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Hamlet's Doubles Author(s): Ralph Berry Source: Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 37, No. 2 (Summer, 1986), pp. 204-212 Published by: Folger Shakespeare Library in association with George Washington University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2869958 . Accessed: 04/02/2011 18:40

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http://www.jstor.org Hamlet'sDoubles

RALPH BERRY

INTHE RSC HAMLETOF 1980, MICHAELPENNINGTON'S HAMLET, listeningintently to thePlayer's account of Pyrrhus, So as a paintedtyrant Pyrrhus stood, And,like a neutralto his willand matter . . . anticipatedthe player to completethe sentence himself: Did nothing. (H.ii. 476-78) A boldtouch, and perfectly in keepingwith the play's echoic, self-referential quality.Everything that happens in Hamletrelates to theconsciousness at the drama'scenter; and Hamlet, with his supremeself-awareness, constantly sees in othersimages of himself:Laertes and Fortinbras are only the most obvious examples.The Player, in thepassage cited, reminds Hamlet of what he knows, and wouldas soon forget. Nowthis quality of Hamlet animates the doubling possibilities that are coded intothe text. Given a companyof 15-16, theassumed strength of theCham- berlain'sMen, extensive doubling was inevitable.Full casting-a differentac- torfor each part-was an indulgenceof the Victorian/Edwardian London stage, a demonstrationof lavish production values. Most stages,and theprovinces everywhere,have had to accommodatemore austere castings. Hamlet is de- signedfor productions in whichactors appear and reappear in differentguises, hauntinglyreminding the audience of whatwas said and expressedearlier in similarvoices, other habits. What,in themost general sense, is theeffect? A. C. Spraguedistinguishes betweendeficiency doubling (together with emergency doubling) and virtuoso doubling.' The firstvariety is aimedsimply at makinggood the numerical de- ficienciesof the company. Doubling has oftenbeen concealed (by such devices as "WalterPlinge," together with his American associate "George Spelvin"), themanagement being ashamed to admitthe company's limitations. It follows fromthis perception that the actor's chief triumph was to submergehimself, unrecognizably,inhis several roles. The second variety, on the contrary, glories in a displayof characteracting. As Spragueand Trewin note, "Polonius and one of the Gravediggers(most likely the First) . . . was once themost popular of all Shakespeariandoubles."2 This double goes back to 1730,and Sprague, in the appendixto his monograph,lists many instances. Neither variety of

1 The Doubling of Parts in Shakespeare'sPlays (London:Society for Theatre Research, 1966), p. 14. 2 ArthurColby Spragueand J. C. Trewin,Shakespeare's Plays Today: Customsand Conventions of theStage (Columbia, S.C.: Univ.of SouthCarolina Press, 1971), p. 17. HAMLET'S DOUBLES 205 doubling,I think,exists in thesame formtoday. Deficiency doubling there mustalways be, butnobody is ashamedof it; the actors tackle their assignments openly.The concept of virtuoso doubling is scarcelymainstream, and the actor playingPolonius is unlikelyto relishthe implication that this is thefirst leg of a comicdouble. Poloniuses are usually praised for not overdoing the comic touches.Broadly, then: doubling is not a uniformmode, implying a single varietyof audienceresponse. It willdepend on thecircumstances and attitudes of thestage in its era. And a historyof Hamletdoubling is well beyondmy scope. I wanthere to examine,first, some aspects of thedoubling problems whichthe text of Hamletdiscloses; second, some solutionswhich theatrical practice,in London and Stratford-upon-Avon, hasproposed in the past century. Andfinally, I willuse thesesolutions to returnto thenature of thetext itself.

