Shakespeare Uncovered

Captioning made possible by Friends of NCI

DAVID TENNANT

If I ask you to name Shakespeare's most famous play of all, there's a fairly good chance you'll plump for "Hamlet." But quite why that should be remains a mystery. It connects with something very sort of primal. It exists in the kind of public consciousness as this icon of theater and culture. It is woven into the fabric of our lives. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

TENNANT

In 2008, I was asked to play Hamlet at the Royal Shakespeare Company. For any actor, that's the offer of a lifetime, but not without its challenges. This was something that I wanted to do and couldn't say no to, but it was, and remained, until the final performance, utterly terrifying. Another hit. What say you? It sounds ludicrous and pretentious and pompous. It's just a play. It's just pretending to be somebody else and saying some words. Am I a coward? And yet, because there's something special about it, it does things to you. Why it has this effect is something I still can't answer. It was written a long time ago. It shouldn't be relevant and contemporary. It shouldn't be. To try and found out what makes this play so unique, I'm going to meet with directors... I'm betting that's why people didn't notice. historians... It's an incredibly rare book. There's only two of these in the whole world. And some other Hamlets.

JUDE LAW

We know that this particular role is also like a sharing of one's soul.

TENNANT

So what is it about this character that is still so compelling 400 years after he was created? The first trick for any actor coming to "Hamlet" is to avoid being overwhelmed by the very notion of it. One of the things when you come to "Hamlet" is ridding yourself of the baggage that comes with it and try to just tell the story. We're in the RSC shop here, where things have been appropriated and made into just about anything. And this is the classy stuff. Oh, look.

Laughing

TENNANT

"Alas, poor Yorick!" This is "Hamlet" the flick book. I'd say it's under 30 seconds. The Manga "Hamlet." Hamlet seems to be dressed as a sort of androgynous superhero. I mean, it's a choice. And, of course, there's a whole smorgasbord of different Hamlets. Kevin Kline. Mel Gibson. Some Scottish bloke. Kenneth Branagh. Derek Jacobi, we got. This play is so deeply ingrained in our popular culture. What's difficult when you come to perform it is extracting yourself from the clich, and, uh, the fact that every line seems to be a quotation. It's just that everywhere I go, it's the same old thing. All anyone wants me to say is "To be, or not to be."

That is the question

whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of out... Yes, it's either that or, "O that this too too solid..."

TENNANT

Just about everyone can quote a line or two from "Hamlet." Do the bit about "Alas, poor Yorick!" Hamlet is clearly a character that everyone seems to know about, but how did that happen? Why this play? On the face of it, the storyline isn't something that necessarily chimes with the everyday experience of most people-- monarchy, madness, murder, and suicide. Yet however melodramatic the premise, somehow, the play keeps feeling relevant and being sought out by successive generations. Is that just down to the plot? So what is "Hamlet" actually about? Well, "Hamlet"is the story of the Prince of Denmark, whose father, the King of Denmark, gets murdered and then comes back as a ghost to tell his son, the Prince, the he most avenge his death. The person who murdered the king is Hamlet's uncle, who's now married Hamlet's mother. Got that? It is complicated, but when we first meet Hamlet, it is clear he is grief-stricken. His mother's marriage to his uncle has taken place with unseemly haste...

Laughs

TENNANT

hot on the heels of his father's death.

GERTRUDE

Hamlet?

TENNANT

Seemingly alone in finding that remotely distasteful, Hamlet is angry and isolated. 'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet, to give these mourning duties to your father; but you must know, your father lost a father; that father lost, lost his. But to persever in obstinate condolement is a course of impious stubbornness. The beginning of the play, obviously, he's dealing with the death of his father, and he's also dealing with the fact that everyone around him seems to have moved on absurdly quickly from this fact.

SIMON RUSSELL BEALE

If you're going to do a play after somebody's just died, then "Hamlet's" the play to do. You know, it's an amazing expression of grief. My mother died just before I did it. She knew I was going to do it, and hoped to stay alive in order to see it, but she didn't, um, and, you know, of course that had an effect on the--the playing of it, because it was my gift to her, really.

