George Washington University 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 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=folger. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Folger Shakespeare Library and George Washington University are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Shakespeare Quarterly. 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 the same 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 organizing roles 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.