Closet Scene Pictures
About the pictures in the Closet Scene, Scene 11.
In Scene 11 Hamlet says to Gertrude,
11-059 Look here upon this picture, and on this,
The passage is typically played these days by Hamlet showing Gertrude two objects, such as coins or cameos, that the audience can't see. That is not genuine Hamlet.
The idea of using small pictures, such as on coins or cameos, is an expedient adopted by later acting companies, after Shakespeare, because of practical problems. Malone was right to observe, in 1783, “The introduction of miniatures in this place appears to be a modern innovation." It is indeed.
In earlier times, pictures had to be hand painted. Also, for a traveling company, the paintings had to be transported in the wagon. It was an expense, and a burden, especially for something as large as an arras. Few acting companies have had the advantage Shakespeare's company had, in owning their own theater, where items for stage decoration could be stored and brought out as needed.
Say you own a traveling playing company, in about the year 1700. Say further, you leave London well equipped, and with large pictures (that cost you significant money) of your Claudius actor, and Ghost actor, for the Closet Scene, to use when you do Hamlet. You arrive at some remote town, where hardly any of the people have ever seen any Shakespeare, and you publicize the fact that you're going to do Hamlet for them. The response is good and the prospects look excellent.
Then, an hour before show time, your Claudius actor comes to you and whispers, "I've lost my voice." He has laryngitis, he can't go on. Fortunately, you have an understudy for him, so the show can still go on. However, do you have the large picture of the understudy that you'll need for the Closet Scene? Oops, no you don't, and the understudy doesn't look at all like the regular Claudius actor. You can't use the picture of the regular Claudius actor while the understudy plays the role. It would only puzzle the audience. What are you going to do?
You're going to fake it, you'll have to. For the Closet Scene, you give the Hamlet actor some small item from the costume trunk, and tell him to fake his way through the scene, pretending that's a picture of Claudius. In performance, you get through the scene, without the audience demanding their money back. It suddenly occurs to you, you didn't need to go to the trouble and expense of the large pictures in the first place. Most of the audience you're playing for doesn't know the difference.
As soon as playing companies realized they could get away with using little pretend pictures in the Closet Scene, they all started doing that. A little item, that the actor can pretend is a picture, can be any item already in the costume trunk. It costs nothing. Then, even more important, there's never a resemblance problem with a "picture" the audience can't see, so it never matters who's playing Claudius, or the Ghost.
It's easy to see how the practice of using pretend pictures in the Closet Scene began. However, that is not genuine Hamlet. In the real Hamlet, Shakespeare's Hamlet, the pictures are big ones, they are life size king tapestries, imitations of the ones at Kronborg.
For Shakespeare's company, that was not an overwhelming problem. Richard Burbage, the man who played Hamlet for Shakespeare's company, was a painter, and a good one. There is a surviving comment praising Burbage's painting skill, and there's also a surviving record that he got paid for painting a portrait. Shakespeare's company had the talent in house to create the large pictures, imitation king tapestries, that they needed for the Closet Scene, and it's a certainty they did. The Scene 11 action tells us that, which I cover in the Action notes.
(For the Malone quote, see the Enfolded Hamlet page...
[Enfolded Hamlet 2437]
...then do a browser find for "Malone (1783, p. 58)"
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© 2014 Jeffrey Paul Jordan
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