TENNANT

Losing a parent is hugely changing for you... and grief is sort of a ghastly immovable thing. Certainly, when you're in the kind of sharp end of it, it feels engulfing and, uh... intractable.

Seagull cries

TENNANT

This play is about a murdered father and his lonely, grieving son, a grief that has resonated down the centuries. So who created this extraordinary character? And where did he come from? There's a lot we don't know about Shakespeare's life, but there are a few things we can fairly safely assume. He was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, where his father was mayor of the town, which means William would have been entitled to go to the local grammar school, King Edward's. Hic, haec, hoc.

BOYS

Hic, haec, hoc. Good. Hunc, hanc, hoc. Hunc, hanc, hoc.

TENNANT

I'm sitting in on a lesson that the young William would almost definitely have endured--Latin.

TEACHER

We've got the word hic, heac...

TENNANT

They're clearly very proud of their connection. There's a photo on the wall just to intimidate the schoolboys of today. Not much to aspire to. OK, ask in Latin. Latin has been taught in this very room to schoolboys in Stratford for hundreds of years. Shakespeare almost certainly learnt Latin here. He learnt Rhetoric, many of the things that would have contributed to his skills as a playwright. There may be a playwright in this room now.

Reciting Latin

TENNANT

It's impossible to know from this distance what influences formed Shakespeare's genius. But there are some intriguing coincidences that are hard to overlook. Shakespeare married at 18 and had three children by the time he was 24. By the time William was 30, around the time it is thought he wrote "Hamlet," his father was aging and ill. And then Shakespeare suffered a terrible tragedy when his 11-year-old son died. He was called Hamnet.

STEPHEN GREENBLATT

It is impossible, I think, not to understand that the name Hamlet was charged with the identity of his 11-year-old dead son. And part of the intensity of this play depends upon the familiarity of Shakespeare and his world with the graveyard and what it meant to bury your fondest hopes.

TENNANT

This theme of bereavement and loss takes a surprising turn when Hamlet is handed some dramatic news. The ghost of his dead father has been seen walking the battlements of the castle.

Birds squawking

TENNANT

I think I saw him yesternight. Saw who? My lord, the King your father. The King my father? The appearance of the ghost becomes the engine of the play. I'm visiting the modern-day replica of The Globe Theatre on the south bank of the Thames, where around 1601, Shakespeare's actors first performed "Hamlet." Here, today, they are running the opening scenes. So this is where we see Hamlet meeting the ghost of his dead father for the first time.

HAMLET

Where wilt thou lead me? Speak! I'll go not further. Mark me. I will. If ever thou didst thy dear father love-- O God! Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder. Murder? Murder most foul. Haste me to know't, that I, with wings as swift as meditation or the thoughts of love, may sweep to my revenge. I find thee apt; but know, thou noble youth, the serpent that did sting thy father's life, now wears his crown. O my prophetic soul! My uncle?

TENNANT

The ghost has confirmed what Hamlet had feared, that his father has been killed by his uncle. It falls to him to avenge this murder. But is he capable of seeing it through? Everyone knew in Shakespeare's time, as everyone knows now, still, that a revenge play, a play in which someone, a son, is called upon to avenge his father, is a play in which a terrible fate will befall the avenger. Hamlet is a dead man from Act I. He knows it, and we know it. This call to arms has come from a ghost, a supernatural visitor from the other side. What would this have meant to Shakespeare's audience? I've come to meet historian Justin Champion, who is an expert in the world of 17th Century religion. So what would a ghost have meant to an Elizabethan audience? Well, I think the first thing is and Elizabethan audience wouldn't have been surprised to see a ghost. Ghosts were everywhere. So to most of the members of the audience, ghosts were things that existed. Yeah, absolutely. So there wouldn't have been the shock if a ghost walks past us now, we'll be a little bit surprised. A little?! A Little bit. A little bit surprised, but for the Elizabethan, the Stuart audience, ghosts are part of the world they live in. The spirit world and the human world are very permeable, so they wouldn't have been surprised at all. They would have asked themselves what sort of ghost is it, good or bad? Right. The ghost's visit propels Hamlet and the play forward, so any actor playing the part has to decide what the ghost means to them. There have been famous productions where the ghost is a figment of Hamlet's own imagination, and I think that's all a very interesting take on it, actually. It's not what we did, uh, so it's not-- No, for me, that was-- That was--that was Dad there.

