In 26 of his 38 plays, Shakespeare includes a war. Reading them, one is tempted to ask ‘when will we ever learn?’ rather than pronounce, ‘lest we forget’.
David Tennant as Hamlet in a 2009 production.
BBC Wales, Royal Shakespeare Company
Hamlet, the tormented prince of Denmark, embodies our own struggles: between reason and violence, courage and inaction. He is a modern character in an endlessly quotable play.
From ‘islands of pain’ to the ‘peril of exposure,’ writers have captured the fear, emptiness and despair that characterize life during the current pandemic, writes a poet and English scholar.
Martin’s Droeshout portrait of William Shakespeare (1623)
Bodleian Library, Oxford.
Neil Armfield’s production of the Brett Dean opera Hamlet is a confronting three hours in the theatre, but then so is Shakespeare’s play. The second act is devastating in its emotional impact.
Relics of St. Valentine of Terni at the basilica of Saint Mary in Cosmedin.
Dnalor 01 (Own work)
Lisa Bitel, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Valentine’s Day originated as a feast to celebrate the decapitation of a third-century Christian martyr, or perhaps two. It took a gruesome path to becoming a romantic holiday.
From Horace Walpole to Steven King, Shakespeare has inspired centuries of supernatural Gothic terror.
Macbeth And Banquo, Théodore Chassériau, 1855. Via Wikimedia Commons
Hamlet begins with a ‘night of the living dead’; Banquo turns into a ghost . The Bard had a supernatural streak and it was crucial to the genesis of Gothic literature.
We cannot help but remember Hamlet: it is iconic.
Robin Goldsworthy, Ivan Donato, Philip Dodd, Josh McConville. Photo: Daniel Boud
Hamlet is a play that haunts itself. Its saturation into cultural consciousness means that watching a performance is inevitably a process of past ghosts and past echoes framing the current performance.
The ghost, in this autumn’s Royal Exchange Theatre production of Hamlet, is in the light bulbs. Hung over the stage, they flicker and hum as they mark Old Hamlet’s movements. They also set the scene for…
Deputy Director, Intellectual Forum at Jesus College in the University of Cambridge, and Researcher for the Department of Social and Political Sciences, Bocconi University, University of Cambridge