Hamlet and Daemon (Shakespeare's Hamlet)

William Shakespeare|Edward Gordon Craig

1909 · Wood engraving · Drawings and Prints

Son of the leading actress Ellen Terry, and architect Edward William Godwin, Craig himself became a gifted actor and stage designer. This print of Hamlet listening to a mysterious whisperer was made as Craig developed a visionary staging of the play for Constantin Stanislavsky at the Moscow Art Theatre. For that 1912 production, he conceived of the ghost in Shakespeare as two beings—the first a skeletal representation of Hamlet’s murdered father in Act 1—and the second an androgynous Daemon or alter ego, who entices the prince towards death later in the play. To demonstrate his ideas, Craig built model sets and carved figures out of wood in low relief to model the actors’ movements. Experimenting, he discovered that these could be printed to create "black figure" images.

Artist

William Shakespeare|Edward Gordon Craig

Date

1909

Medium

Wood engraving

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1924