I Shakespeare'stwo-part structures are fundamentalto his dramaturgy.From Richard III to The Winter'sTale, thereare numerousbefore-and-after com- positions,some of them,like Timonof Athens, exceptionally clear-cut. The schemacalls fora numberof lower/middle-orderparts, which will appear and disappearbefore the midpoint, whose actors can be re-deployedin thelater stagesof the play. It is a principleof organization, not a fixedplan of allocation. Shakespearemust be awarethat the actor playing Strato will comefrom the poolcontaining Flavius, Marullus, and Casca; the disposition of company forces can be made,without preconception, in thelight of theavailable talents. The doublingcharts that have been drawn up forRichard II andJulius Caesar show us howthe thing was done.3The two-part structure accommodated the doubling thatwas basic to performancein Shakepeare'sday, a practice,says G. E. Bentley,of whichaudiences were fully aware.4 Hamletis nota self-evidentlytwo-part structure, and commentators who as- sumesuch a structurehave disputed whether the midpoint lies in the Play Scene orthe Closet Scene. Nevertheless, the "centered symmetry," the careful struc- turalbalancing which Keith Brown adduces between the outer Acts cannot be gainsaid,and I findhis "centric view" ofthe larger Act III cogent.On Brown's showing,Hamlet is indeedsymmetrical, but its midpointis itselfa "central act" coveringseveral scenes, with the play dividing into Acts I-II; III-IV.iii; and IV.iv-V.5 Supposewe applythis tripartite division to thedoubling prob- lem;it correspondsreasonably well to thechallenges of organizingroles other thanthe major ones. The earlystages of Hamletrequire decent middle-order castingfor Marcellus, Bernardo, Francisco, Voltemand, Cornelius, and Rey- naldo. Theseparts disappear before the middle stages, which call uponRo- sencrantz,Guildenstern, First Player (presumably, Player King), Player Queen, Prologue,Lucianus, Norwegian Captain, and Fortinbras. Fortinbras will be needed forthe later stages, which also requiretwo Gravediggers, Sailor, Priest, Osric, andEnglish Ambassador. Without taking note of attendants, orsuch immediate

I WilliamA. Ringler,Jr., "The Numberof Actorsin Shakespeare'sEarly Plays," in TheSev- enteenthCentury Stage, ed. GeraldEades Bentley (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1968), pp. 110- 34. 4 The Professionof Player in Shakespeare's Time (Princeton:Princeton Univ. Press, 1984), p. 229. 5 " 'Formand Cause Conjoin'd':Hamlet andShakespeare's Workshop," Shakespeare Survey, 26 (1973), 11-20. 206 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

possibilitiesas a conflationof Lucianusand Prologue,one sees at once that half-a-dozendecently capable actors are calledfor in theearly stages, again in themiddle, and againin thelater stages of theplay. They can accomplish theirtasks in variouspermutations of tripling,which grow progressively less onerousas thecast numbers available move up between6-7 and 20. All thisassumes a fulltext, or somethinglike it. Hamlet, the quarry-text par excellence,invites cuts aimed at reshapingthe material (and notmerely re- ducingthe bulk). The majorpossibilities are too well-knownto needelabo- ration.Theatregoers today collect Reynaldos in the way their ancestors collected EnglishAmbassadors and Fortinbrases. An assiduous but unscholarly Victorian/ Edwardianplaygoer might have imagined that Hamlet ends at "And flightsof angelssing thee to thyrest." And,in Olivier'sfilm, even Rosencrantzand Guildensternfound no place. Serious cutting, of the surgical order, finds it easy to eliminateparts as well as linesfrom Hamlet. This obvious but unpursuable factI recordand abandon.The discussionof doublinghere takes for granted an approximationto a fulltext, whether of Folio or SecondQuarto. The complexityof thissituation disposes of anyidea thatthere can be a naturaltrack whereby certain dispositions taken early on lead to convenient optionsafter the interval. Instead, the actors are conducted through the "junc- tion" of themid-section-which is, forour purposes, the Play Scene-after whichthey are to be re-deployedin newand unpredictable ways. Let us take theopening scene as thesimplest illustration of theproblems. Three soldiers are required,in additionto Horatioand the Ghost. Of these,Francisco is the least substantial;he exitsearly, does notre-appear, and is availablefor re- castingat all laterpoints. Bernardo must remain throughout scene 1, and is withthe group that announces the news of theGhost to Hamletin I.ii. Mar- cellus,the most important of thethree, is additionallypresent in the battlement scenesof I.iv. andI.v. Thereafterhe, like his colleagues on watch,must return to theacting pool. Fromthere he willemerge later in waysthat defy prescrip- tion.The directormay take the view (a) thatMarcellus, having already had a reasonablysubstantial part, must now submit to somethingless distinguished, or (b) thatMarcellus, an actorof someability in a lean company,must be givensomething at leastas goodlater on. Ofthe three on guardduty, the actor withthe most soldierly bearing might be retainedfor Fortinbras; the second such,Norwegian Captain. How areparts re-assigned via the"junction"? What is theprevious existence of the Priest? Is a triplingfeasible, or does the director save a partby combiningLucianus/Prologue, thus yielding a spareactor who couldtake over Francisco, always provided that Captain could return as Sailor, grantedthat English Ambassador is takencare of . . . ? The combinationsspin andre-form. Always the director is in thebusiness of playingto strengthand maskingweakness, of tryingto matchnumbers with burly sailors, soldierly soldiers,lizard-like courtiers and reverend priests, not to mentionbloat kings andGertrudes who are not too obviously younger than Hamlets. He mustavoid beingend-played with reverend soldiers or lizard-likesailors. To arriveat pre- formedanswers to thesepuzzles would seem beyond the wit of man. Thusthe text, as itdiscloses itself to initialreflection. Scene 1 is notin itself especiallyimportant as a castingproblem. The directoris likelyto startelse- where,from the perception that such a one is an idealOsric and another is one of Nature'sGuildensterns, and to buildup his castingsfrom that point. It is simplythat scene 1 comesfirst, even if closedout late in thecasting process. Fromit one can tracethe network of options criss-crossing into a mathematical HAMLET'S DOUBLES 207 blur,as thetracks lead awayfrom the apparent simplicities of Francisco, Ber- nardo,and Marcellus. They, too, have an identityproblem. Who are they going to playnext?

