What is “Bad Hamlet”?

Bad Hamlet was written by Lillian DeRitter and Anthea Carns for the Playground festival at Carnegie Mellon University in the fall of 2010. With three scholars, six Hamlets, two Ophelias, and Horatio this play explores the three versions of Hamlet that date from Shakespeare’s time – the well known First Folio, the longer Second Quarto, and the much shorter First Quarto, the “Bad Hamlet.” The play also examines the role of gender, both in the text and in various performances of Hamlet throughout history. Through the performance of the interwoven texts, and the presentation of various arguments by the scholars in conjunction with these performances, Bad Hamlet serves to address the issue of the search for the “real” Hamlet, the one of Shakespeare’s intentions, in a time when conflated texts are often all that are known.