GHOST

Adieu, adieu, Hamlet. Remember me!

TENNANT

So, Hamlet is burdened with the task of avenging his father's death. What makes this even worse is the dark and dangerous world he lives in. Well... Rosencrantz and Guildenstern... The King has enlisted Hamlet's friends to spy on him. Let me question more in particular. What have you... The King's minister, meanwhile, devises his own scheme involving his own daughter. "But never doubt I love." Polonius believes Hamlet's distress is caused by his lovesickness for Ophelia, so he spies on them both.

Camera whirs

TENNANT

Where's your father? At home, my lord. We're on edge throughout the play of "Hamlet," because of the sense of people constantly being overheard. We never quite know who is one which side. There's layer upon layer of surveillance going on there. This is a court full of intrigue, of spies. As Hamlet struggles to make sense of the chaos in his head and all around him, Shakespeare allows us to hear exactly what his troubled protagonist is going through. We, the audience, become his confidant. He uses soliloquies to speak to us directly. A soliloquy is where a character speaks their inner thoughts out loud, debates their inner arguments with themselves, and, hopefully, finds some kind of way forward. Right at the heart of the play, Hamlet has a devastating soliloquy that has become the most famous speech in the history of theater, possibly even in all of literature. He asks, what is the point? To be, or not to be-- that is the question.

MARJORIE GARBER

Every individual confronts these questions privately, and then to have a play that confronts them publicly and that confronts them in a voice of such control, in such thoughtfulness, such power, that something is happening on the stage for us, so that it might not have to happen to us. And that's extraordinarily powerful. To die-- to sleep. To sleep--

perchance to dream

ay, there's the rub! For in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause.

BATE

Because Hamlet is alone onstage, and because his most characteristic form of speech is the question, inevitably, we in the audience as we watch it, or we as readers as we read it, we get drawn in. We ask those questions of ourselves and try to come up with our own answers. So this character of Hamlet becomes profoundly personal to us.

TENNANT

There's something about it that transcends its time and place. On some level, we can all identify with those moments of crisis and those moments where it really feels like the only solution might be to...to escape. I think that's why it is so resonant. It's powerful to ask those questions now. In Shakespeare's time, it was revolutionary.

CHAMPION

This is not just a state of crisis. This is a man thinking about killing himself, and suicide in the entirety of this period is absolutely forbidden. Suicide is illegal. If you're convicted of suicide, you will be taken out to the crossroads outside of the village or outside of the town and buried with a stake through your heart. Suicide is absolutely traumatic for this culture. That's what's so shocking about the scene is that here is a man in one sense rationally weighing up the options. This is clearly not somebody possessed by the devil. This is somebody trying to think through for themselves, and I think for many, many in the audience, this would be very worrying. The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn... no traveller returns-- puzzles the will... and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.

TENNANT

Since playing Hamlet myself, I've been fascinated with how other actors have approached this most intimidating of roles. Someone did say to me early on, they said, "Learn your lines." And I kind of thought, "'Course I'm gonna learn my lines," but then when you do sit down and look, you go, "Ho ho, there's quite a lot." Jude Law played Hamlet in London and on Broadway in 2009. There are lines like "To be, or not to be," which are so well-known. It's almost impossible to break the expectation of them coming, isn't it? Did you have a way of coping with that? Would you embrace that full on? Would you try and sneak round the side of them? Would you try and... Oh, dear, so revealing this, isn't it? I think I tried all that. Yeah. I think I tried them all. But then there are also, you know, I remember also in me just feeling like, "Just get on with it." What did you make of "To be, or not to be"? Actually, the specific meaning of it is quite hard to grasp, isn't it? I mean, quite what he's saying at any given moment. I think that's the-- That was the little hook I kind of clung on to, that he didn't know himself. Right. He was-- It was all question, and each--each-- each discovery leads to the next and to the next and to the next, and that there's this sense that he's really trying to figure it out. Yeah. So, "a," it's an opportunity... It has been said that there are as many different Hamlets as there are actors to play him. And that scope for reinterpretation seems to be part of what makes this role so constantly fascinating. We know that this particular role is also like a sharing of one's soul, so it's like you're not just gonna see your preferred actor, but you're also gonna see them perhaps bearing a side of themselves and revealing a side of themselves that's really intimate.