II Hamletwill alwaysbe a Rubik'scube of thedirector's art. What can the- atricalpractice tell us aboutthe solutions?Of the infinitemass of material availablein theory,I selecttwo majorsamplings for their convenience and appropriateness.J. P. Wearing'scalendar of theLondon stage now extends from1890 to 1929.6Michael Mullin's catalogue-index covers a centuryof pro- ductionsin Stratford-upon-Avon(and latterly,London).' The castlists, save forthe remoter years in Stratford-upon-Avon,are reasonably full. Together, thesecatalogues cover a hundredproductions of Hamlet. It is enoughto stim- ulategeneralization. Themain conclusion is marked.There is nothingapproaching a central, con- tinuingtradition of Hamlet doubling. Historic situations change, for one thing. The Londonstage, as I have mentioned,adopted a standardof lavish,full casting.In theentire Edwardian era, therewere only a handfulof doublings (mostof themin Wearing,09.14). One is startledto comeacross a doubling of Bernardoand theGhost, but one's sense of hallucinationfades with the knowledgethat William Poel arrangedthe text (Wearing, 14.12). Duringthe 1914-18 war years,certain exigencies were obviously forced upon manage- ments.Even so, MartinHarvey at His Majesty's(Wearing, 16.93) keptalive BeerbohmTree's practiceof fullcasting. (Tree, in keepingwith the opulent standardsof his day,used to add a CourtJester to his cast.) Afterthe war, LilianBaylis's frugal reign at theOld Vic involvedregular and frequent dou- bling.At Stratford-upon-Avon, Benson, of course, had to cut corners; and Bridges- Adams,operating under the fiscally conservative Sir ArchibaldFlower, had to deployhis forceswith great care. Since 1945the Shakespeare Memorial The- atre,later the Royal Shakespeare Company, has generallybeen able to castas it pleased.There was, however,a remarkableproduction in 1975by thelate Buzz Goodbodyat The OtherPlace (Mullin,0280) in whichtriple castings werenormal. Charles Dance, for example, was wellreviewed for the unlikely combinationof Reynaldo,Third Player, and Fortinbras. Of recentyears, dou- blingat Stratford-upon-Avon hasreflected not exigencies but the director's wish to makea point.To thatI shallreturn. Conditions,though changing, do not,I think,generate historic trends in patternsof doubling.What one findsare odd pocketsof practices,which turn outto reflectthe taste of a directorable to return,over the years, to Hamlet. Benson,for example, liked to castMarcellus and First Player, irrespective of theactors available. Bridges-Adams favored the doubling of Ghostand For- tinbras,doing so on fouroccasions from 1920 to 1929. RobertAtkins, who

