The Fans doth Protest Too Much!

[Rob McCow]

Fans banned from bringing their sonic screwdrivers to be signed at Hamlet!

Doctor Who and Star Trek fans have been banned from having sci-fi merchandise signed by David Tennant and Patrick Stewart while they star in Hamlet.

The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) says only programmes and other Hamlet merchandise can be autographed at the stage door.

Tennant and Stewart are starring in the RSC production at the Courtyard Theatre, in Stratford.

The first preview begins later, and the play opens on 5 August.

Hamlet director, Gregory Doran, recently said fans arrive at the stage door with "bags" of Doctor Who merchandise for Tennant to autograph.

In a statement, the RSC said the level of interest in Tennant and Stewart meant "limits" had to be imposed.

"Due to the huge amount of interest in the RSC's current production of Hamlet, only Royal Shakespeare Company or production related memorabilia will be signed by members of the company," the RSC said.

"It is very flattering that there is so much interest in this production, but the sheer volume of requests means that we need to set some limits which will be as fair as possible for everyone.

"We apologise if this causes any disappointment."

Signs outlining the no autographs policy have reportedly been erected in the window at the stage door.

Tennant's performance in Hamlet has been hotly anticipated, with tickets exchanging hands on the internet auction site eBay for up to £215 each.

David Tennant talked to Andrew Marr in June about his new role as Hamlet

The 37-year-old Scottish actor, who takes on the lead role of Hamlet, made his debut as the Time Lord in Doctor Who in 2005.

His previous RSC credits include Antipholus of Syracuse in The Comedy of Errors.

Stewart is best known for playing Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek, but has a string of critically acclaimed stage performances to his name.

He plays two roles in the RSC production of Hamlet - Claudius and the Ghost.

Too bloody right! Did they even watch the play? I can just imagine a front row of Who fans all with video I-Pods watching 'The Idiot's Lantern' during the 'Alas poor Yorick' speech!

[SiHart]

Poor Ali! How will DT sign her books and things now?

Si xx

[Dirk Gently]

So are the people who ran the Tenth Planet signings now running the R.S.C signings?

[Si Hunt]

Fair enough, you don't want a load of sweaty fans talking through it just so they can get their Monsters and Villains hardback signed at the end.

Though you have to be careful with things like this. It almost sends out the message "David is doing more adult material now, so doesn't want any of his silly Doctor Who stuff involved". Doesn't it?

Si.

[Jon Masters]

Sounds more like a 'let's con fans into paying Xpounds for a crappy programme with about 2 pages of cast stuff and 25 pages of adverts just so they can get an autograph' kind of deal.

Not surprising really - Stratford is officially the biggest tourist rip-off centre of the whole UK anyway.

[Captain Tancredi]

The BBCi article was phrased slightly more amusingly and referred to Hamlet "merchandise". That'll be the Hamlet and Laertes Battle Pack, Ophelia Voice Changer and Player King with pull-back-and-go action then.

It's all rather sad, really, and one of the reasons why I never really wanted to go- because I didn't want to sit in a theatre with the strong suspicion that I was one of a handful of people with more than a passing interest in the play. Having said that, yes, I did go to see Electricity for Christopher Eccleston- now there was a play. Came out of the performance thinking that Murray Gold really ought to stick to writing music, and then heard his music. Which is odd in itself, because I liked his Vanity Fair score- but I liked Natasha Little more...

'Hamlet' is a slog at the best of times and I can't help feeling a lot of people will go for Tennant and Stewart but end up fidgety after about an hour.

[Kaybee Bailey]

I take it the RSC haven't had this problem with any of their previous productions featuring Patrick Stewart then?

I think it's a bit of a shame in a way. I'd love to go and see Hamlet with a cast of that sort of pedigree, but the tickets are going for ridiculous money now, and it is because of David Tennant. Good if you get people interested in Shakespeare, but having to announce things like this casts everyone in a bad light. The RSC appears stuffy, Tennant might be perceived as distancing himself from Doctor Who (can't see that myself, but various people have written to my local paper saying how he's failed to mention Doctor Who in his Hamlet publicity and is therefore trying to be all grown-up!), and all the new fans end up with the same reputation for being obsessive and stalkerish that Doctor Who fans have had for years. One in the teeth for everyone who defended 'celebrity casting' after Jonathan Miller's outburst.

