

As I have studied Shakespeare in Germany over the last few months I have come to one conclusion that I would like to posit as a thesis for this research blog:

William Shakespeare's Hamlet has become and is now more German than English, because of the way that in which the German people have adopted and interpreted the play and incorporated it into their culture.

From the very beginning Hamlet has been a favorite play in Germany, there is a German translation that dates back to 1710, though there are accounts of the play being performed in Germany within five years of Shakespeare's death.

In the 1800's,Shakespeare, and Hamlet especially, were well loved and talked about by the great German thinkers and writers, like Goether, and Schiller.  In fact, now Shakespeare is considered their equal in German eyes, and they refer to the three great Klassiker Goethe, Schiller, and Shakespeare

In 1844, the German poet Ferdinand Freiligrath wrote a poem entitled Hamlet, where we wrote that Germany is Hamlet. I have translated this and done some interpretation, that indicates that Germany is Hamlet because, at least in the 1800's, it was full of great thinkers and philosophers, but few men of action.  At that time there was no German state, but several German kingdoms.  Freiligrath seems to mean with his poem that Germany should stop being so concerned with thinking and hesitating, like Hamlet was, and should start acting, or they would end up like Hamlet, stabbed and killed.

Hamlet is German

In looking at how Germany has appropriated the play Hamlet, as I have discussed before, I decided to look at current productions of Hamlet in Germany. 


I found the Shakespeare Festival at the Globe Neuss.  (Yes, the Germans have built a replica of the Globe on an old racetrack, and they hold a Shakespeare Festival every summer.) They have done productions of Hamlet in 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 and it's on the schedule for 2011.  The program for this summer's festival shows that there are no less than 4 different productions of Hamlet!  One by the Globe Touring Company from London (performed in English), and one by the Bremer Shakespeare Company (from Bremen, performed in German), Kupenga Kwa Hamlet, which is a shortened Hamlet done by two Zimbabwen actors (performed in English), and Hamlet (from the East) performed by the Yohangza Theatre Company from Korea (performed in Korean).  There is also a lecture/discussion Shakespeare - A German writer, which will discuss Shakespeare's influence on German culture with "bilingual readings from Shakespeare and German poets from Goethe till present day."  All of this in four weeks! In addition to Comedy of Errors done in French and English, Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, Troilus and Cressida all in German, Richard III in English, and Macbeth done by a Swedish choir!  Who wants to pay for me to fly to Germany????


Hamlet is very much alive in Germany today.  It has had a long, rich history.  And, although it was technically written in English by an Englishman, Hamlet is very much German now.  There is something about German culture and history that has drawn them to this play, more than any other, so much that they write poems about it, do postmodernist theatrical adaptations of it, and continue to perform it regularly.  Lines from the play may have slipped into the vernacular in English speaking countries across the world, but the play itself has wormed its way into the heart of the German people.

What is Hamlet?: A Look at How Translations Affect the Text

Furthering my exploration and study into the subject of Hamlet, and especially German versions and how the play has been performed in Germany, I find myself coming back to this one defining question:

When does an adaptation or translation of a play become a different play?

Are there essential elements of a play that define it, which would, if changed render a different piece of work?  How much of the plot and characters can be modified or adapted and still retain the essence of the original work?

Let's look at Hamlet specifically.  What about the play Hamlet makes it Hamlet?  I mentioned before that I found a German version of the Hamlet story from 1710, called "Der Bestrafte Brudermord", which has enough similarities to Shakespeare's play that some scholars believe it is a translation of Shakespeare's Hamlet, but with enough differences that others believe it may be the Ur-Hamlet, or original Hamlet text that Shakespeare based his play on.  

Fratricide Revenged : The German Hamlet

As I have mentioned before, I have found a German play called "Der Bestrafte Brudermord" or Fratricide Revenged, as it is commonly translated into English.  This German play is a version of Hamlet, but it appears to be based less on the Shakespearean play and more on the original source text that Shakespeare also used for his play.  The earliest version of this play we have dates from 1710, but this play still gets performed in Germany, there was a production in Bochum at the Ruhr Universität in 2007.

