Murder? Madness? Hamlet will get his day in court before Justice Kennedy

For one night, the big question in "Hamlet" won't be "To be, or not to be" but "Is he or isn't he?" -- as in "Is the prince of Denmark mentally competent to stand trial for the murder of Polonius?"

The Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles will present a Jan. 31 mock trial to determine the answer in a program created and presided over by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.

The legal-literary proceedings, which will be held at USC's Bovard Auditorium, will be run "as if it were a bona fide trial," says Ben Donenberg, the Shakespeare Center's founder and artistic director. "A lot rests on the testimony of expert witnesses. The lawyers will present their arguments. Justice Kennedy will adjudicate. We won't know the outcome until the jury brings back the verdict."

Donenberg says the attorneys -- all well-versed in handling high-profile cases --were chosen by the Los Angeles County and Beverly Hills bar associations. Defense attorneys Blair Berk and Richard G. Hirsch will represent Hamlet. The prosecutors will be Nathan J. Hochman, a former U.S. assistant attorney general, and Deputy District Atty. Danette Meyers. Expert witnesses will include psychiatrists Saul Faerstein and Ronald Markman.

Instead of the inhabitants of Elsinore, the jury for "The Trial of Hamlet" will consist of L.A.-area arts patrons, community leaders, students and actors Helen Hunt and Tom Irwin, who starred in a December production of  "Much Ado About Nothing" for the Shakespeare Center's 25th anniversary. Graham Hamilton will portray the defendant.

In the play, Hamlet stabs Polonius, royal advisor and father of his beloved Ophelia. The prince's sanity has long sparked scholarly debate. Now the question takes on a legal twist. "What mental condition was he in when he thrust his sword through the curtain?" Donenberg asks. "Would a jury today hold him responsible for his actions?"

Supreme Court justices have developed quite a tradition of participating in Bard-inspired mock trials. In 1987, for instance, three high court jurists heard arguments over who really wrote Shakespeare's plays. Kennedy created "The Trial of Hamlet"  in 1994 and has presided over versions in several cities.

The Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles is known for L.A.-centric interpretations of works including "Twelfth Night" and "Julius Caesar" and its community-outreach programs.

The mock trial will run from 7:30 to 10:30 p.m. Ticket information is available at www.shakespearecenter.org.

--Karen Wada

RECENT AND RELATED:

Theater review: 'Much Ado About Nothing' at the Kirk Douglas Theatre

The Bard goes native at Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles

Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles to stage 'Much Ado About Nothing' starring Helen Hunt and Tom Irwin

Photos: Top, Laurence Olivier played the melancholy Dane in the 1948 film of "Hamlet."  Below, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. Credits: "Hamlet," the Criterion Collection; Kennedy, Dennis Brack / Bloomberg

 

Comments

[L. Spoon]

He was mad (crazy, not angry) at the time! My interpretation at least : )
This sounds so fun. I wish I could go!

[Bob Green]

Perhaps Brown will pardon the Sweet Prince. I think he should.

[JamesE]

This state is overflowing with greasy lawyers already. It's time to shut down these fancy "law schools" and put more attention on the sciences.

[Bob Abrahams]

Doesn't the pre-trial publicity make it difficult, if not impossible, for the jury to be totally objective?

[Andrew Masset]

The penalty phase will be tough...he's dead...

[Ray Eston Smith Jr]

Hamlet was clearly insane both by modern standards and by two definitions popular in the Elizabethan Era. He was "from himself taken away." He was possessed (at least metaphorically) by his father's warlike spirit when he erased himself from the book and volume of his brain and wrote his father to live all alone there. Thereafter, in attempting to regain his sanity, Hamlet was a valiant soldier of the spirit, fighting a desperate internal battle to defend the sovereignty of his soul.

In modern terms, he had a split personality or an identity crises, torn between his father's traditional bloody value system and his own humanist values, which were the product of thought and education.

One Elizabeth theory of madness was that it was caused by demonic possession. Hamlet's demon was his father's spirit, which had usurped the sovereignty of his soul.
http://www.thyorisons.com/#Usurp Usurp Your Sovereignty of Reason

Another theory of insanity was that it was caused by the moon. Hamlet's lunacy was due to being like the moon. Laertes had compared him to the moon. Hamlet twice compared his father to Hyperion (the sun god). Hamlet was glowing with the "borrowed sheen" of his father's warlike values instead of shining with his own humanist values.
http://www.thyorisons.com/#Cause_of_Lunacy The Cause of Hamlet's Lunacy

[Willie]

Who cares? Hamlet is connected. The Gubernator will commute his sentence whether he is sane or insane.

[regina]

Clearly the juror pool is tainted no matter what the jurisdiction.

[TWil]

All this mental masturbation, and for what? Wouldn't the cost of staging this be better spent for cancer or aids research, or helping with the budget crisis of the state?

[bill]

as i recall, when he stabbed polonius through the curtain (the arrass) he was in the middle of berating his evil b*tch mom, really talking mean sh*t to her, kind of reveling in explaining to her that she was basically a whore, because she remarried so soon, and remarried the murderer of her former husband. he's making her cry he's being so mean, and he talks himself up into a fury, and he notices movement behind the curtain so he thinks it's claudius and so all of a sudden (a rat, dead for a ducat!) he stabs the bastard. but it's not claudius, it's the fool polonius, and hamlet's immediately crushed. (one reason is this means getting ophelia is not going to happen, since polonius is ophelia's dad.).

nothing insane here. and it's easy to prove there's no insanity at all in hamlet, because the guards in the opening scene have actually seen the ghost. and in the play, hamlet explains to us that he's just pretending to be crazy.

i'd be more interested in what we would charge him with, is it involuntary manslaughter if you intend to kill someone, but it ends up being the wrong person? he was doing it out of anger, does that make it manslaughter instead of murder?