Shamanism in Korean Hamlets since 1990: Exorcising Han

Abstract

During the Korean Shakespeare boom of the last twenty years, Hamlet has been performed more than any other drama. Hamlet productions admired by Korean audiences and critics have, like other successful Shakespeare productions in the same period, shared a common tendency for Koreanization in respect of style and theme. The Koreanization of Hamlet productions, in particular, is closely connected with shamanism. The most prominent of Hamlet productions since the 1990s stage rituals like the gut in which a shaman appears to be possessed. Looking back over the hundred-year history of Hamlet in the modern Korean theatre, this paper argues that these shamanistic Hamlets, which have emerged with democratization, globalization, and the extended freedom of the 1990s, serve to exorcise pain of a people who have suffered from the problems of "to be or not to be" through times of colonialism, wen; dictatorship, and IMF crisis. Examining the major Hamlet productions (1993-2007), this paper explains the relationship between Hamlet and Korean shamanism, which is closely connected with Korean. people's han, an indigenous sentiment of pain and regret. Lee Hyon-u is a professor in the Department of English at Soonchunhyang University in South Korea. He graduated from Korea University (BA 1986; PhD 1994). His work focuses on Shakespeare, especially in performances. He published Shakespeare: Audience, Stage, and Texts (in Korean) in 2004. He has translated The First Quarto of Hamlet and Seneca's Oedipus, both of which were published in 2007. He has published many essays, written theatre criticism, directed Shakespeare productions, and performed as an actor on stage and in television. He is editor of journals for the Classic and Renaissance English Literature Association of Korea and the Shakespeare Association of Korea, and is a correspondent of "The World Shakespeare Bibliography" (online) produced by Shakespeare Quarterly.