Here are my thoughts as I read the play, which is surprisingly shorter than I had thought it would be.  The .pdf of the play that I found is only 23 pages, the scenes are very short, often only half a page, but the plot and the characters are similar to those we are familiar with with Hamlet.

Iambic Pentameter in German Shakespeare

In class as I was talking with Prof. Burton he mentioned looking at the use of iambic pentameter in German translations of Shakespeare.  I said that in the German translations they did not use prose much, that German did not lend itself well to iambic pentameter because in German the first syllable is stressed.  I must admit that I was wrong.  Partly.  German is stressed more on the first syllable, but that doesn't mean that German does not use iambic pentameter.  Especially Goethe and Schiller, after falling in love with Shakespeare, used iambic pentameter in their poetry.  

In the German translations that I have read, though, there is little prose.  They have chosen to translate the meaning of the English text, but with little concern for the poetry, for the meter.  So, I went looking for iambic pentameter in German translations of Shakespeare.  I chose a scene that I was very familiar with in English that is well-known for its use of iambic pentameter: the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, scene 2.  Then I went looking for German translations of Romeo und Julia, looking for iambic pentameter.   I had to look through three different translations before I found one, by August Wilhelm von Schlegel, that used iambic pentameter.  

Here is the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet in German.  I have bolded the accented syllable to show the iambic pentameter, and I have written the number of feet at the end of each line.  A + indicates that there is an extra syllable.

Sources and Links, and another step forward

Following the suggestion that Prof. Burton gave in class today, and modeling after Bryan's blog, I set up two pages:  one for the sources that I cite in my blog and one for other links and interesting websites I have found.  Hopefully this will help keep things a little more organized and a little more scholarly as I can show what I'm studying and where I'm finding my sources.  As my German professor keeps telling us "citing shows how smart you are, how many other sources you have read, how many other people are talking about the same subjects."

In looking through all of my old posts (I can't believe I've written 44 in two and a half months!), I was also reminded of several ideas that I had found and thought about, but forgotten.  In particular, one where I mention a German play called Der Bestrafte Brudermord (The Punished (or Revenged) Fratricide).  I would like to do more research into this, as it is an interesting subject.  I found an English translation online, with an introduction that talked about how this play seems to be based more off of a Thomas Kyd play than Shakespeare's Hamlet.  Others believe it may be the German translation of the original Hamlet story that both Kyd and Shakespeare based their plays on.

As I have been doing posts about Shakespeare and Germany and trying to find a thesis, I am torn between two ideas that keep recurring.

1. Shakespeare and the Nazis -- I want to continue my research into how Shakespeare was treated and performed under the Nazis, maybe comparing the plays produced in Nazi Germany with plays produced in England or America in the same time period.  What does the choice of plays say about Germany and German culture?

2. Germany and Hamlet -- Especially with this reintroduction to Der Bestrafte Brudermord (which I did find a copy of in German!) I would like to study Germany's history with the play and seek to understand why it is so popular in Germany more than elsewhere and more than other plays.  What is it about German history or culture that keeps this people interested in Hamlet?  And, going off of something Prof. Burton said in class today, are German productions of Hamlet more 'real', more 'authentic' than an English or American production, do Germans innately understand something about Hamlet that we do not?

Theatre in Nazi Germany

I was looking in the library the other day and I came across a shelf that had books all about theatre in Germany.  So, I pulled a few off of the shelf and started flipping through them, using the index to find all references to Shakespeare and specific Shakespearean plays.  Here is what I learned from two of those books:

From the book Theatre Under the Nazis, by John London (2000):
There was a section where they he summarized the number of legal productions of Shakespeare by play during the Nazi era.  The results are fascinating.  Now keep in mind these are productions across all of Germany, not individual performances.   Shakespeare was apparently extremely popular.


Twelfth Night -135
Taming of the Shrew - 101
Hamlet - 94
Midsummer Night's Dream - 76
Much Ado About Nothing - 57
Comedy of Errors - 48
As You Like It - 47

What is my point: In which I try to come up with a thesis

I have written a lot about Shakespeare and  Germany, and I have been focusing mostly on Hamlet, and how Hamlet has been treated in Germany.  This has been extremely fascinating for me, researching and discovering the depth of the scholarship, particularly in Germany on the subject of Shakespeare and Hamlet.

