‘Silence bleeds’: Hamlet across borders

Abstract

This article addresses the writing and performance work of Anglo-Kuwaiti director Sulayman Al-Bassam, tracing the development of his various adaptations of Shakespeare's Hamlet into English and Arabic ‘cross-cultural’ versions between 2001 and 2007. Al-Bassam's work presents English as a ‘language in translation’. His works move from early modern to modern English, from Arabized English to Arabic, from one linguistic and geographical location to another, their forms moulded and remoulded by complex cultural pressures. The study focuses on specific examples from three adaptations to show in practice how in these works English is ‘constantly crossed, challenged and contested’.

Keywords:

• Shakespeare
• Arab
• theatre
• Islam
• translation
• globalization

Notes

Richard III: An Arab Tragedy played at the Pallas Theatre in Athens (May 2007) as part of the Athens Festival, and was scheduled to play in early 2008 at the Bouffes du Nord, Paris, and later in Amsterdam.

Personal communication from Al-Bassam to the author (5 May 2007).

Muslims use the ritual phrase ‘Peace and Blessings Upon Him’ (PBUH) when referring to the Prophet.

From the English text used for surtitles displayed on video screens in the Stratford production. I am grateful to Sulayman Al-Bassam for supplying me with this material.

There are many resemblances between the two stories, which clearly have deep folk-tale roots. The Sons of Muslim are held in a dungeon; the sight of them praying together moves the jailer so much he releases them; they are killed successively but remain united in death. The mausoleum of the Sons of Muslim can be seen at in Moosayab near Karbala in Iraq.