Analyze multiple interpretations of Hamlet, Susan Glaspell's Trifles and a recorded poem, evaluating how each version interprets the source text

Learning goal: Analyze multiple interpretations of a story, drama or poem (a recorded or live production of a play, a recorded novel or poetry), evaluating how each version interprets the source text, including at least one play by Shakespeare and one play by an American dramatist.

A script is a set of decisions left open. A play on the page is incomplete in a specific way: it gives the words but rarely the tone, the pauses, the movement, the set or what the characters are thinking. Every production must fill those gaps, and each filling is an interpretation, a claim about what the play means. The same is true of a recorded novel or poem: a reader's pace, emphasis and pauses decide questions the printed page leaves open. To analyze multiple interpretations you (1) locate a moment where the source text leaves a decision open, (2) describe precisely what each version decides, (3) find the textual evidence each decision relies on, and (4) evaluate: does the version account for all of the text, or does it have to cut, ignore or contradict something? A version is not better because it is more traditional or more surprising. The main test in this lesson is how much of the text a version makes sense of; a cut or an addition is itself an interpretive choice, to be judged by what it gains and what it loses, not condemned in advance.

The productions described below are hypothetical, invented for this lesson so that every detail can be checked against the script. When you watch real recorded or live productions, you apply the same method to what the actors and director actually do.

Shakespeare: Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1. Earlier in the play (Act 2, Scene 2) and again at the opening of this scene, Polonius and King Claudius plan to hide and watch Hamlet meet Ophelia, to learn whether love has driven him mad. Polonius tells Ophelia, "Read on this book, / That show of such an exercise may colour / Your loneliness," and the two men withdraw. Hamlet enters, speaks the soliloquy that begins "To be, or not to be, that is the question," then meets Ophelia. Mid-conversation he says "I did love you once," then "I loved you not," then abruptly asks, "Where's your father?" She answers, "At home, my lord." The question the text leaves open is decisive: does Hamlet know he is being watched? The dialogue and the stage directions in the edition used here do not say. A production may show that he knows, show that he does not, or keep the audience unsure; each is a decision.

Hypothetical Production A has Hamlet notice a curtain move just before "Where's your father?" The question becomes a test; Ophelia's "At home, my lord" is a lie he knows to be a lie; his lines that follow, "Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool nowhere but in's own house," are spoken loudly toward the hiding place. Evidence it relies on: the abruptness of the question, which interrupts a speech about himself, and the pointed insult to her father. Interpretation of the source: Hamlet's cruelty after the discovery is at least partly a performance aimed at the listeners, and Ophelia's betrayal is what wounds him. What it must explain: the hostility that comes before the discovery ("Are you honest?", "I loved you not," "Get thee to a nunnery"), as well as the earlier "I did love you once." Production A can play the love line as sincere and the early hostility as bitterness already present, then make the discovery an escalation that turns his anger toward the listeners. That fits the text, but it cannot make the lie the sole cause of his cruelty.

Hypothetical Production B has Hamlet never learn he is watched. He is exhausted after the soliloquy; the contradiction "I did love you once... I loved you not" is played as real confusion; his disgust with women ("God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another") is aimed past Ophelia at his mother's remarriage, a grievance established earlier in the play. Interpretation: Hamlet is genuinely unstable in this moment, and Ophelia is the victim of feelings that are not about her. What it must explain: the sudden "Where's your father?" Production B plays it as a random, suspicious swerve, which is possible, but the question fits less naturally than in A. Evaluation: both versions are defensible because the text withholds the answer; A makes the abrupt question more coherent, while B takes the contradictory love lines more seriously. A production that cut "I did love you once" would be making an interpretive choice too, and a cut is not automatically a fault: productions shorten this long play routinely. Judge it by what it gains and loses. The cut would make Hamlet's cruelty simpler and easier to follow; it would also remove half of the contradiction that makes the scene difficult, so on this lesson's test it interprets less of the source than A or B. A student who defends the cut must show what the production's reading gains in return.

An American dramatist: Susan Glaspell, Trifles (first performed in 1916). In a farmhouse kitchen, the county attorney and the sheriff search for a motive for the killing of John Wright, whose wife is held for murder, while Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters wait among "trifles." The women find a dead canary in a box ("Somebody—wrung—its—neck," Mrs. Peters says, with the halting dashes of the script) and hide it. The play ends when the county attorney jokes about whether the wife was going to quilt or knot her quilt, and Mrs. Hale answers, "(her hand against her pocket) We call it—knot it, Mr Henderson." The open questions: How dangerous are the men? And how is the last line spoken?

