Moscow Art Theatre Production of Hamlet - Aesthetic Approaches

Aesthetic Approaches

The day we see Hamlet die in the theatre, something of him dies for us. He is dethroned by the spectre of an actor, and we shall never be able to keep the usurper out of our dreams.

In line with a tendency within the Symbolist movement to view Shakespeare's play as a work of poetry rather than as one for the stage, Craig wrote in his influential manifesto The Art of the Theatre (1905) that it "has not the nature of a stage representation." The playwright Maurice Maeterlinck (whom Stanislavski visited in the summer of 1908 to discuss his forthcoming production of The Blue Bird) had argued 15 years earlier that many of the greatest dramas in the history of theatre, including Hamlet, were "not stageable." In 1908, Craig again insisted that an adequate staging of the play was "impossible." When he suggested the play to the MAT, he wanted "to test my theory that the Shakespearean play does not naturally belong to the art of the theatre."

Craig conceived of the production as a symbolist monodrama in which every aspect of production would be subjugated to the play's protagonist: the play would present a dream-like vision as seen through Hamlet's eyes. To support this interpretation, Craig wanted to add archetypal, symbolic figures—such as Madness, Murder, and Death—and to have Hamlet present on-stage during every scene, silently observing those in which he did not participate. Stanislavski overruled him.

Craig favoured stylised abstraction, while Stanislavski wanted to explore psychological motivations. Stanislavski hoped to use the production to prove that his recently developed 'system' for creating internally justified, realistic acting could meet the formal demands of a classic play. Despite this apparent opposition between Craig's symbolist aesthetic and Stanislavski's psychological realism, however, the two did share some artistic assumptions; the 'system' had developed out of Stanislavski's experiments with symbolist drama, which had shifted the emphasis of his approach from a naturalistic external surface to the inner world of the character's "spirit". Both had stressed the importance of achieving a unity of all theatrical elements in their work. In a letter written in February 1909 to Liubov Gurevich about his recent production of Gogol's The Government Inspector, Stanislavski confirmed his "return to realism" but expressed the belief that this would not hinder the collaboration:

Of course, we have returned to realism, to a deeper, more refined and more psychological realism. Let us get a little stronger in it and we shall once more continue on our quest. That is why we have invited Gordon Craig. After wandering about in search of new ways, we shall again return to realism for more strength. I do not doubt that every abstraction on the stage, such as impressionism, for instance, could be attained by way of a more refined and deeper realism. All other ways are false and dead.

Craig's and Stanislavski's interpretations of the central role of Shakespeare's play, however, were quite different. Stanislavski's vision of Hamlet was as an active, energetic and crusading character, whereas Craig saw him as a representation of a spiritual principle, caught in a mutually destructive struggle with the principle of matter as embodied in all that surrounded him. Hamlet's tragedy, Craig felt, was that he talks rather than acts.