Subverting Hamlet through Re-writing: Sexual and Gender Politics of the Mother in Howard Barker’s Gertrude-The Cry

Abstract

In Howard Barker’s Gertrude-The Cry (2002), all the things most popularly known about Shakespeare’s play Hamlet are subverted and transformed to a great extent. In this adaptation, the title character of the source text is changed from Hamlet to Gertrude, who is presented as a villainous woman in Hamlet with her potential involvement in her husband’s murder and subsequent marriage to Claudius. Barker alters the status of Hamlet as the tragic hero and makes his mother the new heroine of the play who does not conform to any of the norms set for her in Shakespeare’s text. Instead, Gertrude behaves as a woman extremely driven by erotic desire towards several male characters in the play. This paper analyses Barker’s rewriting as an attempt to challenge the norms of womanhood represented in conventional literary works. The transformations in Barker’s version are also related to women’s role and status in society at the time the play was written. Regarding the dominant ideas of the play such as personal will and sexual liberation in light of the relevant legislations of the New Labour as the ruling party in Britain in the early years of the twenty-first century, Barker’s play is also discussed as a politically driven adaptation.