Hamlet's Apocalypse

Funded in part by the Ada G. and Stanley L. Halbreich Foundation and based on work by Shakespeare scholar Linda Hoff, this production shows that the play is not a tragedy but a black comedy which parodies Doomsday in the Book of Revelation. A background article on the Jewish religious allegories in Shakespeare’s plays can be found here.

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. Watch an interview with Hamlet. Or watch a five minute extract from the professional video of the production.