Hamlet Alternate Setting

If I had to choose a setting for Hamlet other than thirteenth-century Denmark, I think I would choose modern times and have the plot unfold in an American professional baseball team rather than a European kingdom. Claudius would be the owner of the team who killed the previous owner, his brother and Hamlet's father. Hamlet would simply be the nephew of the owner of the team, and Polonius would be the coach of the team while his daughter Ophelia would be a fan. Laertes, Horatio, Marcellus, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern would be athletes on the team, and Fortinbras would be an owner of a rival team. Finally, Gertrude would be the wife of the owner Claudius.

 As for the translation of the themes, I think that the uncertainty of action and death can be expressed well in the alternate setting. First, uncertainty of action can be expressed by Hamlet who doubts what the ghost of his father says and calls his request into question. While he contemplates his actions in his various soliloquies, I picture him sitting in an empty stadium that slightly echoes the sound of his voice to assert that he is completely alone and can trust no one. Next, the uncertainty of death can be expressed through the team’s success or lack thereof; for example, losing a game can be equated to death in the original Hamlet. I imagine that most of the play would take place in the stadium, dugout, and offices that control the team’s finances and publicity.

In the fifth scene of the first act, Hamlet’s departed father visits him in ghost form to make a very pivotal request. To stage this scene in the alternate setting, I imagine Hamlet speaking to Horatio and Marcellus out on the field in the dark, and then the ghost appears wearing a baseball hat with the team emblem. Then, the ghost leads Hamlet into a darkened and damp dugout where he says, “Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand/Of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatched,/Cut off, even in the blossoms of my sin" (1.5.81-83) while Claudius laughs happily with Polonius and Gertrude out on the field. I think this alternate scene would equally embody the despair of betrayal, extremeness of the ghost’s request, and greatness of the moral weight placed on Hamlet.