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Alienating Hamlet

Precarious Work in Jenny Andreasson's Teatern

Per Sivefors

Abstract

The protagonist of Jenny Andreasson's autobiographical novel Teatern (2022) is a young female director whose feminist production of Hamlet at the Swedish national stage fails to have its planned premiere. While the novel makes a point of describing the misogynist structures behind this failure, the present article suggests that class structures and precarity are the main reasons behind it. The financial difficulties of the theatre generate a clear discrepancy between cultural capital – embodied by Shakespeare's canonical play – and economic. The resulting precarious work situation is reflected in the protagonist's yearning for stability, in her recurring assertions of class privileges vis-à-vis her co-workers and in her increasing sense of alienation from both them and her own work. While not strictly paraphrasing Shakespeare's play, the protagonist invokes parallels to both Hamlet and Ophelia, and Teatern, instead of locating these parallels in an ‘existential’ reading of Shakespeare's play, anchors the theme of alienation in the economic and social strictures of the theatre institution.

Cover Critical Survey

In  Critical Survey

Published (Print):
01 Dec 2023
Article Type:
Research Article
Pages:
41–57 (17 total)
Restricted access

A Danish Fool at Elsinore?

Some Thoughts on Hamlet's Lost Clown

Peter K. Andersson

Abstract

This article discusses the clowning element of a German version of Hamlet believed to date back to the time of Shakespeare. Der bestrafte Brudermord is noted as an adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy which incorporates a lot more low comedy than any extant version of Hamlet and provides opportunity for contemplating the reason why Hamlet has no explicit clown character. The article focuses especially on a character appearing very briefly in the German play, a rustic buffoon called Jens, and his affinity with the rustics and comic servants of other Shakespeare plays and other Elizabethan plays. It is particularly asserted that this role shows signs of the involvement of the clown Will Kemp at some stage of the writing of Hamlet, or of touring continental Europe with an adaptation of it that puts the clowning element at the forefront.

Cover Critical Survey

In  Critical Survey

Published (Print):
01 Dec 2023
Article Type:
Research Article
Pages:
10–25 (16 total)
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Elli Tompuri's Female Hamlet, 1913

Nely Keinänen

Abstract

This article analyses the first female Hamlet in the Nordic countries, Elli Tompuri (1880–1962). Early in her career Tompuri made a name for herself at the Finnish National Theatre, but later, in part due to her radical politics, was unable to find permanent employment at any established theatre so she began touring with her own company, putting on Hamlet in 1913. The article traces Tompuri's inspirations and thoughts about the play, before analysing the major themes raised in the reviews. On one hand, reviewers noted with some pride the national significance of the first female Hamlet. On the other hand, Tompuri's status as a New Woman, an actor-director-manager making her own way, generated a wide range of opinions, from outrage that a woman would attempt the part to admiration of Tompuri's genius and intelligence, often within a single review.

Cover Critical Survey

In  Critical Survey

Published (Print):
01 Dec 2023
Article Type:
Research Article
Pages:
58–75 (18 total)
Free access

From Invasive to Iconic

A New Cultural Typology of Introduced Species

Clayton Fordahl

Abstract

Recent years have seen a shift in the social scientific study of introduced species. Social scientists have shown that popular interpretations vary beyond the critical, invasive frameworks and include more celebratory or welcoming responses. Yet this research has taken the form of case studies. This has limited comparative inquiry. In response, this article develops a typology of sociocultural responses to introduced species by nonspecialists. The article then discusses major forms of collective meaning-making that go into creating these different cultural types.

Cover Nature and Culture

In  Nature and Culture

Published (Print):
01 Dec 2023
Article Type:
Research Article
Pages:
280–301 (22 total)
Free access

Introduction

Hamlet and the Nordic Countries

Nely Keinänen and Per Sivefors

The story of Shakespeare's Nordic play is also, inevitably, one of cultural exchanges before, during and after the early modern period. From its origins in Nordic tradition to its re-introduction in the Nordic countries through Shakespeare's play, the story of Hamlet from the Middle Ages to the present is inextricably bound up with Nordic history and culture. In tracing some of these links, this special issue develops our recent work on the early dissemination of Shakespeare in the Nordic countries, focusing here on that most Nordic of plays, Hamlet. Although there is already a great deal of criticism on Hamlet in various national or regional contexts, very little of this has focused on the Nordic countries.1 It is therefore fitting, we believe, to provide a necessarily brief outline of the rich and varied history that Shakespeare's play has had in Northern Europe.

