Mimesis in Gregory Doran’s Adaptation of Hamlet Anonymous College

If one were to ask a random stranger a question about Shakespeare, their immediate association would likely be with a scene from Hamlet—either the first line of the title character’s famous soliloquy (III.1.64) or the image of him holding Yorrick’s skull (V.1.190). That this is arguably the most familiar of Shakespeare’s work is no surprise. It is a masterclass in character development, and its bloodbath of an ending is thrilling to say the least. In chapter 30 of his book A Theater of Envy: William Shakespeare, entitled “Hamlet’s Dull Revenge: Vengeance in Hamlet”, the scholar René Girard argues that while maintaining the guise of a popular revenge play, Shakespeare’s interpretation of the classic tale is actually anti-revenge. Functioning much in the same way as iambic pentameter, this “brilliant feat of theatrical double entendre” (Girard 273) takes a necessary constraint which could be limiting to lesser writers and turns it into tremendous literary fuel. What results is an endless mimetic circle of revenge, whose futility Hamlet realizes but is ultimately unable to subvert. This paper will examine the function of Girard’s book’s broad unifying concept, mimesis, as it appears in Gregory Doran’s 2009 adaptation of Hamlet ...