Simply Explore… Hamletmachine by Heiner Müller

WARNING: Grotesque imagery and swearing.

To read the original text and more in depth exploration visit Let’s Explore…

Synopsis:

The structure of the play arguably follows the same structure of Hamlet with five acts.

1. Hamlet’s father has died, Claudius and Gertrude are together and Hamlet is questioning the motives of the people around him.
2. Ophelia rejects the misogynistic world.
3. Hamlet and Ophelia trade places.
4. The actor playing Hamlet brakes his role and envisions the drama in a revolution riddled with Marxist qualities, it ends with him killing figures that represent Marx, Lenin and Mao.
5. Ophelia enters and claims to be Electra before absorbing the world back into her womb.

 

Major Themes and Motifs:

• Feminism (and misogyny)
• Revolution
• Oedipus/Electra complex
• Death
• Impossibility of certainty
• Corruption
• Appearance vs reality
• Madness

 

Characters:

(In order of appearance)

The majority of the characters are based on their original counterparts in Hamlet by William Shakespeare.

Hamlet-

Hamlet interrupts his father’s funeral before carving up his body and giving it to the mourners to eat. He shows little interest in his father and anger towards her mother. He questions Horatio’s motives. Hamlet wants to eat Ophelia’s heart and exchanges clothes with her. Afterwards, his actor breaks character.

King Hamlet-

His state-funeral gets interrupted by his son, then his flesh gets cut up and eaten by his mourners. When he reappears as a ghost, his son has little interest in him.

Claudius-

He has sex with Gertrude on top of King Hamlet’s coffin. He reappears out of a coffin to see Hamlet dressed as a whore before climbing back.

Gertrude-

She has sex with Claudius on top of King Hamlet’s coffin. Hamlet’s anger is directed towards her.

Horatio-

A friend of Hamlet’s whose motives are questioned. He dances with Hamlet when he is dressed like a whore.

Polonius-

He is compared to Horatio.

Ophelia-

The arguable protagonist of the play. A tragic character whose heart is both a clock and produces Hamlet’s tears. She’s shown to be conscious of misogyny, she rejects and fights against it. There is a moment when she dresses like a whore and performs a strip tease. Eventually, she is confined to a wheelchair as two men tie her up with gauze. As a self-declared Electra, she rejects being confined and threatens mankind.

The actor playing Hamlet-

He originally plays the part of Hamlet before breaking his role although he frequently refers to the drama in his monologue. He envisions a revolution and playing the part of both parts. The actor playing Hamlet feels nauseous from watching T.V. He desires to be a machine and kills three women who pose as communist leaders.

Marx, Lenin and Mao-

Three women who appear naked and represent the historic figures. While on stage, they repeat Marx’s words in their own language before their heads are striked with an axe by the actor playing Hamlet.

 

Detailed Description of the Events Within the Play:

1

• A self declared Hamlet enters.
• King Hamlet’s funeral takes place and his son opens his coffin, cuts up his corpse and feeds it to the mourners.
• Claudius and Gertrude have sex on the coffin.
• Hamlet’s father returns, but Hamlet is too busy being angry at Gertrude.
• Horatio enters and Hamlet questions his motivations.
• Ophelia enters.
• Hamlet acknowledges that they are all actors stuck in a prison, Denmark.
• Hamlet talks about his mother’s lines, his mixed feelings and his anger towards her.
• He wants to eat Ophelia’s heart that weeps for him.

 

2

• Ophelia enters and talks about all of the women who have committed suicide but she has rejected such her fate.
• She smashes her confined world.
• She wretches out her heart and walks out into the streets.

 

3

• Scene changes to the university of the dead and Hamlet looks at all of the women that Ophelia described before.
• The dead women take his clothes and Ophelia gives him her whorish clothes.
• He poses as a whore before dancing with Horatio.
• The voices of the dead say, “What thou killed thou shalt love.”

 

4

• The actor playing Hamlet breaks character and envisions a revolution.
• He talks about the implications of the original play and what it means to people.
• Now, at the time of the uprising, the drama will take place again.
• The actor playing Hamlet describes the uprising, the chaos of the streets and the armed pedestrians sweeping away the police.
• The drama would occur on the front lines of the revolution, where Hamlet will be on both sides of the revolution.
• All the actors go home.
• Television is the daily nausea, broadcasting the Kingdom of Coca Cola, but his nausea is a privilege.
• With disturbing imagery, he describes that he doesn’t want to have a vulgar human body but rather a machine.
• Three naked women arrive with the persona of either Marx, Lenin and Mao.
  • They quote Marx’s work in their own language.
• The actor playing Hamlet puts on a costume and makeup before splitting the heads of Marx, Lenin and Mao with an axe.

 

5

• Ophelia enters in a wheelchair while two men wrap her in white smocks wrap gauze.
• She calls herself Electra.
• She takes the world back into her womb.

 

 

Significance of the Text:

The most important aspect of this play is that it’s a prime example of a postmodern piece. While taking a well-known story, Müller condenses the plot before shattering it into five fragmented pieces that all contribute to the overarching story. Each section could be staged in isolation and make just as much sense as when they are grouped together, but the flow suggests that there is a greater message that depends on the staging. One of the core ideas of postmodernism that can be seen in the structure of the play is shown by the disconnecting nature of the fragments. They appear like words on a page rather than an intellectual interpretation of Hamlet, leaving directors room to interpret the play in a vast amount of ways.

 

 

Interesting Tidbit:

The name Hamletmachine was an accident. After being inspired by the name ‘Shakespeare’s factory’, Müiller tried to think of a smart equivilant and he wanted an illustration from a book called Duchamp; this resulted in Hamletmachine. Many interpreted the play’s name as taking the initials H.M. from the author but this is a misconception and purely incidental.

 

Where more of Müller’s work can be found:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hamletmachine-other-Texts-Stage-Books/dp/0933826451/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

 

http://www.amazon.com/Hamlet-Machine-Other-Texts-Heiner-M%C3%BCller/dp/0933826451/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1454177934&sr=1-1&keywords=heiner+muller

 

Sources:

Müller, Heiner. Hamletmachine. London: Almeida Theatre, n.d. Print.

Words: 1,071