[WhiteCrow]

I'm actually pleased about this. If there was one thing which was bound to cause David Tennant to run from the role it would be him doing "serious" acting, and still being plagued with Dr Who merchandise.

I heard something similar from Ewan McGregor who said we was beseiged at the stage door by fans with lightsabers. It does make me pity the actors a bit to do a whole range of work, but get one piece forever rammed down their throats.

[WhiteCrow]

"Can I kiss David Tennant?"

[Rob McCow]

"Can I kiss David Tennant?"

Only if you think of Ophelia's grave while you're doing it!

[Larry]

I don't see where there's a problem with this by rights people should be going to see Hamlet, because they like Shakespear and not because Tennent and Patrick Stewart have appeared in Doctor Who / Star Trek.

This is the problem with certain sections of Doctor Who/Star Trek fandom in that they are totally obsessive and are unable to understand that actors when doing other things don't want to be constantly bombarded with one paticuler thing they have done.

[Larry]

Poor Ali! How will DT sign her books and things now?

Si xx

come on Si, you know that's never going to stop Ali's she'll probably go around Stratford buying every Shakespeare book or bit of tick tack she can find and get DT to sign that insted.

[Rob McCow]

I wish I was going. I'd get some Who tat signed:

"Sign my DVD of The Shakespeare Code! Sign this photo of the Doctor and Shakespeare! Sign more things under the sun than are dreamed of in your philosophy! Will you sign my breast if I clutch an Asp to it? David! DAAAAYYY-VEEEEDDD!!!!"

[WhiteCrow]

Knowing Ali she'll put her DW book in a Complete Works of Shakespeare slipcase, so he won't even know he's doing it.

[Stuart Wallis]

It's not unreasonable to put a restriction on getting them to sign things; knowing how obsessive some fans are, it's right to give them a chance to actually go home of an evenig rather than spend a week putting endless signatures on stuff. Especially if they're doing the full 4 hour version of the play.

[Andrew Curnow]

Does this mean that when David's filming the 2009 specials next January, Shakespeare buffs will be prevented from getting him to sign their folios?

[Stuart Wallis]

I'm not having David Tennant manhandling my folio!

Jessica Alba, yes...

[Andrew Curnow]

I'm sure David Tennant would be only too delighted to manhandle Jessica Alba, if she should appear at the stage door telling him to sign something...

[Stuart Wallis]

And she should think herself lucky he's not Frazer Hines, we'd never see her again!

[Rob McCow]

She'd definitely prick the conscience of his king.

[Dirk Gently]

Is that a euphemism?

[Stuart Wallis]

I don't know; what colour is it?

[WhiteCrow]

I think in a way given that signed merchandise is such big buisness, they shouldnt really do any signings. I will bet a LOT will go from stage door to eBay in less than an hour ...

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/SIGNED-DAVID-T...em310070584777

[Captain Tancredi]

Thing is, lead actors signing at the stage door of the RSC is a tradition of sorts- somewhere I still have Charles Dance's autograph from when I went down there on a school trip about 20 years ago to see him in Coriolanus.

[WhiteCrow]

I found this kind of funny article today whilst surfing ...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/25/tennant_hamlet/

Stob Perhaps motivated by the desire to avoid type-casting, David Tennant is to take time off from television, to lead the RSC's forthcoming production of Hamlet. Your correspondent sneaked into early rehearsals.

Episode I. Elsinore. The guard-platform of the Castle. Enter HAMLET, HORATIO and MARCELLUS.


Hamlet The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.

Horatio It is a nipping and an eager air.

Hamlet What hour now?

Horatio I think it lacks of twelve.

Hamlet No, it is struck.

Horatio Indeed? I heard it not:
Then it draws near the season
Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk.

Enter Ghost.


