Hamlet

Q&A: Reynaldo Piniella and Emily Lyon on their bilingual Hamlet
In this bilingual Hamlet, a Black and Latinx prince has his sense of identity fractured by the loss of his Black father.

An Ofrenda to Shakespeare’s Afterlives
Katherine Gillen, Adrianna M. Santos, and Kathryn Vomero Santos write about stage adaptations of “Hamlet” and “Romeo and Juliet” that engage with Día de los Muertos traditions, reframing Shakespeare’s meditations on life and death according to Indigenous and Latinx worldviews.

Ian McKellen on Playing Hamlet
Sir Ian McKellen played Hamlet in his thirties, and again in his eighties. He gives us his take on the Melancholy Dane.

How Shakespeare Thought About the Mind, with Helen Hackett
The Elizabethan period marked an unusually rich moment for theories of consciousness and for the representation of thought in literature, says scholar Helen Hackett.

The soliloquy and Hamlet - Excerpt: 'The Elizabethan Mind' by Helen Hackett
Helen Hackett explores Shakespeare’s use of the soliloquy in “Hamlet,” including the famous “To be or not to be” speech, in this excerpt from her new book, “The Elizabethan Mind: Searching for the Self in an Age of Uncertainty,” published…

Bothered by madness: 'Hamlet' and 'The Northman'
Robert Eggers’s “The Northman” is not an adaptation of “Hamlet,” but a film in conversation with Shakespeare’s play, Austin Tichenor writes.

Q&A: Allan Clayton on playing Hamlet in Brett Dean's opera
Hamlet sings! A new opera version of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” is onstage now at the Metropolitan Opera, with tenor Allan Clayton resuming the title role that he played for the opera’s world premiere at the Glyndebourne Festival.

Brett Dean and Matthew Jocelyn on Their Hamlet Opera
Composer Brett Dean and librettist Matthew Jocelyn talk about adapting Hamlet to create an opera that subverts expectations and takes audiences inside the minds of Hamlet and Ophelia.

Something is rotten in the state of Gotham: Shakespeare and The Batman
Austin Tichenor draws connections between Hamlet and Batman, noting the range of interpretations.

Pamela Hutchinson on Asta Nielsen's Hamlet
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 188 In 1921, Asta Nielsen, one of the world’s biggest movie stars, had just formed her own production company, and decided to open it up by playing Hamlet. Plenty of women had done that on the stage…

Folger Finds: Photographs of Hamlet in Japan
In a recent post on the Folger’s Collation blog, assistant curator Elizabeth DeBold shared a small set of photographs, newly added to the Folger collection, that document a 1933 Japanese production of Hamlet: These five photos provide a glimpse of…

New Acquisition: Photographs of an early 20th-century production of Hamlet in Japan
Welcome to a new regular series here on The Collation! Curatorial staff will be writing short pieces focusing on new acquisitions, hopefully giving our readers a glimpse into how we’re building our collections. Today, I’m excited to share a small…