Globe Education Online
Resources for people passionate about learning and engaging with Shakespeare's plays
Hamlet (2000)
I have heard That guilty creatures sitting at a play Have, by the very cunningof the scene, Been struck so to the soul that presently They have proclaim'd their malefactions.
2.2.523-527
Prince Hamlet has not succeeded his father as King of Denmark. The throne is occupied by his uncle Claudius, who has promptly married Hamlet's mother upon her husband's death. At midnight, the old king's ghost appears to his son on the battlements of Elsinore to tell him of the manner of his death - poisoned by his own brother - and to demand revenge.
No play tells us more about Shakespeare's views on acting and the role of theatre in society as a way of mirroring the truth. Packed with references to the Globe, 'Heavens', the groundlings and even the performance of Julius Caesar in the previous year, Shakespeare seems to have ben inspired by hs new theatre when he first staged Hamet in 1600.
