1604-1605 - "O, Beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-ey'd monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on..."

1604-1605 - "O, Beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-ey'd monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on..."

When Shakespeare returned to London from Stratford after Easter, he probably looked at London with new eyes. The plague of 1603 seemed to be abating by April, and the theatres looked like they would reopen in May or June of 1604. With more leisure time to write because of the Plague but no compelling reason to write, the pace of Shakespeare’s life would have changed through the end of 1603 and the beginning of 1604. Shakespeare probably started lodging at the Mountjoy's residence on the corner of Silver and Muggle Streets in East London around this time. It is possible that he paid the £25 a year rent in advance. This was a step up from other accommodation he had rented prior but Shakespeare probably was making around £200 a year by this point with his tenanted farmland, his investments in moiety, his shares in the Lord Chamberlain's Men and the Globe and the money paid to him for writing plays.

London city was busy in the spring and the ports were busy with boats and traders from Europe, Africa and the East. Shakespeare was a great observer of people and places and it was probably while observing people and ships at the port that he turned a tale by Cinthio called Hecatommithi, which dealt with jealousy and the unfaithfulness of husbands and wives and he adapted it to an English context.

Although the play may have been performed in July 1604, the first mention of the play is in the Revels Office 1604 records which states that on "Hallamas Day, being the first of Nouembar... the King's Maiesties plaiers" performed "A Play in the Banketinghouse at Whit Hall Called The Moor of Venis."  

Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure was probably performed also in July 1604 at The Globe Theatre although the Revels Office records it being performed at King James I court on December 26^th 1604 (St Stephen’s Day). After some success with ‘Othello’, time Shakespeare's Measure for Measure was probably performed in July 1604 at the Globe Theatre although the Revel's Office records a performance at King James I's court on December 26, 1604 (St Stephen's Day).  Shakespeare experimented with this play stylistically and probably started to pull together the tragic and comic elements of Cinthio’s ‘Hecatommithi’ and Whetstone’s ‘Promos and Cassandra’ into the tragic-comedy or comi-tragedy which eventually became ‘Measure for Measure’. The starts with a ruler (The Duke) appointing his trusted subordinate Lord Angelo while he goes away on a long trip. The play looks at the nature of power and hypocrisy and looks at the pitfalls of imposing an overly strict moral code. Although the play is a difficult one, it was probably a success since it was performed before King James I. 

In October of 1604, Shakespeare was involved in a real life domestic incident of high drama and intrigue. Shakespeare's landlady asked for his help with a personal family matter. Her husband's apprentice Stephen Belott had promised to marry the Mountjoy's only daughter Mary, but Belott had started to get cold feet because Christopher Mountjoy would not pay the dowry. Marie Mountjoy asked Shakespeare to talk to Belott. Shakespeare successfuly intervened and gave the young lovers the assurance that "...they should have a sum of money for a portion from the father..." Shakespeare then united them in a handfast (like that done between Rosalind and Orlando in As You Like It). Eventually the lovers married and eventually in 1612, Belott belatedly took his father-in-law to court to claim a fair dowry.

Early in 1605, Shakespeare probably worked quickly to produce ‘Timon of Athens’. He hadn't produced many plays over the last year and now that he was settled back in London with his properties in the country making a fair sum for him, he probably started in earnest. Once again, he looked around him to see what aspects of contemporary life struck him. His company were desperate to get the opportunity to perform more before the new king but the queues outside St James's Palace seemed to stretch for hours with sycophants of all sorts from nobles to painters and poets. This probably gave him the idea behind 'Timon of Athens'. 

