A stroke of outrageous fortune
Serendipity had a hand in the re-creation of Ngaio Marsh’s abbreviated 1943 version of Hamlet,
Sometimes, an event comes along that can truly be described as ‘‘serendipitous’’. Recently, University of Canterbury master of English student Polly Hoskins was in the Alexander Turnbull Library, researching her honours thesis on New Zealand women writers.
Something caught her eye: an old book, tucked away, seemingly forgotten.
As she picked it up and looked at it, she was amazed to realise it was Dame Ngaio Marsh’s 1943 production script for Hamlet.
The legendary crime novelist, herself an alumna of Canterbury University, had directed students in several Shakespearean plays, and Hamlet was the first one performed by the university’s drama society.
Coincidentally, Hoskins is president of the present-day university drama society.
As she later studied the 76-yearold script book, which included blocking instructions – actors’ movements on stage – and Marsh’s own exquisite illustrations, Hoskins realised how adept this adaptation of Hamlet was.
‘‘It seemed a shame that it should lie hidden in archives . . . seeing the typescript at the Turnbull was quite a revelation.
‘‘It’s alive with drawings of the stage action and packed with blocking instructions. You can see and hear the performance by just looking at it.’’
She also saw that the script did
not contain Shakespeare’s usual 4000 lines (up to four hours of performance time), but had been trimmed to about half.
‘‘[Marsh] reduced the play considerably because she wanted to present an economical, studentfriendly version . . . she had what she called a ‘clear burning picture’ of how she wanted it to be played.
‘‘Unusually for the time, it was a modern-dress – or rather, battledress – version, with the cast wearing military uniforms, echoing World War II.’’
Another coincidence has come with the incidental music for
Hamlet. This was originally composed for Marsh by UC alumnus Douglas Lilburn – and Polly Hoskins’ father Robert Hoskins just happens to be a retired music academic and series editor of the collected piano music of Lilburn.
That music rang out again on August 9, in A Night of Ngaio: Celebrating Ngaio Marsh,
accompanying a recreated performance of Hamlet at the opening of the new Ngaio Marsh Theatre in the rebuilt UC student association building.
DramaSoc also performed other Shakespeare scenes. Marsh biographer Joanne Drayton gave a talk. ‘‘To . . . hear the music again [since 1943] was breathtaking,’’ recalls Hoskins. ‘‘My father edited the score; Philip Norman conducted the performance.
‘‘The music opens the play, capturing the feeling of a chilly night, and when a tubular bell strikes midnight it sends a tingle down the spine . . .
‘‘The evening was wonderful . . . Ngaio Marsh produced plays for our club for 30 years, beginning with Hamlet in 1943 and ending with A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1969. ‘‘Thankfully, the Christ’s College drama department provided us with military costumes, which we were very grateful for.’’
The new, and rather incredible, thing about Hoskins’ work is that, as she mentions, it’s the first close examination of a Ngaio Marsh Shakespeare script.
The Hamlet production script, edited and with an introduction by Hoskins, a note on the Lilburn music by Robert Hoskins, the original score and 12 illustrations, has been published for the first time by Canterbury University Press.
Now, Polly Hoskins is getting back to concentrating on her thesis: ‘‘The woman alone in the 20thcentury New Zealand short story.’’
Footnote: Long ago, as a homeschooled child, Edith Ngaio Marsh was introduced to Shakespeare’s works.
In 1916, when she was 20, the professional Allan Wilkie Theatre Company arrived in Christchurch with a stage season of Hamlet.
As recounted by Maurice Hurst in his 1944 classic Music and the Stage in New Zealand, Ngaio described the first night of the play as ‘‘the most enchanted I was ever to spend in the theatre’’.
She approached Wilkie, an Australian Shakespeare actormanager, with a play script of her own, and he offered to include her in his return season of 1920.
That’s exactly what happened, Hurst added. He writes that she was described then as ‘‘a ‘statuesque young woman in small parts’,’’ and that later, when established as a crime writer, she put this touring experience into her novel Vintage Murder.