About the work
Heiner Müller's „Hamletmachine" („Die Hamletmaschine") was written in 1977 and is one of the most famous texts of postdramatic theatre. In a few pages Müller shatters the Hamlet material into five collage-like images about the failure of the intellectual, the burden of European history and the impasse of revolution. There is no continuous plot.
Plot
The text consists of five short, titled parts. A Hamlet figure declares „I was Hamlet" and steps out of his role; he stands amid the rubble of Europe, at his father's state funeral, and reflects on betrayal, power and his own impotence. Ophelia rises as a rebellious, finally silenced female figure who revolts against her role as victim and at the end, wrapped in gauze bandages, refuses all hope. Hamlet-actor and author blur; quotations from Shakespeare, Marx and the history of communism run through the text. Instead of action, „Hamletmachine" offers a sequence of images, monologues and stage visions that mark the end of a historical subject and the exhaustion of the grand narratives.
Cultural significance
„Hamletmachine" is a key text of modern and postdramatic theatre, performed and translated worldwide and intensively discussed in theatre studies and directing. Robert Wilson's 1986 New York production became famous. The text is regarded as a radical rejection of illusionist theatre and as Müller's densest engagement with the legacy of the Enlightenment and revolution.