Shakespeare probably went back to his lodgings on the corner of Silver and Muggle Streets in East London and took out his Plutarch and probably happened upon Timon of Athens. The real Timon was a philosopher and misanthrope who lived around 445-400BC in Athens during the time of the Peloponnesian War. Shakespeare then probably took out a copy of ‘The Misanthrope’ which was written around 165AD by Lucian but which he had an 1580 translation of. The idea of a misanthrope (a person who dislikes humans) would have caught his fancy. The allusions in 'Lysistrata' to Timon hating men but being liked by women probably interested him too. He then looked through the verse of Brooke's 'The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet' (1562) again as well as looking at the prose of William Painter's 'Palace of Pleasure' (1567) to give a sense of some characters and stories. It is alleged that Shakespeare worked closely with someone else on 'Timon of Athens' since some of the language is more like that of Thomas Middleton. Maybe the Jacobean era meant that Shakespeare and other playwrights started to develop their plays in a more collaborative manner. Nevertheless, 'Timon of Athens' is an interesting play that takes us on the journey of a wealthy fool who loses everything and shuns human society and curses humanity only to find honesty in the friendship of a single man.

The play starts with a Poet, a Painter, a Jeweler, and a Merchant entering  Timon's house in Athens. The Jeweler is trying to sell a jewel to Timon while the Painter and Poet talk about works they created for Timon. Then Timon enters and being told his friend Ventidius is now in prison, Timon says he will his friends debt to free him. An old Athenian enters and when Timon hears his servant Lucilius is after the old Athenian’s daughter, Timon gets an agreement of a marriage between Lucilius and the girl. Lucilius feels he is forever in Timon’s debt. Timon then takes the gem from the jeweler, the poem from the poet and the painting from the painter.

We have no idea what audiences at The Globe in 1605 thought of Timon of Athens at the time. Perhaps the play’s investigation of Asceticism would have sat well with the new world of James I’s court. Its unexplained plot points, combination of verse and prose makes it a strange play for modern audiences. Some people see the play as both satire and tragedy. The great writer Herman Melville saw the play as one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays and stated in an article about Shakespeare that he is not "…a mere man of Richard-the-Third humps, and Macbeth daggers," but rather "it is those deep far-away things in him; those occasional flashings-forth of the intuitive Truth in him; those short, quick probings at the very axis of reality:–these are the things that make Shakespeare, Shakespeare. Through the mouths of the dark characters of Hamlet, Timon, Lear, and Iago, he craftily says, or sometimes insinuates the things, which we feel to be so terrifically true, that it were all but madness for any good man, in his own proper character, to utter, or even hint of them."

1600-1603 - “If music be the food of love, play on Give me excess of it…”

1600-1603 - “If music be the food of love, play on Give me excess of it…”

Things must have going pretty well for Shakespeare in 1600, even if it was a pretty slim year for his writing. The Globe seemed to be becoming very lucrative and revivals of many of Shakespeare’s plays in the 1600 season seemed to keep the crowds coming from June through until September (even despite heavy snowfalls outside London even as late as April). He even had a 1600 production of his ‘Julius Caesar’ mentioned in the diary of the Swiss ‘tourist’ Thomas Platter when Platter wrote that he saw "… in the straw-thatched house the tragedy of the first emperor, Julius Caesar, quite excellently acted by about fifteen persons.”

Shakespeare was even able to sell a few copies of his plays with the publication of ‘The Merchant of Venice’ and ‘A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream’. He and the Chamberlain’s Men were able to clamp down a bit on stealing and copying of popular plays like ‘As You Like It’ which they registered with the Stationer’s Company to prevent unauthorized copying of this play.

As the calm of 1600 came to a close, the turbulence of 1601 came to the fore. The year started in January/February with a rebellion started by the Earl of Essex. After having being deprived of public office at the end of 1600, in January, Essex started to gather an army of his followers and began to fortify his house on the Strand. On February 4^th, some of Essex’ followers including Charles and Joscelyn Percy, approached members of the  Chamberlain’s men to commission a special performance of Shakespeare’s ‘Richard II’ (a play which involves the usurping of a king) at the Globe Theatre and offered the handsome sum of forty shillings for the performance (at least ten shillings above the going rate). The players consented and to a small audience on the early afternoon of February 8^th, they performed ‘Richard II’. In the late afternoon, Essex moved with a band of others nobles and gentlemen into the confines of the City of London to force an audience with Queen Elizabeth I. Essex was driven back and retreated to Essex House and surrendered after the Queen’s Guard stormed Essex House. Essex and his followers were tried and executed before the start of March 1601. One interpretation of the poem is that it is about the death of the relationship between Essex and Queen Elizabeth I.

