A Comparative Study of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Erksan’s Adaptation: Indigenization and Reception of the Play in Turkish Culture

Abstract

William Shakespeare’s plays have been vastly adapted to movies by many directors all over the world. Metin Erksan (1929-2012), a Turkish director was one of the mentioned ones. His movie Intikam Meleği – Kadın Hamlet (1977) considered a modern adaptation of Hamlet. This paper intended to present a comparative analysis of Hamlet and its Turkish adaptation with a specific focus on similarities and differences in light of the adaptation theory. Adaptation theory as this study’s main framework will result in finding the news meanings of both Hamlet and its movie .The paper also going to focus primarily on three questions that proposed by Hutcheon and O’Flynn (2013) theory of adaptation including ‘What’, ‘Where’, and ‘When’, since it is quite important to focus on the changes that occur in the transfer from telling to showing mode. The paper aimed  also at answering questions such as what features of Hamlet transferred in this adaptation (i.e. Plot, characterization, setting, and themes), how the context of Hamlet is transcoded in this adaptation, finally how did Erksan indigenize Hamlet. In conclusion, what will result from this analysis is that Erksan modified the movie so that it could fit with Turkish society, its traditions, and culture in the 20^th century.