Shakespeare Magazine 14
Hamlet is the theme of Shakespeare Magazine Issue 14, with each and every article devoted to the fictional Prince of Denmark and the play that bears his name. Rhodri Lewis asks “How Old is Hamlet?” while Samira Ahmed wonders “Why do Women Love Hamlet?” and we review recent productions of the play starring Tom Hiddleston and Andrew Scott. There's a set report from the making of Daisy Ridley's Ophelia movie and a visit to Hamlet's historic home, Kronborg Castle. We also delve deep into the Victorian Illustrated Shakespeare Archive's Hamlet collection, while Gyles Brandreth tells us about his family production of the play, and Alice Barclay recounts how she taught a group of amateur actors to become Hamlet.
Hamlet is the theme of Shakespeare Magazine Issue 14, with each and every article devoted to the fictional Prince of Denmark and the play that bears his name. Rhodri Lewis asks “How Old is Hamlet?” while Samira Ahmed wonders “Why do Women Love Hamlet?” and we review recent productions of the play starring Tom Hiddleston and Andrew Scott. There's a set report from the making of Daisy Ridley's Ophelia movie and a visit to Hamlet's historic home, Kronborg Castle. We also delve deep into the Victorian Illustrated Shakespeare Archive's Hamlet collection, while Gyles Brandreth tells us about his family production of the play, and Alice Barclay recounts how she taught a group of amateur actors to become Hamlet.
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Gyles Brandreth <br />
HOW’S YOUR<br />
FATHER?<br />
In the summer of 2017, veteran British author<br />
<br />
long-held ambition to appear in a production of<br />
Hamlet. Acting alongside him were his own son<br />
and daughter-in-law. He tells us all about it.<br />
Interview by Jen Richardson<br />
Photography by Francis Loney<br />
Tell me about your 90-minute, strippeddown<br />
version of Hamlet, and how you<br />
came to take multiple roles in the play.<br />
“Yes. How did this come about? I suppose it came<br />
about because I’m an almost lifelong Hamlet<br />
obsessive – who isn’t? And I thought to myself,<br />
‘I’d like to play Hamlet’. Then my wife said to me<br />
‘Please, don’t be absurd, you can’t play Hamlet,<br />
you’re knocking 70. I said, ‘Sir Frank Benson was<br />
still a very credible Hamlet aged 72. The older<br />
Hamlet often works very well. Michael Redgrave<br />
played Hamlet at Stratford when he was 50 years of<br />
age. There have been plenty of ‘old’ Hamlets’. ‘Be<br />
sensible,’ she said.<br />
“So I thought ‘OK, I can’t play Hamlet, but<br />
there are two characters called Hamlet in the play,<br />
Hamlet Senior and Hamlet Junior. I shall play<br />
Hamlet the ghost’. Then I thought, ‘Who’s going<br />
to play Hamlet?’, and it occurred to me that my<br />
son could play Hamlet. “My son is, by day, a<br />
barrister, but by night he’s a performer and he is an<br />
author. He has written, for example, recently two<br />
novels – the first one was called The Spy of Venice.<br />
They’re novels based on <strong>Shakespeare</strong>’s lost years.<br />
In fact, you should be interviewing him in due<br />
course, and am sure will be! He knows all about<br />
<strong>Shakespeare</strong>, but more to the point, he’s rhetoric<br />
coach at the Royal <strong>Shakespeare</strong> Company and, as<br />
readers of <strong>Shakespeare</strong> <strong>Magazine</strong> don’t need to be<br />
told, rhetoric was a core subject in Elizabethan<br />
schools, and at grammar school <strong>Shakespeare</strong> would<br />
have learned rhetoric.<br />
“Rhetoric imbues all of <strong>Shakespeare</strong>, and my<br />
son is a brilliant rhetoric coach. I thought this<br />
would be a brilliant opportunity for him to put<br />
what he preaches to the test. As a result of this, we<br />
came up with this idea of doing a family Hamlet,<br />
because why do Hamlet? Well, you do Hamlet<br />
because you want to. And once you’ve done it,<br />
you realise that you want to keep on doing it, but<br />
shakespeare magazine 49
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