‘The Phoenix and the Turtle’ is Shakespeare’s only truly metaphysical poem, an allegorical poem which explores the death of truth and beauty of symbolized by the Turtledove and the Phoenix. The poem was first published in a collection of poems supplementing the title poem by Robert Chester published in 1601 called “Love’s Martyr’. ‘The Phoenix and the Turtle’ could be seen as being about the death of truth and beauty as abstract concepts. Alternatively, the poem can be seen as a lament for the inevitable end of the Tudor monarchy and the choice of the mythical phoenix can be seen as a symbol for the Virgin Queen Elizabeth I. Some also suggest that the poem is also about the relationships of real people in Shakespeare’s time. Some contenders are: Elizabeth I and the Duke of Essex, Elizabeth I and John Salusbury; and John Salusbury and Ursula Salusbury. Whatever the basis or inspiration for this poem, it is truly a rich diversion for Shakespeare which stands on its own as perhaps the first metaphysical poem ever written. The poem starts like a funeral or death march. Truth (in the Elizabethan meaning it is linked to constancy) and Beauty are united in death. Some see the last part of the poem as showing Shakespeare’s exasperation with the religious and the faithful or neglected the birth of the Age of Reason.

In September 1601, William Shakespeare’s father John Shakespeare died and was buried in the Holy Trinity Churchyard in Stratford. William Shakespeare was executor of the will and he within a month signed a new lease for 91 years on the Henley Street house to Lewis Hiccox. Perhaps William and Ann Shakespeare needed the money. Since William Shakespeare was probably making about £250 a year some people assume that The Bard and his wife had started to speculate on property shares and tithes.

“If music be the food of love, play on;

Give me excess of it…”

‘Twelfth Night or What You Will’ was probably performed in December 1601 or in January or February of 1602 for beginning of the Christmastide celebrations or for twelfth night celebrations or at the Candlemas celebration at the end of Christmastide celebrations. Originally celebrations for Christmas went for twelve days hence the Twelfth Night was the end of Christmastide and then it was extended for forty days so that Candlemas (the celebration of Jesus’ presentation by his mother at the temple) traditionally ended the Christmastide celebrations.

So, ‘Twelfth Night’ may have been performed on the first day of Christmas on December 1601 or on Twelfth Night on January 6^th, 1602 or at Candlemas on February 2^nd, 1602. Any of these dates meant that it was probably performed in doors so the playwright and screenplay writer Tom Stoppard in ‘Shakespeare in Love’ making the play one that was requested by Queen Elizabeth I is not beyond the realms of belief (even though this is highly improbable since it would place the play much earlier and the quite precise Royal records would probably confirm this if it was so). So we can probably best imagine that on the evening of January 6^th (the Twelfth Night) or February 2^nd (Candlemas) 1602, the candles were lit in the Middle Temple of the Inns of Court (one of the four law schools in London at the time), musicians appeared on stage and played a lyrical melancholic tune on a violin, a viola da gamba, a lute and theorbo (bass lute) and then the actor Richard Burbage entered the stage dressed as Lord Orsino and the music stopped and Burbage uttered the now famous first lines of the play that let us know that this play is going to be about love, rejection and desire:

“If music be the food of love, play on; (music continues)

Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken, and so die.

That strain again! it had a dying fall:

O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound,

That breathes upon a bank of violets,

Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more… 

After the ‘triumph’ of a complex play like ‘Hamlet’ it is possible that Shakespeare sat down in 1602 and decided to tackle a project he had been thinking of for a long time. He knew that Elizabethan audiences could accept plays that were complex in ideas characters and themes and now he wanted to challenge the boundaries of their understanding of dramatic style and form. 

