Bibliographische Detailangaben
Beteiligte: Boatner-Doane, Charlotte
In: Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film, 44, 2017, 2, S. 212-235
veröffentlicht:
SAGE Publications
Medientyp: Artikel, E-Artikel

Nicht angemeldet

weitere Informationen
Umfang: 212-235
ISSN: 2048-2906
1748-3727
DOI: 10.1177/1748372718763621
veröffentlicht in: Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film
Sprache: Englisch
Schlagwörter:
Kollektion: SAGE Publications (CrossRef)
Inhaltsangabe

<jats:p> This paper considers Sarah Siddons’s cross-gender performances as Hamlet in relation to critical fascination with the character’s interiority in the early Romantic era. An examination of the responses to Siddons’s Hamlet in the context of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century studies of the play reveals that Siddons’s contemporaries saw the actress’s femininity and acting methods as particularly effective for conveying the sensibility and irresolution that became increasingly associated with Hamlet in literary criticism of the period. In particular, the responses to Siddons’s performances emphasise Hamlet’s first encounter with his father’s Ghost, a scene often considered the focal point of definitive performances by actors like Thomas Betterton, David Garrick, and Siddons’s brother, John Philip Kemble. The fact that these commentators describe Siddons’s Hamlet as superior to her brother’s and praise her reactions in the Ghost scene suggests that Siddons succeeded in creating a dramatic interpretation of the character that aligned with the Romantic focus on Hamlet’s inner life. </jats:p>