But where am I going with this?   I want to take a step back and look at what I already know, what research I have already done in order to see if I can come up with some sort of working thesis.

1. Deutschland ist Hamlet -- I posted about Freiligrath's famous poem along with a translation and interpretation.  There has been scholarship in Germany since the mid 1800s about Germany's relationship with Hamlet, including the debate whether Germany is Hamlet or not.

2. Shakespeare in Nazi Germany -- I have also found several books dealing with theatre and Shakespeare and how these plays were seen and produced in Germany under the Nazi regime of the 1930s and 40s.   There were some productions that were very pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic, especially a production of The Merchant of Venice, and some productions that were blatantly critical of the Nazis, like Fehling's Richard III or Gründgen's Hamlet.

3.  König Lear -- I have an edition of King Lear in English and German, and I have done some comparative analysis of the two languages, and I have at least one more post in draft status which looks at the footnotes of my German translation, which helps explain some things from the English text. I would like to do more close readings and analyses of King Lear using both of these texts.

So, what thesis should I be following?  What should I spend my time focusing a little more in depth on?  For this week, I will do one more post on each of these three points as I continue to develop a thesis, but for now, I think I am leaning more toward a study of Shakespeare in Nazi Germany.  I would like to do a Reader Response analysis and look at how Shakespeare can be interpreted in any way to prove whatever point the director or audience chooses.

Hamlet in Nazi Germany

Today I had some free time so I went to the library and picked up a book that I mentioned earlier, The Nazi Appropriation of Shakespeare, by Rodney Symington, published in 2005.

I sat down and started reading it, but soon found myself flipping to the section that actually talked about the plays and how they were treated and dealt with, and to my surprise the very first play discussed in this book was Hamlet, specifically the Gründgens performance of 1936, that I also mentioned earlier.

Gustaf Gründgens as Hamlet 1936

What I found interesting was the description of the performance that Gründgens gave as Hamlet.  They cut lines and scenes that indicated Hamlet's reluctance to act.  The Shakespeare Jahrbuch, a publication of the German Shakespeare Society wrote in 1936 that Hamlet was not portrayed as "a weakling or nervous artistic personage, but as a brilliant young man whose world is overturned by incredible spiritual burdens" (qtd. in Symington).  A critic of the time, Richard Biedrzynski described Gründgen's Hamlet as, “more active, more single minded, more dangerous, more alert, more ready to strike” (qtd. in Symington).

Deutschland ist Hamlet, follow up

As a follow up to my last post, more especially the comment that Janelle left, let me do a little more explanation of Freiligrath's poem.

Janelle asked a great question, If Germany is Hamlet, then who are the other characters in the play?

In the poem Freiligrath only mentions three other characters in his poem:  The Ghost of Hamlet's father, Polonius, and Laertes.  Let's look at each of these characters and what they would symbolize or represents in Germany's history.

1. The Ghost of Hamlet's father --  In Hamlet, who was Hamlet's father in relation to him -- well, obviously his father.  A person that Hamlet respected, looked up to, was incited to revenge.  I already mentioned Otto von Bismarck, and what he did for the German empire.  This was seen as the Second German Empire, the first being the Holy Roman Empire founded in 962 by Otto I, and the Third Reich we are all familiar with, being Hitler's pipedream of a Germany that ruled the world.

So, I would say that the Ghost of Hamlet's father would be Germany's rich history, including the Holy Roman Empire.  Freiligrath wants Germany to rise up and take action and be as great as it once was, so he writes this poem, drawing on the parallel of Hamlet being asked to avenge his father's legacy.

