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 />
Gyles crying as<br />
the Ghost with<br />
Hamlet just<br />
before he departs:<br />
“Remember me”.<br />
away. He wanted to hold onto him not because he<br />
wanted to hear more, but because it was his Dad.<br />
Obviously, from Kosha and Benet’s point of view,<br />
they are husband and wife, so the struggle between<br />
Ophelia and Hamlet, and being rejected by your<br />
husband, was very real.<br />
“Because of what we did with Laertes – he has<br />
already gone to France, so as Polonius I couldn’t<br />
deliver the famous speech to him – so, in fact, we<br />
had Ophelia asking Polonius what he had said<br />
to Laertes when he saw him off. It became quite<br />
touching, actually. Also that it was genuinely my<br />
daughter-in-law that I was giving this advice to. So,<br />
I think the emotional impact was greater.”<br />
You once quoted Steven Berkoff, who<br />
you mentioned earlier, as saying that<br />
‘you cannot be miscast as Hamlet’, and<br />
that ‘there is something of Hamlet in<br />
everybody… the wit will play for laughs,<br />
the lunatic for madness’ and so on. What<br />
did you see come to the fore in your son’s<br />
performance?<br />
“We saw the thinker, the intellectual, the student,<br />
the clever person. The directors made him wear his<br />
glasses. Benet made a decision before that he would<br />
do whatever he was told to do and go with the<br />
flow, and he wore his glasses. One performance he<br />
didn’t because he had forgotten them, and he was<br />
quite thrown. He wore them so he was a studious<br />
Hamlet. In years gone by that would have been<br />
terribly controversial, but it enabled him to do<br />
something with ‘To be, or not to be’ that Sir Derek<br />
Jacobi was kind enough to say. He said ‘you are an<br />
shakespeare magazine 53
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