Hamletmachine

by Heiner Müller

In Müller's fragmented eight-page text, Shakespeare's masterpiece struggles to survive amidst the mounting rubble of literary and political history. Failed ideals and human disillusionment give way in Hamletmachine to the youth clamoring in reaction against the past in order to change the present. To break free of the continual cycle of violence within history the past is questioned and deconstructed. Moving away from psychological narrative, Hamletmachine creates a landscape of the betrayed revolution. Brown's production challenges and provides resistance to this complicated text, inciting spectators to do the same. This performance is an exploration into the place of theatre as a sight of revolutionary change. In Müller's words, "the slogan of the Napoleonic era still applies: Theater is the Revolution on the march."

Genres: Plays, Theatre, Drama, Fiction, Shakespeare, German Literature, School

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Heiner Müller was a German (formerly East German) dramatist, poet, writer, essayist and theatre director. Described as "the theatre's greatest living poet" since Samuel Beckett, Müller is often considered the most important German dramatist of the 20th century after Bertolt Brecht. His "enigmatic, fragmentary pieces" are a significant contribution to postmodern drama and postdramatic theatre.

Reviews

[Diana · Rating 2 out of 5]

نمایشنامه‌ی هملت ماشین برای من بیشتر یه ابزار مطالعه بود برای بررسی تاثیر اوضاع سیاسی آلمان روی ادبیاتش. فرمش رو هم دوست داشتم

[Hulda Kristín Hauksdóttir · Rating 5 out of 5]

las / sá hamlet svona 5 sinnum á síðasta ári (eiginlega af tilviljun) og datt ekki í hug að það myndi nýtast mér á nokkurn hátt but here we are... fannst þetta epic verk

[Leah · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have a limited tolerance of postmodernism for postmodernism's sake. At least make the stage directions intelligible, otherwise you're just a wanker.

[Alan Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hamletmachin is a postmodern, absurdist play, the text of which is only 6 pages long but the original German staging was 7 hours! It is obscure, bizarre, and unsettling, with no conventional plot and references to events and objects all throughout history/time (TVs, for instance). The version I saw in Chicago featured three different Hamlets, two Ophelias, and one Gertrude. At one point Ophelia #3 turned into a man and Hamlet #3 turned into a woman. Hamlet #1 spent a lot of time rolling around on the ground in torment about the death of his father and the "wasteland of Europe," the Hamlet #2 was a revolutionary who excitedly described an uprising of the masses, and the Hamlet #3 lusted after Ophelia as well as the power of the State (this Hamlet also deliberatly drowned the Ophelia #2). Oh, and did I mention the Chicago version was done as an opera with weird, ambient, post-industrial music playing the entire time. It was good stuff!! The text itself is incredibly open for all kinds of varied performances/interpretations. It is dense, with big blocks of text. In the original staging Ophelia did a strip tease, Hamlet smashed plaster statues of Marx and Engels, and Gertrude has breast cancer. It seems to me that T.S. Elliot's Mythic Method is in order here since there is little to hold onto plotwise except what you bring to it from the outside in terms of one's knowledge of Shakespeare's work. A work showing the shattered, splintered nature of the individual. Recommended.

[Ella · Rating 2 out of 5]

I... am not sure I understood what exactly was going on here...

[Divya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this felt like the entirety of Hamlet was condensed, turned up to 11, and then violently thrown back into my face, but in a good way.
I would love to watch a staged version of this, just to see all the different ways in which the stage directions are interpreted.

[Meg O'Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

This play showed me the Way

[w3rmo · Rating 5 out of 5]

"yesterday i stopped killing myself"

[Serena · Rating 3 out of 5]

This text feels like a fever dream, or rather a fever nightmare. I read this while very sleep deprived and sitting in an airport, which I believe is probably the absolute most correct way of experiencing it.

"I am the soldier in the tank-turret, my head is empty under the helmet, the strangled cry under the chains. I am the typewriter. I tie the noose, when the leaders are hanged, kick the stool away, break my neck I am my own prisoner. I feed my data into the computer. My roles are spit and spittoon knife and wound teeth and gum neck and gallows. I am the data-bank. Bleeding in the crowd. Exhaling behind the doubledoors."

[elo kaalep]

kui ma oleks tiit ojasoo siis ma lavastaks seda ainult koostöös ain mäeotsaga

[Bine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Experimentell. Düster. Interessant.