Ghost Who-woo, who-woo woo![1]

Horatio Look, my lord, it comes!

Hamlet [Aside] Well, duh.
[To Ghost] May ministers of grace defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damn'd?
Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell?
Be thy intents wicked or charitable?
Thou com'st in such a questionable shape.
A cyber-shade[2], by human mother loved,
Until thy brain was from its bony cup
Untimely ripped? [Scans with sonic screwdriver.
I see it is not so.
A gassy Gelth[3], a windy wanton wraith? [Sniffs
Not likely without calorific airs,
Nor yet sustaining suppurating flesh.
Perchance a hologram? En-bodied light
Doth dazzle blind the credent Danish eye
With smuggled tech from two millennia hence.
The projector of this apparition's shape
Must hidden lie not five and two score paces
From this not-so-haunting haunter. [More sonic screwdriver.

Ghost Oi!

Horatio It beckons you.

Hamlet Then I will follow it.

Marcellus You shall not go, my lord.

Hamlet Hold off your hands.

Horatio Be rul'd, my lord. Methinks it is a trap.

Hamlet A trap? A trap? Of course it is a trap.
A happy-rappy, clappy-sappy trap.
Still am I call'd. Unhand me, gentlemen.
Thou hast always to go when t'is a trap.

Horatio He waxes desperate with imagination.
Let's away to seek physician's help
Before his madness carries him to mischief.

Marcellus Forsooth, our addled lord assaults our ears:
His wits are fled. He's gone quite Britney Spears.
[Exeunt Horatio and Marcellus.


Hamlet Alone at last. Speak; I'm bound to hear.

Ghost I am thy father's spirit.
If thou didst ever thy dear father love
Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

Hamlet What, murder then? How cam'st thou to be stiffed?

Ghost Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard,
My custom always of the afternoon,
Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,
With juice of cursed hebona in a vial,
And in the porches of my ears did pour...

Hamlet Half a mo. Let's just rewind that tape.
Thou nappest outside in the Danish frost?
One hundred bedrooms boasts our Elsinore,
Yet thou bedst down in dirty Febr'y snow?[4]
Hebona-schmebona! As my hearts do beat,
T'was hypothermia that put paid to thee.
And I'm the one whose marbles art in doubt!
Wherefore, old mole, this fatal freezing folly?

Ghost There are more things in heaven and earth, time lord,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. The Queen
And I, at the green year, forswore the fags.
Since which sad hour, now stranger'd by our oath,
I hid ten Marlb'ro Lights behind the arras
And crept to chilly garden for a gasp.
I wish that I had striven with the patch.
Now I am done. Hast thou got a match?
[ Exit Ghost, smoking

Hamlet Come Marcellus! Come Horatio!
Come Ophelia! Come one! Come all!

Enter MARCELLUS, HORATIO, OPHELIA, CLAUDIUS KING OF DENMARK, GERTUDE THE QUEEN, POLONIUS &c. plus numerous spear carriers and grave diggers.


Hamlet Our tragedy that threatened to unfold
I have, with Gallifreyan wit, cut short:
The Ghost I hath dispatched to happiness
(He wanted just a 'ponymous cigar[5]);
The King and Queen and worthy Laertes
Have jointly not succumbed to toxic shock;
Polonius, old fool, unpunctured thrives;
Ophelia hath no need of fluffy towel.
By God I'm good! And best of all is last,
(For Russell T hath touched the RSC)
A telegram from Brighton I've just read
That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern... are wed!

[Exeunt singing and dancing to 'Hi Ho Silver Lining'.

Notes
The Ghost's cries are metrical. One expects nothing less from a writer of Shakespeare's calibre.
An Elizabethan term for a Cyberman, as seen in Army of Ghosts.
The Gelth were the wispy monsters in The Unquiet Dead. Yes you do; it had Dickens in it.
The Ghost has baffled Shakespeare scholars for years. What was Hamlet Senior doing sunbathing in the middle of the Danish winter? Tennant's authoritative interpretation finally clears up this point.
Happiness, Tudor and Jacobean readers and YouTubers will recall, is Bach's Air on the G String.