The Globe Theatre was proving a financial and popular success and ‘Twelfth Night’ had been a triumph when it was revived there in May, June and July of 1602 along with ‘Hamlet’ and other plays. As the weather turned colder and The Globe closed its doors, Shakespeare’s mind turned to what new project he could premiere at an indoor venue in Winter at one of the inns or colleges inhabited and run by the lawyers in London. He was also probably thinking of making this new play easily transferable to The Globe and its more eclectic audience in May in the Summer of 1603. It is then that he probably burnt the late night candle with re-reading Homer’s ‘Iliad’ and Chaucer's fourteenth-century epic poem, Troilus and Criseyde. Chaucer and the work of the Ancient Greeks were undergoing a revival in publishing at that time, yet strangely, not too many dramatic versions had made it to the stage and those that did were largely unsuccessful. It must have struck Shakespeare that these stories were absurdly tragic and romantic to the point of strangeness and Shakespeare knew that his audience would know the end of the story involving Cressida's treachery and Hector's death well. With a passion for the story in hand and a good idea of what an audience might expect and how to still challenge them, Shakespeare would have sat at his table sometime on a dark night in October 1602 and started writing the Prologue to one of his most strange and problematic of his plays - ‘Troilus and Cressida’.

The New Year of 1603 would not have been a happy and ceremonious occasion for Shakespeare and others who lived in London. After a relatively subdued party for her 69^th birthday on September 7^th in 1602, Queen Elizabeth started to be seen even less in public and everyone played the waiting game. She knew people wanted her to name a successor but she also knew that she had successfully played the political game of not naming an heir for a while now and this had worked for stability in her case. She knew that her cousin Arabella was popular but Arabella had annoyed Elizabeth on a number of occasions due to flippant statements and besides, Elizabeth knew that the Privy Council favoured a male heir. So although not publicly announced, her preferences swayed towards James VI of Scotland who was already a monarch and a fortuitously for Elizabeth and England, a Protestant. The weather deteriorated further in January 1603 and Queen Elizabeth’s health and will to live took a further blow when the last of her close friends and confidante’s Catherine Howard (Countess of Nottingham) died in February. Elizabeth fell into "settled and unremovable melancholy" and was moved to Richmond Palace early in March 1603 and so the waiting game began.

The events surrounding the ‘melancholy’ of Queen Elizabeth I, the questions of succession and the cold and wet weather meant that William Shakespeare probably was stuck in London for most of January, February and early March of 1603. He spent much of his time reading and buying manuscripts which he found in the market place but uncertainty about Queen Elizabeth and whether the theatre would open in May, meant that this was a lean time for Shakespeare. Sometime in early March of 1603, he may have re-read through Cinthio’s ‘Hecatommithi’.

‘Hecatommithi' is a set of tales framed within the story of Roman fugitives escaping by sea who sit down every couple of nights at different ports and tell stories. These stories within the main story each have a theme (normally one for each night of the storytelling) and there is a sense that by telling the stories that the fugitives achieve some redemption. The story of Epitia which involves a corrupt magistrate who, when the wife of man who is to be executed gives up her body to the him, sleeps with the woman and then kills her husband anyway, must have been seen to have some dramatic legs for Shakespeare. He probably saw the potential in this story even though in its original form it lacks a sense of character and purpose. 

As the waiting game continued as Elizabeth I’s health deteriorated further, Shakespeare probably turned to older plays by English playwrights. It was probably out of frustration that he burnt the candle late one night reading Whetstone’s ‘Promos and Cassandra’ for another time. Shakespeare had probably seen Whetstone’s play when he was young or maybe even acted in it as a young actor some 13 years earlier. The comic sub-plot of the play and the character of Mistress Overdone who runs a brothel would have been seen to have dramatic potential for Shakespeare. What probably troubled him about the main plot of the play was that Cassandra marries Promos, the murderer of her brother. Shakespeare saw that he needed a very clever and subtle handling of the main tragic plot but he probably was also fascinated with putting a tragic plot with high and bawdy comedy (a idea that had worked with the character of Falstaff). With Falstaff it had worked because the story of Henry V was so well known and the comedy helped to move along the narrative of history plays but Shakespeare probably mused over whether it could work with a tragedy or even dominate the tragic events. But his musings and initial writings came to a halt when on March 24th 1603, the bells rang out over London.

