helmut helmet tail text banner

Home

Audience Info
 ~E-mail List
 ~Directions

Play Resources

Current Season

Past Seasons

About Us
 ~Mission & History
 ~Genesius Theatre
     Foundation

Actors/Techs Info
 ~E-mail Call List
 ~Tryouts
 ~Rehearsals

Support the Guild
 ~Donation Form
 ~Volunteer
 ~Donate Items
 ~Donors List

Contact Us

 

side navigation graphic

Play Previews and Resources
Play Info Home ~ Greek ~ Shakespeare ~ Feedback Form

Shakespeare

Hamlet
Play introduction by Don Wooten - text (PDF)
Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamlet
Read the play online - http://shakespeare.mit.edu/hamlet/index.html

Last performed by the Genesius Guild in 2001 ~ Photos

It's hard to generalize about “Hamlet.” But that doesn't stop people from trying. Here's a rather compelling thought: it's about five young people who don't have the strength of character to disobey their elders.

Think about it. Ophelia obeys her father's order to stop seeing Hamlet, loses her mind, then her life. Her brother listens to the king's murder plot and buys into it, dying in consequence. Rosencranz and Guildenstern are only too eager to do their school chum in to please the monarch and they “go to it.”

Hamlet sets out to obey the ghost of his father, but can't quite bring himself to commit the crime of revenge. He pauses again and again, once acting compulsively, only to find he has killed the wrong man. By the end of the play, his passion is largely spent and it takes the deaths of both the queen and Laertes, his own imminent demise, and the obvious guilt of Claudius to move him to action. Had he acted immediately, everyone but Claudius would be alive.

 

 

 


 

 

 
Copyright 2000-2014. All rights reserved.
The Genesius Theatre Foundation
1120 40th Street
Rock Island, IL 61201
Web Guild Logo (This website is developed
and maintained by the
Augustana Web Guild.)