[“HAMLET” REIMAGINED THROUGH CENTRAL EUROPEAN EXPERIMENTAL THEATRE] The tragically Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke. Prema poljskom tekstu Józefa Paszkowskoga nanovo pročitana i promišljena od Stanislava Wyspiańskoga

SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM (1564-1616).

Izvanredno izdanje Matice Hrvatske; tisak Kuzme Rožmanića, Zagreb, 1921.

Complete title: [“HAMLET” REIMAGINED THROUGH CENTRAL EUROPEAN EXPERIMENTAL THEATRE] The tragically Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke. Prema poljskom tekstu Józefa Paszkowskoga nanovo pročitana i promišljena od Stanislava Wyspiańskoga. Preveo s poljskoga Julije Benešić.

Original wrappers. Demy 8vo. (21.5 x 15 cm). In Croatian. 126, [2] p., b/w reproduced portraits. Covers and the first pages slightly stained, spine recently rebacked with a grey cloth strip; very occasional creasing. Overall, a well-preserved copy.

A rare first Croatian translation of Hamlet by Julije Benešić (1883-1957), prepared not from the English original but from the Polish text of Józef Paszkowski (1817-1861), as subsequently re-read and reconceptualised by Stanisław Wyspiański (1869-1907). Published in Zagreb in the interwar period, the edition reflects the transmission of Polish experimental theatre and Central European modernism into Croatian literary culture, and the modernist reinvention of Hamlet across linguistic and cultural boundaries. The title page deliberately reproduces the orthography and visual language of the 1603 English quarto.

The edition documents the transformation of Hamlet from an Elizabethan tragedy into a twentieth-century theatrical and intellectual project shaped by Polish modernism. Rather than functioning as a direct translation, the text represents a multilayered reinterpretation in which Hamlet is filtered through the aesthetic programme of Stanisław Wyspiański (1869-1907), one of the leading figures of the Young Poland (Młoda Polska) movement.

For Wyspiański, Hamlet became a vehicle for exploring questions of political inertia, collective responsibility, historical memory, and national self-examination. His engagement with the drama occupied a singular position within Polish theatre history and influenced subsequent interpretations in Central Europe. Through Julije Benešić's translation, this particular Polish reimagining of Hamlet entered Croatian literary culture, forming an unusual intellectual bridge between Kraków and Zagreb.

Shakespeare's original text, Józef Paszkowski's nineteenth-century Polish translation, Wyspiański's modernist intervention, and Benešić's Croatian rendering are all explicitly acknowledged on the title page. Few editions so clearly reveal the layered process through which Hamlet was reimagined and circulated across linguistic and cultural boundaries.

As of October 2026, OCLC records only three copies worldwide: one at the Biblioteka Narodowa in Poland, and two in the United States, at the Folger Shakespeare Library and New York University (OCLC 42201154 & 80376113).