Through much of March 1603, Queen Elizabeth I had refused to see doctors and even members of her Privy Council. She even refused to take to her bed and would stand for hours looking out the window of Richmond Palace. It is said that her servants even made a day bed for her on the floor of one of the rooms. Then on March 23rd she was finally taken to her bed and early in the morning of March 24th depending on your sources she either spoke to Lord Robert Cecil in whispered tones on her death bed and "...mildly like a lamb" and "easily like a ripe apple from the tree..." and said “I will that a king succeed me and who but my kinsman the king of Scots.” Or if you follow the other common scenario, Elizabeth, being unable to verbally reply to the question should James VI of Scotland succeed her, she simply nodded and gestured a circle crown on a head. Even as her body was still warm, a rider was dispatched to Scotland and to London (since relay riders would have been set in place days if not weeks before). Later on the day of her death, Cecil and the Privy Council announced James VI of Scotland as her successor. A torch and candle lit barge was arranged and Elizabeth's coffin was carried downriver at night to Whitehall. On 28 April, her coffin was taken to Westminster Abbey and she was interred with her half-sister, Mary with the inscription "Regno consortes & urna, hic obdormimus Elizabetha et Maria sorores, in spe resurrectionis" ("Consorts in realm and tomb, here we sleep, Elizabeth and Mary, sisters, in hope of resurrection") written on the tomb.

By early May, Shakespeare was being pressured to have a play ready for late May to open the Globe Theatre’s 1603 season. He had probably started lodging at the Mountjoy's residence on the corner of Silver and Muggle Streets in East London around this time. It is possible that he paid the £25 a year rent in advance. This was a step up from other accommodation he had rented prior but Shakespeare probably was making around £250 a year by this point with his tenanted farmland, his investments in moiety, his shares in the Lord Chamberlain's Men and the Globe and the money paid to him for writing plays. With parades in the streets on May 7^th when James arrived in London in preparation for his July coronation, Shakespeare knew he needed something new for a new age for his play and the main topic of conversation on the street seemed to be questions of what sort of ruler James VI of Scotland (soon to be crowned James I of England) would be. Time was running out when Shakespeare probably started to pull together the tragic and comic elements of Cinthio’s ‘Hecatommithi’ and Whetstone’s ‘Promos and Cassandra’ into the tragic-comedy or comi-tragedy which he called ‘Measure for Measure’.

1599 - "O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention..."

1599  - “O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend

The brightest heaven of invention…”

For Shakespeare 1599 was one of his greatest years. It is the year that he and the other shareholders of the Chamberlain’s Men built The Globe Theatre, the year he wrote Henry V, Julius Caesar and As You Like It. It is also the year that Shakespeare started and probably completed one of his greatest and perhaps his most complex play Hamlet. It is also the year that a collection of twenty poems appeared attributed to William Shakespeare and published by William Jaggard.

Modern commentators and academics tend to agree that only five of the twenty poems are written by Shakespeare. But let’s start with the beginning of 1599.

Shakespeare worked for the Chamberlain’s Men (later known as the King’s Men). He also become a shareholder in the company in 1594. The Chamberlain’s Men had been performing in the actor/manager James Burbage’s purpose built Shoreditch venue The Theatre since 1587 when it was built. The Theatre was a multi-sided structure with a central open yard and three tiers of covered seating was built. This gave The Theatre an amphitheater appearance. One side of the polygon extended out to form what was a thrust stage. The Theatre probably cost about £700 construct (a huge sum at the time). Standing room was a penny, covered standing two pennies and three pennies for a covered seating. The Theatre venue was a timber building with a tiled roof and probably held about 1500 to 2000 people.

In 1596, a dispute arose of the renewal of the leasing of the land The Theatre stood on. When James Burbage died in 1598, the issue became more complex. Believing that they owned The Theatre (especially the building materials), James Burbage’s sons Cuthbert and Richard offered some of the members of the company (including Shakespeare) shares in the building.