[Rytas Sakas]

How do you spell GEMÜTLICHKEIT
Give us this day our daily murder
For thine is the nothingness Nausea

[Abby Bowling · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I am Ophelia. The one the river didn’t keep. The woman at the gallows The woman with sliced arteries The woman with the overdose SNOW ON HER LIPS The woman with her head in the gas oven. Yesterday I stopped killing myself. I am alone with my breasts my thighs my womb. I smash the instruments of my imprisonment the chair the table the bed. I destroy the battlefield that was my home. I rip open the doors so the wind can come in and the cries of the world. I smash the window. With my bloody hands I tear the photographs of the men I loved who used me on the bed on the table on the chair on the floor. I set fire to my prison. I throw my clothes into the fire. I unearth the clock that was my heart from my breast. I go onto the street dressed in my blood."
so I have very mixed thought on how Müller writes women because it still sounds from a man… but this one really really got me.

[gigi_booksworld · Rating 3 out of 5]

Τα μεταδραματικά κείμενα είναι αρκετά δύσκολα, δεν αποτελεί εξαίρεση το συγκεκριμένο. Αρκετά ενδιαφέρον αν και θέλει ψάξιμο στο κάθε τι που λέει.

[Matt]

> Ich bin Ophelia. Die der Fluß nicht behalten hat. Die Frau am Strick Die Frau mit den aufgeschnittenen Pulsadern Die Frau mit der Überdosis AUF DEN LIPPEN SCHNEE Die Frau
mit dem Kopf im Gasherd. Gestern habe ich aufgehört mich zu töten.

> Was du getötet hast sollst du auch lieben.

> Ich schüttle, von Brechreiz gewürgt, meine Faust in der andrängenden Menge gegen mich, der hinter dem Panzerglas steht. Ich sehe, geschüttelt von Furcht und Verachtung, in der andrängenden Menge mich, Schaum vor dem Mund, meine Faust gegen mich schütteln.

[NaphTa · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The German writer Freiligrath, a close friend to Karl Marx, said: ‘Germany is Hamlet, never quite knowing how to decide and because of that always making wrong decisions.’ When I wrote Hamletmachine, after translating Shakespeare’s Hamlet for a theater in East Berlin, it turned out to be my most American play, quoting T.S. Eliot, Andy Warhol, Coca Cola, Ezra Pound and Susan Atkins. It may be read as a pamphlet against the illusion that one can stay innocent in this our world.”
— Heiner Müller, April 30, 1986

[Lara Sijnesael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some really weird postmodern reads make sense after a while.. this one did not. I don't know if I find it pretentious or if I just missed its brilliance, all I know is that this should not be aloud on stage, like ever.
EDIT:
Okay, so after learning more about the play, I've come to appreciate a little more. I'm still very unsure as to whether it should ever be performed.

[Victoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

very dense, very uncanny, very confusing but only as confusing as hamlet's mindset is in the play, which is the point. but only nine pages in total (i have not been the family fang'd or if on a winter's night a traveler'd it is literally only nine pages)

[Lea Dokter · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the general chaotic feel of this, and as the purpose of the text seems to be throwing people off and leaving them confused and baffled it seems to have reached its goal. I like it, mainly for the sheer absurdity of it.

[Rosanna Threakall · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ugh

[Marta Crespo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Este texto es cuerpo supurando y resto que nos queda (¿?) del lenguaje. Sin duda un hachazo al que no podré dejar de volver

[Micaela *CLONAZINE* · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pero mira el tipo cómo la ve 🙏 me encanta... no me sentía así de estimulada intelectualmente desde que leí a Sarah Kane. Son 11 páginas que lees (en mi caso en inglés) y pensas discúlpeme señor Müller pero no se entiende nada entonces empezas a buscar análisis y mira vos che que manera de innovar.

[Noah]

qué movida

[Floor · Rating 2 out of 5]

???

[Aurora]

الکترا در تقابل با افلیا

[Ralia · Rating 4 out of 5]

رک، شاعرانه، سیلی به صورت انسان پست مدرن

[Marta Grünvald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rinnavähk särab nagu päike

[Calvin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I WANT TO PLAY HAMLET

[vinnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tasteless, prententious, self-important postmodern nonsense. Five stars.

[Emma Cam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVE THIS SHIT