Hamletmachine

Hamletmachine (Hamletmaschine)

    Author: Heiner Müller

    First Performance: 1979, Paris; 1979, Essen

    Published: 1977

    First English Translation: 1984

    Genre: Drama in 1 act (5 scenes); German and some English prose and verse

    Setting: Indeterminate place and period

    Cast: 1m, 1f, extras

    (1) Family Scrapbook. Hamlet recalls his father's funeral procession, which he stopped so that he could cut off chunks of his father's flesh to distribute for the mourners to eat, while his mother and uncle had sex on the coffin. He greets Horatio, and confesses his love–hate for his mother: ‘A mother's womb is not a one-way street.’

    (2) The Europe of Women. Ophelia rejects her suicide and rebels against male oppression.

    (3) Scherzo. In the university of the dead,...

[The entire page is 341 words long]

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