I don't know what critic ventured the opinion Dumas version was a comedy.
That put me off even looking at it, for years. I'm sure whoever said it
didn't read the play or see it performed. When one great dramatist reworks a
play by another great dramatist he should be given a hearing. Even if you
do not like the changes Dumas has made, they were carefully chosen and by an
expert craftsman of the
theatre and should not be cavalierly dismissed.
Basically, what Dumas has
done is to streamline the play, cutting some of the self-indulgent
material Shakespeare has included. He pares down the play while sticking to the main
plot. Some actions are moved forward without any
violence to the story line and he cuts a few characters out.
Until the ending, most of the changes are largely dictated by the need to
limit the number of set changes. Elizabethans, with their perfunctory
notions of set, bothered themselves very little about
set changes. They were virtually unnecessary. By the 19th century,
however, the elaborate sets forced playwrights to try to configure the
action of the play into as few changes of set as possible. The playwright
attempts to get as much action into a single scene as possible. This has
the beneficial result of holding the attention of the audience, by not
interrupting their limited attention span with frequent
set changes. If a set change takes too long, or happens too often, the
audience tends to lose interest and lose the thread of the story. This also
tends to make modern plays a little more thoughtfully written from the point
of view of staging them.
Dumas' final changes seem to me to reflect a more modern point of view about
the ending, although he brings back the Ghost of Hamlet's father as a kind
of Deus ex machina to tidy things up at the end. Having
kept the ghost at the begining I imagine he felt, in for a nickle, in for a
dime. The ghost metes out punishment to Laertes, The Queen, and the King.
He more or less umpires the holocaust at the end, with commentary. This
allows Dumas to end the play where it really ends, and doesn't have to bring
in Fortinbras. The one significant change he makes is that Hamlet survives.
The Queen, The King, and Laertes die as in Shakespeare, perhaps a little more
tidily. In Shakespeare they drop off like flies. Dumas provides a little
more space in between.
What about letting Hamlet live? I don't think Dumas did this because he was
shy of killing off his hero. Dumas kills off his heroes often enough in
many of his plays. I think, on consideration, he felt Hamlet's plight was
worse if he had to face the horror of what happened. After all, Hamlet's
death in Shakespeare is not a suicide but the result of treachery, therefore,
his death is not necessarily required by a character flaw. He dies because
Laertes poisoned foil pricks him. I think Dumas said "Wouldn't it be worse to survive?"
Anyway, it's no
comedy. And it's a strong tight ending.
It is very instructive, if nothing else to compare it to Shakespeare's
version. I'm glad I translated it. I had always thought it was of little
worth. I no longer think so.
