Hamlet (2009) - film adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

William M. Hamlin (Washington State University)

Ed. by William M. Hamlin, Washington State University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.03: English Writing and Culture: Renaissance (Elizabethan and Jacobean periods) , 1485-1625.
Vol. editors: William M. Hamlin (Washington State University), J A Roe (University of York), Virginia Mason Vaughan (Clark University), Ema Vyroubalova (Trinity College Dublin)

Domains

Cinema/ Film/ TV

Dates

Date of occurrence 2009

Places

England (Location)

Genres and Modes

Adaptation

Resources

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Adapted from William Shakespeare’s

Hamlet

. Directed by Gregory Doran. Starring David Tennant, Patrick Stewart, Penny Downie, Mariah Gale, Oliver Ford Davies, Peter de Jersey, Edward Bennett, John Woodvine, and Mark Hadfield. Color. 182 mins.

This is an intimate Hamlet, a Hamlet less concerned with dynastic politics than with the annihilation of two families. The Elsinore imagined by Gregory Doran is bourgeois and modern rather than medieval and aristocratic; its best emblems are the plush bedroom of Gertrude and the handsome wooden bannister in the middle-class home where Ophelia and Laertes have grown up. Indeed the full-length mirror on the door to Gertrude’s closet is shattered when Hamlet shoots Polonius, and it serves thereafter as a symbol of the shattered lives and

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1137 words

Citation: Hamlin, William M.. "Hamlet (2009) - film adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 22 December 2015 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=19370, accessed 21 November 2024.]