literature, education, and early modern performance // the words, words, words of an English teacher // all views are my own and do not represent those of my employer // Dr James Alsop (@readtheshakey)
Few plays explore the rich dramatic potential of living death as explicitly as Thomas Middleton’s The Lady's Tragedy (or, The Second Maiden’s Tragedy, as the play is sometimes known), a tragedy that in the first three acts alone presents suicide, grave-robbing, defiled corpses, and ghosts. Middleton did *not* do these things by halves.
For a Senecan-styled tragedy of inordinate bloodshed, things work out remarkably well for the characters who survive John Marston’s 1602 Antonio’s Revenge...
Does Branagh's "Hamlet" offer audiences the most complete and compelling version of the Ghost to be put to film. I think so.
One of my favourite ghost stories that I came across while researching my undead-themed PhD thesis. Don't expect too much in terms of in-depth analysis; this is all about the spooky thrills...! *insert thunder-clap here*
Critics are starting to come around to the idea that the "Bad Quarto" of "Hamlet" may have something worthwhile to offer after all - and it's a good thing too!
How powerful a ruler was Queen Elizabeth I? Not even the inconvenience of being dead could prevent her from ordering people around. Or from exploding. In the month between her death and her funeral, the late Queen flaunted Big Dead Energy like no one else...
In "Hamlet," Shakespeare’s depiction of man-eating in forces his audience to confront their own unsavoury distinctions between “acceptable” and “unacceptable” forms of cannibalism...
