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(Click for full review)
Name:
Hamlet - Shakespeare At The Tobacco Factory Venue:
The Tobacco Factory, Raleigh Road
Southville
Bristol
BS3 1TF Dates:
20th March -3rd May 2008 How to Book:
Call 0117 902 0344 or Book Online Reviewer:
Cathy Cowell
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Hamlet is the first of Shakespeare’s four great tragedies and appears to have been a success from the start. It is believed that Shakespeare himself may well have performed in an earlier play of Hamlet, together with Richard Burbage and Will Kemp, at the Newington Butts Theatre in June 1594., six or seven years before his own version of Hamlet was written and produced.
The story begins at Elsinore in Denmark. Hamlet’s father, the old King, has recently died. The young Hamlet is grief-stricken, mad and confused that within two months his mother has remarried to his father’s brother, Claudius. Some critics maintain that psychologically, Hamlet is in love with his mother and resents her sharing her bed with his uncle, however, there is no evidence in the play to support this notion. What the audience in Shakepeare’s day would have recognised would be the incestuous nature of marriage between Claudius and Gertrude, according to the doctrine of ‘carnal contagion, ‘If a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an unclean thing’, (Leviticus). ... more >>
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