Shakespeare’s Hamlet is perhaps his greatest play. It has never been out of fashion. A mystery play, a revenge thriller, Hamlet is full of intrigue and excitement – with ‘accidental judgements, casual slaughters, deaths put on by cunning and forced cause.’ he King is dead – Long Live the King!

Summoned to avenge his father’s death Hamlet delays; he plots and schemes – while others are plotting and scheming too. As for the noble Prince himself, the questions Hamlet asks about life and mankind are as relevant today as in Shakespeare’s time. For, as his friend Ben Jonson wrote, ‘He was not of an age, but for all time!”

We are very fortunate that on Thursday evening, Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Oxford University, fellow of Hertford College, Oxford, and one of very finest Shakespeare scholars in the world today, will be giving a short talk before the play begins. She has
done extensive academic work on the First Folio. Emma is on the board of the Royal Shakespeare Company and was the Sam Wanamaker Fellow at Shakespeare’s Globe. She is the author of This Is Shakespeare and has a podcast series, which emerged from her Oxford University lectures, called Approaching Shakespeare.