ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the theatrical and textual modes of transmission of Hamlet to demonstrate that a greater degree of transculturation is found in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century stage adaptations of Shakespeare than in printed translations from the same time. French neoclassicists insisted on thorough transculturations, and it was through Ducis’s neoclassical adaptation that Hamlet was first transmitted into other European countries. In contrast, the Romantics preferred to engage with Shakespeare’s art by and of itself. Thomas’s adaptation, the only operatic adaptation of Hamlet which has been performed with any regularity, sought to balance neoclassical and Romantic approaches, and exemplifies how adaptations of Shakespeare for the stage were shaped by aesthetic debates and performance-related conventions, by institutional regulations, and by audience expectations related to performance. It also demonstrates how nineteenth-century adaptations reimagined Shakespearean heroines in innovative ways, with the opera providing a landmark moment in the history of the representation of Ophelia on stage. As such, Thomas’s opera throws light on the mechanisms of adaptation and problematises commonly held distinctions between “adaptation” and “appropriation.”
