Hamlet: An Eighteenth-Century French Adaptation

The premiere of Jean-François Ducis's Hamlet in 1769 marked Shakespeare's first faltering steps onto the French stage. Within a couple of generations, his play had itself been translated so widely that it was better known than Shakespeare's across most of Europe; it has thus aptly been called 'one of the most important Hamlets of all time'. Ducis, who spoke no English, takes copious liberties with his Shakespearean source material, attempting to tap into the dramatic power of the English original without unduly shocking French sensibilities or transgressing 'classical' French dramatic conventions. Yet Ducis also returned to the play quite obsessively across his life, reordering scenes and sometimes changing the ending considerably.

Using the 1770 version as its base, this critical edition brings together variants from the heavily rewritten 1769 manuscript to the last version published in Ducis's lifetime, in 1815. The introduction provides an overview of Ducis's principal changes, reflecting on the aesthetic, dramatic, ethical, and political differences between these versions in the light of his evolving practice. Annotations direct the reader to key textual borrowings from, and changes to, Shakespeare's original and its eighteenth-century scholarly adaptations. This edition should thus be of interest to scholars of Shakespeare and Shakespeare reception, eighteenthcentury French theatre, and theories and practices of adaptation.

Joseph Harris is Professor of Early Modern French and Comparative Literature at Royal Holloway University of London.