Jawad al-Asadi's Forget Hamlet: A Study in Adaptation and the Concepts of Economic Lures and Legal Constraints

Abstract

Jawad al-Asadi’s adaptation, Forget Hamlet, paradoxically asks the reader to forget Shakespeare's Hamlet, the philosophical, contemplative and vindicative, and meet with the weak, indifferent and ineffectual Hamlet. Forget Hamlet is an adaptation by an Iraqi playwright and director, Jawad al-Asadi, staged in1994 and published in 2000. This paper is an attempt to study the economic lures and legal constraints of the adaptation in the light of Linda Hutcheon’s Theory of Adaptation, especially one of its the six journalistic questions, 'why'. The study investigates how the author succeeds with making the adaptation popular and appealing to the reader and at the same time avoids all legal constraints through modifications, additions and cancellation. This study will be a valuable effort to the people who are interested in the study of adaptation in Iraq