Hypothetical Production C plays the men as comic fools and the last line as a triumphant, knowing jab, with a sudden blackout. Evidence: the stage directions do color the attorney's manner, "with the gallantry of a young politician," "scoffingly," "facetiously," and Mr. Hale's line "women are used to worrying over trifles" invites laughter at his blindness. Hypothetical Production D plays the men as competent and the stakes as real, and has Mrs. Hale speak the last line quietly, her hand pressed to the pocket that holds evidence she is concealing from a murder investigation, with a slow fade. Evidence: the attorney says "you know juries when it comes to women. If there was some definite thing," so the concealed box is exactly the "definite thing" that could convict; the dash in "We call it—knot it" can suggest hesitation (another production could play it as deliberate emphasis). Evaluation: C honors the play's satire of male condescension but lowers the tension the hidden box creates; D honors the stakes and the women's risk but must still let the audience hear the irony of "knot it," since the men laugh at the very quilt detail that a reader can connect to the rope used in the killing. The strongest production keeps both: condescension that is funny and dangerous.

A recorded poem. Recorded poetry is interpretation too. Imagine two recordings of the original poem "Closing Inventory" from an earlier lesson. Its second stanza ends and its third begins with these lines (the double slash marks the stanza break): "The register gives back its drawer of change / as if it had been asked a question. Grave // and courteous, he thanks the last customer, / who came for nothing, bought a box of nails." Reader 1 pauses two full seconds at the stanza break after "Grave"; Reader 2 runs "Grave / and courteous" together. Reader 1 lets the listener hear the burial meaning; Reader 2 keeps the father's courtesy in the foreground and may hide the double meaning. Neither contradicts the text, but Reader 1 accounts more directly for the stanza break, a structural choice the poet made, and Reader 2 underplays it.

The misconception. Students often judge a version by whether they liked it or whether it "follows the book." Every performance adds something the text does not specify. Evaluate each version by how it interprets the source text: what gap it fills, with what evidence, and what it must ignore.

Worked evaluation of a Hamlet choice: Gap: the text does not say whether Hamlet knows he is overheard. Production A's decision: he notices before "Where's your father?" Evidence used: the abrupt question and the insult "play the fool nowhere but in's own house." Text it must handle: "I did love you once" and the hostility that already comes before the question ("I loved you not," "Get thee to a nunnery"); A plays the love line sincerely and the discovery as an escalation, not the start, of his cruelty. Verdict: coherent and well supported, though it risks making Hamlet's feelings for Ophelia seem to depend entirely on a single test.

Worked evaluation of a Trifles choice: Gap: the delivery of "We call it—knot it, Mr Henderson." Production C: defiant, triumphant, blackout. Production D: quiet, hand on the pocket, slow fade. Evidence: the stage direction "(her hand against her pocket)" fits both; the attorney's "facetiously" supports the men's condescension; his line about juries and a "definite thing" establishes that the box could convict. Verdict: D accounts for more of the text, because it registers the risk Mrs. Hale is taking, but a production that loses all humor would miss the irony the script builds into the men's laughter.

Worked comparison across versions: The same method applies to a recorded poem. Reader 1's two-second pause after "Grave" versus Reader 2's continuous reading. Gap: the page cannot dictate the length of a pause. Evidence: the poet placed "Grave" at the end of a stanza. Verdict: Reader 1 interprets the structure the poet chose; Reader 2 is not wrong but loses a meaning the source text makes available.

Interpretation grid: For each of the three texts, make a row for each version (A, B; C, D; Reader 1, Reader 2) and columns headed Gap in the source, What this version decides, Textual evidence it uses, Text it must cut or strain. Fill every cell with a quotation or precise description.

Independent performance: Watch or listen to two recorded or live versions of one scene from a Shakespeare play and one scene from a play by an American dramatist (your teacher will provide recordings; if you are working on your own, the references below link to free public-domain audio recordings at LibriVox, two complete readings of Hamlet and one of Trifles, which this lesson has not reviewed, so what each recording does with the scene is for you to hear and describe; where a second version is not available, you or your group perform and record your own contrasting reading; for an audio version, describe pace, emphasis, pauses and cuts in place of movement and staging; the hypothetical versions in this lesson serve only as preparation, not as substitutes). Write a 700–900-word analysis evaluating how each version interprets the source text. Success criteria: each scene's open question is identified with the lines that leave it open; each version's decisions (delivery, movement, cuts, staging, set, lighting) are described precisely; each decision is linked to textual evidence; each version is evaluated for what it accounts for and what it must ignore; the essay reaches a reasoned judgment and acknowledges what the weaker version does well.

Staging note: Choose one line from Trifles or Hamlet 3.1 and write two different sets of stage directions for it. Explain how each set changes the meaning.