Handling Ophelia: a Story in Four Unscripted Scenes

Abstract

Referring to several European productions of Hamlet between 2001 and 2014, Nicoleta Cinpoeş in this article examines the stage struggle to ‘recuperate’ an Ophelia that both discursive criticism and visual objectification bury prematurely, albeit by different means and for different aims, when they claim, in Laertes's words: ‘The woman will be out.’ She takes Laertes's words to mean both taking the woman out and putting the woman on view, and offers a preliminary survey of the customary textual cuts and their effect on Ophelia's part, exploring ‘the four unscripted scenes’ of three directors – Vlad Mugur, Radu Alexandru Nica, and Jan Klata – and their impact on Ophelia's role as found in Shakespeare's play. Nicoleta Cinpoeş is Principal Lecturer at the University of Worcester and author of Shakespeare's Hamlet in Romania 1778–2008 (Mellen, 2010) as well as editor of, and contributor to, Doing Kyd (Manchester University Press, 2016). She has published articles in Shakespeare Bulletin, SEDERI, Testi e linguaggi, Arrêts sur scène, Theatrical Blends, and Studia Dramatica.