6 The London Stage 1890-1899: A Calendar of Plays and Players, 2 vols. (Metuchen,N.J.: ScarecrowPress, 1976). Subsequentcalendars for the London stage have been issued for 1900- 1909,2 vols. (1981); 1910-19,2 vols. (1982); and 1920-29,3 vols. (1984). The formused is thesame throughout, and I treatit hereas a compositework. In Wearing'ssystem, the first two digitsrefer to thedate. 09:14 meansthe fourteenth production listed for 1909. 7 Theatreat Stratford-upon-Avon:A Catalogue-Index to Productionsof the ShakespeareMem- oriallRoyalShakespeare Theatre, 1879-1978, compiledand editedby Michael Mullin withKaren MorrisMuriello, 2 vols. (Westport:Greenwood Press, 1980). 208 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY directedfive Hamlets in Londonduring the early 1920s, four at theOld Vic, also experimentedwith Ghost/Fortinbras (twice). Tripling was commonat the Old Vic duringthat era, and no onecombination dominated. One findsFrances L. Sullivancombining Francisco/Priest/English Ambassador (Wearing, 22.117). To approachthe matter from another angle, suppose we samplethe doubles withwhich Bernardo was associated:the first four decades of thiscentury at Stratford-upon-Avonyield us Guildenstern(twice); 2nd Player(four times); Priest;Rosencrantz (twice); Fortinbras; 2nd Gravedigger. London, from 1900- 1929,gives us Rosencrantz(three times); First Player (twice); Osric (twice); 2ndGravedigger (twice); Priest; and Captain.It is tediousto demonstratethe obvious.Doubling practice in Hamletis, and mustalways have been,over- whelminglyopportunistic. A negativecuriosity is worthmentioning. If we canbe tolerablysure of any specificdoubling in Shakespeare'sown company, it is thatof Marcellusand Voltemand.The firstQuarto evidence seems to confirman authenticpractice of theChamberlain's Men: thata singleactor was responsiblefor Marcellus andVoltemand, together with Prologue and Lucianus.8 One mightexpect Mar- cellus/Voltemandto be at leasta cultdouble, a purist'sdouble. I can findno evidenceof itspopularity, now or in anyera. Voltemandis an earlycandidate forelimination, as thedirector eyes his options together with the playing-text; Voltemand'slot maywell be to join thewoebegone Cornelius in thelimbo reservedfor non-players. But that does notaccount for the continuing irrelev- ance of a doublingpractice from Shakespeare's own company. Theatrepractice, then, reveals no consistentpattern of doublings.Polonius/ Gravediggerhad twocenturies of esteem,before fading; even Ghost/Laertes was practicedfor a hundredyears, an odditywhich Sprague has preservedfor us.9 Individualdirectors have favored or experimentedwith certain combina- tions.But thereis no masterkey. The searchfor through lines yields only a crazypattern of interconnectedlines. One has thento acceptthat the play is likethat: it is an infinitelycomplex set of possibilities,not a logicalgrid with well-definedpaths.

III A thirdvariety of doublingsI shallterm "conceptual." This is a modern phenomenon.In conceptualdoublings, the director looks beyond numbers, and beyondthe physical characteristics ofthe acting corps, to couplings which have an undergroundlinkage. Recognizing that the play's unity comprehends all its parts,the director wishes to italicizeinto a formalrelationship two of them. Conceptualdoubling brings a hiddenrelationship to light.Suppose we think of theplay as a metrosubway system, the characters as stations:to double partswith conceptual intent is to color-codethe stations on thesubway map. The play's meaningas realizedin performanceis thenheld to depend,not minimally,on a relationshipwhose intensity the director proposes. This tactic affordsthe director of Hamletan especiallyinviting range of possibilitiesin thosepairings which include the Ghost.

