In "Modern Hamlets and Their Soliloquies" (Iowa, 1992), Mary Maher examined how modern actors have chosen to perform HamletOCOs soliloquies, and why they made the choices they made, within the context of their specific productions of the play. Adding to original interviews with, among others, Derek Jacobi, David Warner, Kevin Kline, and Ben Kingsley, "Modern Hamlets and Their Soliloquies: An Expanded Edition" offers two new and insightful interviews, one with Kenneth Branagh, focusing on his 1997 film production of the play, and one with Simon Russell Beale, discussing his 2000-2001 run as Hamlet at the Royal National Theatre."

The Shakespearean soliloquy has always fascinated scholars, readers, and theatregoers, and none is more famous than those found in Hamlet. Dreamed of by aspiring actors, memorized by schoolchildren, and coopted by Madison Avenue sloganeers, these best-known and most repeated lines from Shakespeare's oeuvre have been the inspiration for numerous critical studies on the soliloquy. Now, for the first time, Maher's Modern Hamlets and Their Soliloquies takes a performance point of view in examining the challenges and problems of delivering the soliloquies in Hamlet. Modern Hamlets offers a detailed record of how various twentieth-century English and American actors, beginning with John Gielgud in 1936 and ending with Kevin Kline in 1990, have dealt with these challenges. At the heart of this fascinating study is a series of eclectic and provocative interviews with Kline, Derek Jacobi, Ben Kingsley, David Warner, Anton Lesser, David Rintoul, and Randall Duk Kim. Maher also worked closely with Gielgud and Alec Guinness to offer chapters on their presentations and has included a discussion of filmed Hamlet performances with attention to the work of Laurence Olivier and Richard Burton. Maher describes each actor's mode of performance and explores the factors that influenced each actor's performance choices within specific production contexts. No one knows how Richard Burbage, the actor for whom Shakespeare created Hamlet, performed it - but here is an inside look at how modern Hamlets have approached performance options and forged unique readings of the part. The interplay of these interpretations and the similarities and differences among the actors both challenges much of the received wisdomabout soliloquies and provides an absorbing new look at what Olivier called "pound for pound the greatest play ever written". Modern Hamlets should be required reading for all those who would read, watch, or perform Hamlet and for all those fascinated by theatre and the performance arts.

This work defines the dramatic rationale of the Hamlet soliloquies in their dramatic contexts, thereby clarifying the tragic idea that organizes the play.

Encompassing nearly a century of drama, this is the first book to provide students and scholars with a truly comprehensive guide to the early modern soliloquy. Considering the antecedents of the form in Roman, late fifteenth and mid-sixteenth century drama, it analyses its diversity, its theatrical functions and its socio-political significances. Containing detailed case-studies of the plays of Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson, Ford, Middleton and Davenant, this collection will equip students in their own close-readings of texts, providing them with an indepth knowledge of the verbal and dramaturgical aspects of the form. Informed by rich theatrical and historical understanding, the essays reveal the larger connections between Shakespeare's use of the soliloquy and its deployment by his fellow dramatists.

This is the first book to provide students and scholars with a truly comprehensive guide to the early modern soliloquy.

The core of the ground-breaking, three text edition, this self-contained, free-standing volume gives readers the Second Quarto text (1604-5) and includes in its Introduction, notes and Appendices all the reader might expect to find in any standard Arden edition. As well as a full, illustrated Introduction to the play's historical, cultural and performance contexts and a thorough survey of critical approaches to the play, an appendix contains the additional passages found only in the 1623 text."The new Arden Hamlet is a pathbreaking edition, one that promises to change irrevocably our understanding of Shakespeare's greatest play."- Professor James Shapiro, author of 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare'Hamlet's latest editors have undertaken a heroic task with great skill and thoroughnesss.' - Stanley Wells, The Observer"(The) new Arden Hamlet is quite simply the most comprehensive edition of the play currently available, a status I suspect it will enjoy for many years to come" - The British Theatre Guide"Stunning! There is absolutely no doubt about this being the text to buy if you are studying the play at A Level. And the same stands for those students who will be studying the play at university. This critical edition gives the reader the Second Quarto Text (1604-1605), annotated with intelligence and care, a wealth of historical and cultural references and a survey of different critical approaches to the play."- The Use of English, The English Association