Shakespeare's Hamlet - Assignment 1 - Hamlet from the point of view of the first audience.

Like I'd ever pass up the opportunity to post a picture of David Tennant!

So last week I started a new course with Futurelearn, I already finished one course on life in England at the time of Richard III which was super interesting, involved some of the people who found his body and I felt like I really learned a lot from it. For my second course I picked The University of Birmingham's course on Shakespeare's Hamlet, I'm only a week and a half in and I have already learned a few things that I wasn't previously aware of.

For example I didn't know that Hamlet wasn't an original idea of Shakespeare's and that there was a previous, now lost play of the same name prior to the play we now know.

Anyhow this week's assignment is to write a blog post review of Shakespeare's Hamlet from the point of view of a member of the original audience.

So without further ado (about nothing?):

I must say that I was beginning to tire of  Hamlet, surely this is a concept that has been done to death? Nevertheless William Shakespeare works his magic once more and breathes new life into the classic tale of revenge.

Richard Burbage's performance as the tragic Prince of Denmark is fantastic and very believable, I wonder if perhaps his own personal tragedies (you may recall that he lost his own father just last year) have played some part in how much he has simply become the character of Hamlet, truly his finest performance to date.

The supporting cast were pretty good too though, the actor playing Ophelia was mildly unconvincing (perhaps a closer shave is in order!).

My only complaint is that perhaps the play is a little slow at first, but my advice is to stick with it, put down the cabbages and be patient because when the action kicks off, my word it certainly kicks off!

4/5