So on the rainy morning of December 28^th 1598, carpenter Peter Street along with the half a dozen laborers and the shareholders of the Lord Chamberlain’s men including Richard Burbage, Cuthbert Burbage, John Heminges, William Shakespeare, Augustine Phillips, Thomas Pope and William Kempe, began dismantling The Theatre to take the timber to a riverside warehouse Street had by the River Thames in Bridewell. This was in preparation for using the timber for a new theatre with a new design. This theatre was to be built on a new site at Maiden Lane Southwark when the weather was a bit drier. Early in spring of 1599 The Theatre’s beams were raised again to build the new theatre which could accommodate an audience of 2000 people. This theatre was to be called the Globe Theatre.

The Globe Theatre was a large open air theatre which would have appeared from the air as doughnut shaped or a polygon of 20 sides. The three-tiered seating area was covered and the stage had a front apron performance area and later a thrust stage was also added.  It probably had an audience capacity of up to 3000.

Over January and February of 1599 as work was progressing on The Globe, William Shakespeare was writing Henry V. He also had to deal with the illegal publication of a collection of poems under his name published by William Jaggard. It is now agreed that only about five of the poems were written by William Shakespeare. The collection included some poems from Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost. However, most of Shakespeare’s time would have been spent in early in 1599 on Henry V.

Shakespeare had had great success with the trilogy of ‘Richard II’, ‘Henry IV Part 1’ and ‘Henry IV Part 2’ and now it was time to deliver on the finale of these history plays with the most anticipated and most well-known of these histories, ‘The Chronicle History of Henry the Fifth’.

William Shakespeare had probably written speeches for the Henry V and scribbled plot ideas for a couple of years now, but with his 15 % ownership in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men and bills to pay on the new Globe Theatre and back in Stratford, he and the company needed a success. Elizabethan audiences had met the wild, undisciplined Prince Hal but now it was time for them to meet King Henry V as he embarked on a quest to reunite all of England on his conquests and trials on the battlefields of France.

“O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend

The brightest heaven of invention,

A kingdom for a stage, princes to act

And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!”

It is a stirring moment in theatre to hear The Chorus’ first words in the Prologue of ‘Henry V’. “O for a Muse of fire…” Unlike a Greek Chorus, The Chorus in this play is more like the medieval chorus of a single actor. The scene is set and The Chorus fires our “imaginary forces” asking us to see “within this wooden O” and imagine two mighty monarchs, thousands of soldiers, great battles, and the sound of thousands of “proud hoofs”. The stage is set for the actors and the audience to embark on a great journey through history and their own imaginations. The excitement of hearing these words is made more so when you consider they were perhaps the first words uttered on the stage at The Globe Theatre in late April 1599 when this famous theatre first opened.

You can imagine that day in April, when the red flag to indicate that a history play was going to be played was raised early in the morning. Around midday, crowds would start to arrive and by 1pm Henry V would have started. Just after 4pm, the crowds would leave the theatre having witnessed the premiere of one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays.

As rehearsals were underway for the opening of The Globe Theatre and Henry V, Shakespeare would have started on another of his greatest plays, ‘The Tragedy of Julius Caesar’.

“Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world

Like a Colossus, and we petty men

Walk under his huge legs and peep about

To find ourselves dishonourable graves.”

There are many reasons why Shakespeare’s ‘The Tragedy of Julius Caesar’ is a great play. It is a very innovative play which does not shy away from plot complications but conversely embraces the cheap thrills of deaths, blood, gore and omens. It was written and performed probably in May of 1599 and was probably performed in the newly built Globe Theatre. It is a wonderful mix of tragedy and historical drama. The death of Julius Caesar occurs early in the play and it builds towards the Act Five climax where Cassius dies when he orders his own servant to kill him. On a macro level, the play centres around the attempt of Cassius and others to keep the Republic of Rome from becoming an Empire. The play is set in 44BC and has two protagonists (Brutus and Cassius) and two antagonists (Anthony and Octavius). Although the play shifts its perspective many times, the most sustained perspective on the events that unfold is that of Brutus who eventually kills himself with his own sword.