8 The exceptionaltextual accuracy of thespeeches for these four parts seems almost certain to indicatethat a singleactor, playing all fourparts, was the source for the First Quarto edition. This assumptionis widelyaccepted, as in HaroldJenkins's New Ardenedition of Hamlet(London: Methuen,1982), pp. 20-21.But Ringler is startlinglycertain that "the two parts cannot be doubled." Ringler,p. 127. 9 Sprague,Appendix, p. 35. HAMLET'S DOUBLES 209

The Ghostis theanimating spirit of Hamlet. Everything that happens in the play, fromthe initial"Who's there?"is an indexof or reactionto his ap- pearances.The play's subtitleis an adjustment:"Not theKing of Denmark." Admonishingand dominating his son, the Ghost is (likeJulius Caesar) "mighty yet";and young Hamlet, going through a series of admissions and submissions thatleads to theuse ofthe royal seal andthe taking-up of arms,acknowledges hiskingly mentor. And yet the all-pervasiveness of theGhost's influence does notmarch with the actor's duties. Two silent appearances in I.i, a majorcadenza in I.iv-v, a briefintervention in III.iv: it is notmuch for the play's arbiter. Whereelse can theold molere-emerge? PeterHall's Hamletat theNational Theatre (1975) offereda clearcutillus- trationof a possibleanswer. The National,operating to neo-Edwardianstan- dardsof luxurycasting, has nottended to economizeon actors.One reviewer indeedcompared disparagingly the large cast at theNational to the 14-strong RSC corps,then playing the Goodbody Hamlet at theRound House.'0 In the National'sproduction (which contained two English Ambassadors) there was a singlemajor doubling: the Ghost and Claudius. Everythinga director does is liableto be construedas reductionist,but this lookslike a severecase. Thelinkage of Ghost and Claudius is patentlya homage to Freud,to ErnestJones's Freud anyway. According to Jones,"The call of dutyto kill his stepfathercannot be obeyedbecause it linksitself with the unconsciouscall of his natureto killhis mother'shusband, whether this is the firstor second;the absolute repression of the former impulse involves the inner prohibitionof thelatter also." 11 An earliergeneration of directors-Guthrie, say-mighthave put that quotation brazenly in theprogramme. Hall was con- tentto leave theaudience to drawits own conclusions.Vulgar Freudianism, whichtraditionally calls foran unseemlywrestling sequence between Gertrude and Hamleton herbed, was thusrejected in favorof an understatedgesture. Interested,the reviewers noted the doubling without hazarding an interpretation. "Subsequentoriginal details consist of Denis Quilley'sdoubling of Claudius andthe Ghost (who, for once, is a sufferingrather than an admonitoryspectre)" is IrvingWardle's cautious phrasing.'2 "Denis Quilley'sbooming, Wagnerian Ghostlays the revenge ball firmlyin hisson's court,"is MichaelCoveney's. 13 "It was an interestingidea to doublethe roles of Claudiusand theGhost," saysRobert Speaight, without, however, going on to expoundthe idea.'4 Col- lectively,the reviewers were puzzled at Hamlet'sfailure to act, themore so as AlbertFinney, a raw and virilepresence, scarcely suggested Oedipal in- hibition.The verdicton theexperiment must be "notproven." YetHall had tried it before, in the 1966 revival of his RSC productionstarring David Warner.Eric Shorteridentifies "the paternalBrewster Mason doing a Freudiandouble as Claudiusand theGhost."''5 Mason's was a hugeGhost, toweringover all: Hamletwould have to outgrowhis parent.Thus the Ghost/

0 BernardCrick, The TimesHigher Educational Supplement,13 February1976. Hamletand Oedipus(New York:W. W. Norton,1949), p. 90. 12 The Times, 11 December 1975. 13 Plays and Players, February1976. 14 ShakespeareQuarterly, 28 (1977), 184. RichardDavid notes the double without offering an interpretationin Shakespeare in theTheatre (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1978), pp. 78- 79. 15 Daily Telegraph,29 April1966. The Ghostis describedin DavidAddenbrooke, The Royal ShakespeareCompany (London: William Kimber, 1974), p. 131;and Stanley Wells, Royal Shake- speare: Four Productionsat Stratford-upon-Avon(Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1977), p. 34. 210 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