2.  Polonius -- Freiligrath actually tells us who he wants us to interpret as Polonius, August Kotzebue.  Kotzebue was a poet and author who wrote against the student uprisings and rebellions of the time.   These student organizations were very involved with nationalism and conservative values.  After reading what Kotzebue wrote, one student, Karl Ludwig Sand, killed him.
It seems, then, that like Polonius, who was trying to stop Hamlet from what he was supposed to be doing, and conspiring with Hamlet's enemy, Claudius, Kotzebue was working against the cause of German nationalism, and was killed for it.  But making this connection with Polonius, Freiligrath says that Kotzebue was the wrong man to kill.  The poem even says that he received the blow instead of the proper one.    Who, then, does Freiligrath consider the Claudius, the actual person who was standing in the way of German nationalism?


3.  Laertes -- In the poem, Freiligrath does mention, in connection with Laertes, a "French rapier".  It seems, then, that Freiligrath feared some treachery from France.  I might have to do some more research into German history of this time period, to see if there was a threat from France.  I just don't know.

Deutschland ist Hamlet

Here is the poem by Ferdinand Freiligrath from 1844 (source), that I mentioned before.  I have done my best in translating it into English for you, so that you can see what he is writing about.

Ferdinand Freilgrath

Hamlet
Ferdinand Freiligrath

Deutschland ist Hamlet! Ernst und stumm           Germany is Hamlet! Serious and Silent
In seinen Toren jede Nacht                                 Buried Freedom wanders about his gates 
Geht die begrabne Freiheit um                            Every night and waves at the men of the Watch.
Und winkt den Männern auf der Wacht.               There stands the High One, openly armed
Dasteht die Hohe, blank bewehrt,                        And says to the procrastinator, who still doubts,
Und sagt dem zaudrer, der noch zweifelt:            "Be for me a Revenger, Draw your sword!
"Sei mir ein Rächer, zieh dein Schwert!               They have trickled poison into my ear!"
Man hat mir Gift ins Ohr geträufelt!"

Das Wintermärchen

After rereading Hermione's trial scene from The Winter's Tale, I tried to apply my focus (Germanic) to it.  It was hard.  I read that scene in German, and didn't learn anything new (that applied to the play, I did notice some very interesting things about the text of the play, but that is more historical linguistics, and probably uninteresting to anyone but myself)

Then I started researching the history of this play in Germany.  In addition to finding the following clip, of a fun student version of the play from the Universität Bielefeld,


Angriff des Bären aus Shakespeares Wintermärchen

Compagnie Charivari | Myspace Video

Hamlet and Germany

In 1848 the German poet Ferdinand Freiligrath wrote a poem in which he wrote that "Germany is Hamlet", referring to the famous Shakespearean play, which toured Germany within five years of Shakespeare's death.  It seems that play never left.  
Ever since his famous poem, scholars have debated back and forth, looking for and finding or not finding themselves within the text.  Freiligrath's original poem describes Hamlet as being serious, and overly thoughtful, yet inactive.  He thinks too much and does too little, which Freiligrath saw in Germany of the 19th century, though he later wrote, "To the German Shakespeare Society of Weimar, Representative of a People  Whose Recent history has proved Once for all that "Germany is Not Hamlet."  (Look for a future post where I take a look more closely at that poem)

Wilhelm Shakespeare -- Shakespeare in Germany

William Shakespeare is loved the world over, but nowhere near as much as in Germany.  From some simple Google searches on Shakespeare and Germany, I have learned that the oldest Shakespeare Society in the world is German: Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, founded in 1864, English acting troops brought the Bard to Germany in the early 1700s with performances translated into German, and there have been so many translations of Shakespeare's plays into German that most Germans actually believe that Wilhelm Shakespeare was a German!

As a student of German, who has loved this language and this culture for over a decade now,  I find this fascinating.  I have found several translations of these plays online and they have evolved as the modern German language has evolved.  Shakespeare is very much alive in German, because he is allowed to be translated and retranslated, where in English there are always those purists who frown on anything but the actual, authentic, original text.  But Shakespeare has been allowed to thrive in Germany precisely because he is a foreigner.  And yet, he is very much a German.  A poem from the German Shakespeare Society reads,

Seht, heut' gesellt, im heil'gen Bund der Dritte,
Zu Deutschlands Dioskuren sich der Brite,
Auch er ist unser...

(See, today in the holy bond joins as the third, to Germany's dioscuri (referring to Schiller and Goethe), the Brit.  He, too, is ours.)