‘|Y]oung Hamlet’

Abstract

Shakespeare's Hamlet has been retold in children's versions several times in Sweden in recent years. It was the subject of the first episode of the children's television programme På teatern [At the Theatre], written and directed by Christina Nilsson for SVT in 2001–2002, where Shakespearean actors meet their child or grandchild backstage after a performance to tell and partly enact the story of the play. In 2005–2006, Lotta Grut wrote the plays Lille Hamlett och spöket [Little Hamlett and the Ghost] and Offelia kom igen! [Offelia Come Again!] for the theatre company Unga Roma. In these fairy-tale versions, the children Hamlet and Ophelia are confronted with death, grief, anger, oppression and erasure. This article argues that the På teatern episode is an adaptation of Hamlet while Grut's two plays are appropriations.