Claudiusdouble may be heldto conflatea parent-figure,rather than promote a specificallysexual problem in Gertrude,Claudius, and Hamlet. Whatever the gloss,the Ghost/Claudius doubling was one thatreviewers preferred to skirt around,in 1966as in 1975.The idea remains essentially unproven and perhaps of dubiousvalue. Practical directors, as Keynesmight say, are slavesto some defunctcritic. I passover with some reluctance the Ghost/Priest double, which Trevor Nunn experimentedwith in his RSC Hamlet(1970). Thatproduction was strongly imbuedwith religious values. III.i was setin a chapel,and Hamlet left Ophelia slumpedin a pew. Hamletwore a blackcowl fromthe Players' wardrobe in III.iii, as also in IV.ii. He was broughtbefore Claudius in a cloisterwhere black-cowledmonks were gathered.'6 Was thePriest, then, a signalof reality afterplay-acting? There is a case forseeing the Priest as thereminder of what theGhost had impartedto Hamlet.But noneof thereviewers on fileat the Stratfordarchives showed any interest in this doubling, and I prefernot to make outa theoreticalcase whenits practice failed to makean impressionon those whowitnessed the production. A muchmore important double has had significantif inconclusivetesting. RobertSpeaight, in hisautobiography, writes of the 1923 Angmering Festival: "Gyles Ishamhad agreedto doublethe Ghost and Fortinbras-anexcellent idea whichI havenever seen repeated."'17 Speaight could in facthave seen the doublein Stratford-upon-Avon andLondon during the 1920s, when it had some- thingof a vogue. Bridges-Adamsdirected the play eighttimes at Stratford, fourof them exploiting the Ghost/Fortinbras double (Mullin, 0259, 0262, 0263, 0264). The firstoccasion, in 1920,must have been accounted a falsecast. The visualappearance of theGhost was leftto theaudience's imagination, to the displeasureof thereviewers. The Daily News remarked acidly that "it is mod- ernizingShakespeare too muchto omitthe ghost and onlyto hearhis voice. Apparently,Hamlet saw his father somewhere in the dress circle. "18 From1927 through1929 Bridges-Adams tried again, this time giving the Ghost a corporeal presence.Gordon Bailey was theactor of the Ghost and Fortinbras in all three productions,evidently a satisfactorysolution. In the1927 production, the re- viewerswere well pleasedwith the Ghost's delivery, as also withthe Hamlet of JohnLaurie and the Ophelia of LydiaSherwood. In thefollowing seasons, Bailey'sdistinctive and impressive Ghost continued to be singledout for praise. "His voice is remarkablygood, reaching a noteat thefinal 'Remember me' whichmoves one deeplyand creates the feeling of suspensewhich is so vital at thispoint. "s 9 And:"A specialword of praise is dueto Mr. GordonBailey's Ghost,a reallyimpressive figure in spiteof thosepersistent grey draperies. Does Mr. Bridges-Adamsreally think the King wore an old wedding-veilwhen he smotethe sledded Polacks on theice?"20 The last pointmakes all clear. Bailey's Ghosthad no face,but a presenceand a voice; he transmittedhis identityto Fortinbrasas a vocalecho. WhatFortinbras received as hisgenetic heritagefrom the Ghost was a distinctiveand memorablevoice. In London,Robert Atkins more or less had theHamlet concession during

