Gade, Olivier, Richardson: Visual Strategy in "Hamlet" Adaptation

The convention of the unlocalized stage, which in the Roman plays, the histories, and the other tragedies seems to underline a sense of human action played against a macrocosmic backdrop, here seems to invert itself, to stress the essential sameness of all locality where the philosophical underpinnings of human action, not its Protean texture, are given form. While Gade immersed his action in its political ramifications, both British directors move to extract Hamlet from the hurly-burly of public intercourse, focusing tightly on the hero as individual consciousness, largely straining out those Shakespearean touches which distinguish Hamlet as Renaissance man of action and aspirant to royal power.