THEN AND NOW

Hamlet, like any other Shakespearean nobleman, wore his hat indoors. When the foppish and murderous Osric came flourishing his headgear with the invitation to fight Laertes, Hamlet undoubtedly doffed his bonnet in reply to Osric's flourish, and then put it back on. Osric's failure to follow suit led to Hamlet's reproof (‘Put your bonnet to his right use, ’tis for the head'). The unbonneted Hamlet familiar to modern audiences is a creation of the indoor theatre and fourth-wall staging, where every scene is a room unless it is specified otherwise, and where everyone goes hatless accordingly. Hamlet in 1601 walked under the sky in an open amphitheatre, on a platform that felt out-of-doors in comparison with modern theatres but indifferently represented indoors or out to the Elizabethans. There was a wall at the back of the platform, fronting the ‘tiring-house’ or room where the players changed, the offstage area. It gave access to the playing area by two or more doors and a balcony. These places of entry could equally well provide the imagination with the exterior doors and balcony of a house or the interior doors and gallery of a great hall. Hamlet's headgear was worn with equal indifference to the imagined scene.

The wearing of hats on stage is a minor matter in comparison with, say, Hamlet's use of a ‘nighted colour’ in his clothes, so far as the play's general concerns go.