Cover Critical Survey

In  Critical Survey

Published (Print):
01 Dec 2023
Article Type:
Introduction
Pages:
1–9 (9 total)
Free access

Mythical Infrastructuring

The Work of Stories in the Making of the Chacao Bridge, Southern Chile

Rodrigo Cordero, Aldo Mascareño, Ignacia Rodríguez, and Francisco Salinas

Abstract

The very nature of large-scale infrastructure projects—long design and construction periods, high investment, and impact on social and natural spaces—makes them prone to socioecological and technical conflicts. These conflicts materialize in stories that become keystones in the making of infrastructure. In this article, we analyze the infrastructuring power of stories by drawing on the case of the Chacao Bridge on Chiloé Island in southern Chile, a controversial infrastructure project that has been in the making over the last six decades. We argue that the “absence” of the bridge creates a space for the production of stories on the island's inherited past and imagined future that keeps recurring and growing in the form of myths. Thus, we propose the concept of “mythical infrastructuring” to capture this process. We then conclude by arguing that the Chacao Bridge project develops its infrastructuring presence over landscape and culture in contradictory ways that cannot be solved technically or symbolically.

Cover Nature and Culture

In  Nature and Culture

Published (Print):
01 Dec 2023
Article Type:
Research Article
Pages:
257–279 (23 total)
Free access

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

The Invisible Society of Waste in Singapore

Ng Xin Hui, Kuan Shu Wen, and Md Saidul Islam

Abstract

Waste is an increasingly significant environmental concern in Singapore in light of the shortening lifespan of the nation's Semakau Landfill, which is expected to reach full capacity by 2035. In order to provide a fresh perspective on the age-old problem of waste management and open different conversations regarding waste, we posit that the obscurement of waste promotes the production of waste in Singapore by desensitizing Singaporeans to their waste and disconnecting them from the waste problem. This article aims to uncover the factors that contribute to the obscurement of waste in Singapore and to explicate how this obscurement disconnects Singaporeans from their waste. Through qualitative interviews and field observations substantiated by secondary data, this article seeks to study how the intangible and tangible factors—educational, sociocultural, and situational—exert a collective influence on waste obscurement and hinder the adoption of waste minimization practices.

Cover Nature and Culture

In  Nature and Culture

Published (Print):
01 Dec 2023
Article Type:
Research Article
Pages:
302–324 (23 total)
Free access

Serpents for Salvation?

There Is Room for Doubt

Sahotra Sarkar

Veronica Strang, Water Beings: From Nature Worship to the Environmental Crisis. London: Reaktion Books, 2023. 280 pp.; 126 color plates; 5 halftones. US$45.00.

Cover Nature and Culture

In  Nature and Culture

Published (Print):
01 Dec 2023
Article Type:
Book Review
Pages:
325–329 (5 total)
Restricted access

(There Is) Nothing Like a Dane

Gertrudes at Elsinore and Elsewhere

Kiki Lindell Tersmeden

Abstract

This article gives a brief account of the two-hundred-year-old performance history of Hamlet at Elsinore Castle; this is followed by a discussion of Gertrude as portrayed in nine English or English-speaking Hamlets at Elsinore, beginning with Olivier and the Old Vic in 1937 and concluding with Cape Town Theatre Company eighty-five years later, in 2022. The article discusses different aspects of how Gertrude (as seen through the prism of these particular Hamlet productions) has been portrayed on stage, drawing attention to the fact that, particularly in productions with a star actor in the title role, Gertrude has often been neglected, ignored or marginalised by the director, or else objectified and sexualised for the benefit of the audience: aged down, dumbed down or otherwise commodified.

Cover Critical Survey

In  Critical Survey

Published (Print):
01 Dec 2023
Article Type:
Research Article
Pages:
76–93 (18 total)
Free access

Toward an Ecology of Disentanglement

Jozef Keulartz

Abstract

The relationship between nature and culture is a major theme in the philosophical discourse on the Anthropocene. The best-known movements within Anthropocene thinking are ecomodernism and posthumanism. Both movements distance themselves from the idea that nature and culture are strictly separate domains. In the Anthropocene, this separation no longer appears tenable; nature and culture have become inextricably entangled. The world consists exclusively of hybrids, compositions of both human and nonhuman entities. Ecomodernists and posthumanists are of one mind in their criticism of the traditional nature movement, which believes that it can return to a past when nature and culture were still distinct entities and there was such a thing as “pristine” nature. I will argue that denying the possibility of any decoupling between humans and nonhumans will result in the latter being severely curtailed in their freedom to autonomously shape their own lives, and I will therefore argue for what I like to call an “ecology of disentanglement.”

Cover Nature and Culture

In  Nature and Culture

Published (Print):
01 Dec 2023
Article Type:
Research Article
Pages:
235–256 (22 total)