Tag Archives: Hamlet

Judi Dench’s Shakespeare connection: Who Do You Think You Are?

For years now Who Do You Think You Are has been great TV, but the episode featuring Dame Judi Dench on 19 October 2021 was outstanding. The programme uncovers aspects of the family history of celebrities and has covered everything … Continue reading

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Unfreezing the statue: rescuing the arts

It is always said that “The show must go on”. But since 16 March 2020 when theatres and other cultural venues closed, shows have not gone on. And while shops and pubs are now able to open again, live performances … Continue reading

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John Hutton’s Shakespeare characters in glass

  One of the first objects on the Antiques Roadshow on Sunday 17 March was a Shakespeare item that I found very familiar, a framed and mirrored glass panel by the artist John Hutton featuring the character of Hamlet. Hutton’s … Continue reading

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Hamlets onstage then and now

This week David Ricardo-Pearce has joined the mighty list of actors who have taken on Shakespeare’s most famous part, Hamlet. Until 10 March 2018 he’s playing the role at the Octagon Theatre in Bolton where they are celebrating the fiftieth … Continue reading

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Shakespeare in Soviet Russia

On 25 October 1917 (following the Julian calendar, 7 November on the Gregorian Calendar), the Bolsheviks took over Petrograd. The following day they took the Winter Palace and with it control of Russia. Thus began the Russian Revolution, one of … Continue reading

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A German Hamlet: Fratricide Punished

There are many unanswered questions regarding Shakespeare’s plays, many of which relate to Hamlet, Shakespeare’s best-known play. The German Der Bestrafte Brudemord, known in English as Fratricide Punished, is one of the earliest known versions of Hamlet in a foreign … Continue reading

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Influences on Shakespeare

The source books from which Shakespeare took the main stories of his plays are well-known, sometimes so important that he quoted almost word for word, as in Enobarbus’s description of Cleopatra from Plutarch’s Lives. Other sources seem to have been … Continue reading

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Hamlets onstage in 2017

Of all Shakespeare’s plays, it’s Hamlet that holds most fascination for audiences, and new productions often make the headlines. In recent years we’ve seen Maxine Peake at the Royal Exchange in Manchester in 2014, Benedict Cumberbatch’s production staged at the … Continue reading

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Donald Trump and Shakespeare

Shakespeare’s fascination with politics can be seen in many of his plays, not only those directly based on British history. The Roman plays too examine the workings of power, looking at how countries have been governed and how those who … Continue reading

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“The point envenom’d too” onstage fighting or the real thing?

On 13 December 2016, the members of Stratford-upon-Avon’s Shakespeare Club will be able to get an inside view on the subject of staging battles and fights in productions of Shakespeare’s plays, from a man who really knows his subject. Alan … Continue reading

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