16 See PeterThomson, "A NecessaryTheatre: The Royal Shakespeare Season 1970 Reviewed," ShS, 24 (1971), 123. 17 The PropertyBasket (London:Collins and Harvill Press, 1970), p. 60. 18 22 April1920. 19Bladon Peake, Stratford-upon-AvonHerald, 3 August 1928. 20 BirminghamGazette, 27 April 1929. HAMLET'S DOUBLES 211 the1920s. His Old Vic productionswere well-regarded, offering successively ErnestMilton, Russell Thorndike, and Ion Swinleyin thetitle role. Twice, Atkinsdoubled the Ghost and Fortinbras;first with Austin Trevor, then with StephenJack (Wearing, 22.117 and 25.112). These productionsreceived few reviews,and The Stage and The Era havenothing of consequenceto say. The Timeswas franklygravelled: "It is difficultto understandthe motives which haveprompted the Old Vic's interpretationofthe ghost-an overpowering Ghost, as pompousas Poloniusand withoutPolonius's variety, in mindand forma mostsubstantial Ghost."'2' Another inconclusive experiment, it would seem. ButAtkins must have had in mind that concept of a dominatingGhost, emerging intoaction as Fortinbras.Latterly the point has beenmade more clearly, in the practiceof JonathanMiller. For his productionat The Warehouse(1982), he had PhilipLocke doublethe Ghost and PlayerKing. As Millerexplained in an interview:"In thefirst production I did I tripled:Player King, Ghost, and Fortinbras,because these were the three models of decisiveness and vigour with whichHamlet unfavourably compares himself."22 The logicalterminus to thisline of thoughtis thedoubling of Hamletand theGhost. This, the most extreme possibility in Ghostdoubling, was testedin RichardEyre's production at theRoyal Court (April 1980). "Thereis no Ghost in thisproduction. Jonathan Pryce, in whatis effectivelyhis firstsoliloquy, playsboth sides of the conversation between Hamlet and his dead father, adopt- ing forthe latter a deep voice wrenchedfrom his stomachdespite himself, causingconsiderable physical contortion."23 The first scene was cut,and Ham- let's encounterwith his father'sspirit did notoccur until I.v. "Insteadof re- ceivingthe demand for revenge from his dead father,Hamlet pronounces it himselfwhile in a stateof apparent'possession.' ,24 Illegitimate,of course. Andyet the reviewers did not register a collective sense of outrage at thetext's beingviolated. In part,their reaction was a tributeto JonathanPryce's acting, a performanceofgreat intensity and power. "His bodyconvulsed, eyes closed, headrocking back, Pryce belches up theGhost's word from the depths of his stomachin an agonizinghowl. It is a spectacularand mesmerizing effect that completelyovershadows the substance of the words themselves, but introduces a senseof mystery and power fully in tune with the animal vigour of the Prince. "25 In part,it was an admissionof exorcismas a thenfashionable topic. But the reviewersalso senseda certainlegitimacy in thedirector's tactic, stemming fromthe perception that the Ghost does in someway speakthrough Hamlet, thatthe double is a primalconflation of twoselves. The doublingof theGhost and Hamlet crystallizes the underground logic of theplay. Everything inHamlet has thepotential to bear upon the play's center, to offera brokensamizdat on Hamlet'sconsciousness. This potential could not havebeen realized in theperformances ofShakespeare's day. There, the needs ofrepertory and a limitedcompany (15-16) wouldhave severely limited casual experimentation.Further, the conceptual doubling which reveals the play's un- dergroundlogic dependsupon a director,a functionarywith no existencein Englanduntil the late nineteenth century. Thus the multiple possibilities within thetext have had to awaittesting in thesubsequent history of Hamlet in per-

21 27 April1922. 22 CharlesLewsen, "In variousdirections," Plays and Players,October 1982, p. 13. 23 The Listener,4 April 1980. 24 Colin Ludlow, Plays and Players, May 1980, pp. 25-26. 25 Ludlow,pp. 25-26; 212 SHAKESPEAREQUARTERLY formance.The doublingsof stagehistory offer a mechanisticparallel to the castingsof, and within, Hamlet. Conceptual doubling, a twentieth-centuryde- velopment,assumes a companyof reasonablenumbers and resources,and a directorwho is perceivedto be makingsignificant choices in his castings. Within thistradition, a line of modem directors from Bridges-Adams toJonathan Miller andRichard Eyre has, I think,filed a majorclaim on Hamlet.It is this:dou- bling,executed with intent beyond the older categories of emergencyand vir- tuoso,can expressa rulingperception of thetext's values. In theend, the possibilitieswithin the great play, social and genetic, can be reducedto a single likeness(Hamlet/Hamlet), a single admonition ("Remember"), a singleac- knowledgement.The Ghost'spairings all aspireto theselves of Hamlet.And thelast double, as thestage now proposes, is thatof Hamletand his father.