I like to think that as the summer was drawing to a close in 1599, Shakespeare thought it was time for a good pastoral comedy. In June or July of 1599, Shakespeare took up his quill to write a rustic love story which starts in a duchy somewhere in France and moves to the mystical Forest of Ardenne (aka Arden). Perhaps writing ‘Julius Caesar’ had made Shakespeare question the machinations of power and city life and he yearned for the simple pleasure of country life. When the white flag indicating the performance of one of Shakespeare’s great comedies As You Like It was raised over The Globe, people were in for a treat. This comedy play starts with a feud between brothers. Orlando, whose father Sir Rowland de Bois has recently died, describes to Adam (an old family servant), how since his father’s death his brother, Oliver, who inherited his father’s estate, has deprived him of education and a decent allowance. This is against his father’s expressed wishes. Moreover, Oliver allows Orlando’s older brother to be educated widely and broadly. Orlando wants to confront his brother with his grievances.

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark Act One – “Neither a borrower nor a lender be;

For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry…”

By mid-year in 1599, everything seemed to be coming together for Shakespeare professionally. He had just moved with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men to the Globe Theatre, he had had a great success with the play ‘Julius Caesar’ and he finally had an actors worthy of playing great parts since the actor Richard Burbage seemed to be growing in skill and reputation. But still Shakespeare was restless or as Shakespeare’s Hamlet puts it, “Something is (was) rotten in the state of Denmark.” On about August 9^th, 1596, William Shakespeare’s only son Hamnet had died and sometime in August 1599, Shakespeare had returned to Stratford Upon Avon for a memorial service. He wrestled with the ‘ghost’ of his son and notions of mortality and death in ‘King John’, ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and ‘Julius Caesar’ and even had entered a period of writing comedies like ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and ‘Much Ado About Nothing' to forget his loss, but still the big questions of life and death seemed to plague him. On top of this, with Queen Elizabeth I entering her 66^th year without a direct heir and questions of who would succeed her always on people's thoughts (and sometimes their tongues), questions of death, life and stability abounded in the minds and hearts of most English men and women, including Shakespeare.

It is not, therefore, unthinkable that as the summer weather started to turn in August 1599 and the rain and ghostly mist worked its way back into Shakespeare’s daily life, that Shakespeare turned his mind to reworking Saxo Grammaticus’ ‘Amleth’ (probably as influenced by Beleforest’s 16^th century retelling of the story).

It may be useful to ask why ‘Hamlet’ has become such a famous play for Shakespeare. It is his longest play, though probably the full five-hour version we have today is a conglomerate of a number of versions and a number of approximately four-hour stage versions of the play that would have been performed in Shakespeare’s time. This means that he wrestled with this play even after writing it and it is probably the only one of his plays that seems to have been re-written and had speeches added to many times. What I think is so riveting about the play is its dramatic structure, its complex characterization, its rich verse and dialogue and the masterly way it deals with complex issues of life, death, love, revenge and fate.

The play starts on a dark, misty winter’s night on the walls of Elsinore Castle in Denmark in about 1200. Bernardo relieves Francisco from his watch on the wall and the darkness and the mist make it difficult for them to identify one another. Francisco leaves and Bernardo is soon joined by Marcellus and Horatio (a good friend of the Prince of Denmark, Hamlet). We soon discover the reason for why Horatio is on the wall this dark night. It seems that Bernardo and Marcellus wanted Horatio to witness something strange that they have encountered on previous watches.

Hamlet is a unique play. It has a complex and intriguing flawed main character. When Richard Burbage, who Shakespeare wrote the part for first played the part, even he must have struggled with learning the part of Hamlet in what is Shakespeare’s longest play. The play went on to win acclaim for Richard Burbage and for Shakespeare and it was probably the fourth most popular Shakespeare play in his lifetime (after Henry IV Part 1, Richard III and Pericles).