WHISHAW

I think of all the parts I've played, that one feels the most transparent. When you go and see it, you're seeing something of the actor. Something very personal, private about the actor who's playing it, always, I think. It's not a-- It's not a ma-- It's not a sort of mask you can hide behind, I don't think, that role.

BEALE

There's something extraordinary about stripping away your acting persona really. Did you find it quite exposing then? Yeah, I think you-- I think in the end, you're standing on stage as David Tennant.

TENNANT

None of which helps to make that most famous of speeches any easier to cope with. Quite often, I'm sure you had this, people would say it along with you. Ah. Um, that's fine. I had one woman who was doing it just before I said it, which was infuriating. Yes. Many people come to "Hamlet"with preconceptions or expectations of what the play should be. But, in fact, there is not even "a"definitive text of the play. There are three different sources. Copies of these are extremely valuable and precious. I'd never seen them all up close, but at The British Library, they have examples of each one. Tim Pye, the curator, has agreed to open up the safe. Here we have the precious cargo. Yeah! There is a first version, the so-called "bad quarto," believed to be cobbled together from an actor's memory, the second, much-longer version, possibly printed to replace the bad quarto, and a third version in the First Folio, a collection of Shakespeare's plays published after his death. So you want to open that one up to the title page? I'm allowed to touch? Yes, of course. On the table in front of me are about 10 million pounds worth of books. So this is the first quarto. Often known as "the bad quarto." That is right. I think the bad quarto is a bit of a misnomer. Why is that? 'Cause I think it has merits. Yeah? Um, it is quite quick-paced for a "Hamlet." Yes. Because it's about half the length of the other two later versions. Yes. It includes some stage directions that aren't included anywhere else and that people still reference nowadays. Right. Um, yeah, so I think "bad" is a little unfair. Yes. There are two known copies. OK, only two? It's an incredibly rare book. There's only two of these in the whole world? There's only two. I had no idea. Judging the versions against each other, there are many surprising differences. There's one on the very first line. "Who's there?"which is quite a famous opening to a play. Yep. It's "Stand: who is that?" in this bad quarto, which is quite markedly different. Yeah. Although it is much shorter, there are certain details that only feature in the first quarto. "Enter Ofelia playing on a Lute, and her haire down singing." Playing on a lute? It's gonna limit your casting options as well.

Laughing

TENNANT

And perhaps most interesting are the differences in that most famous of soliloquies. The thing that we probably recognize as being the biggest difference is the most famous speech... In the English language. Indeed, indeed. "To be, or not to be, that is the question," becomes "To be, or not to be, I there's the point." Yeah. "To die, to sleepe, is that all?" That's quite a cut. "Whether 'tis nobler in the minde to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune..." I mean, that's all gone. It is all gone. Um, all gone. It does sound like a sort of poorly remembered version of the speech that we know. Yeah. Half phrases are in there and the sense is in there. Yeah, yeah, but... But who's to say this isn't the original, of course? Well, indeed, or do we just think that's poor compared to the much more eloquent, elegant one we now know? If this was the only surviving text of "Hamlet," would we denigrate it as much as we do? Well, quite. I quite like the fact that it's been edited in places to shorten it. Oh, I think it can do with an edit definitely. "Hamlet"can sometimes be a bit long. It can be a bit long. I've heard that. Some productions can be a little dry. I wouldn't know about that. No, but I think, absolutely, this must have charged along, which is great. Yeah. Whichever version you use, Hamlet's dilemmas remain the same. Having doubted the point of life itself, Hamlet starts to doubt his mission. Should he trust the ghost? Can he be sure Claudius is guilty? He devises a plan to expose the King. This is one Lucianus, nephew to the King. He enlists a group of traveling players to enact a play mirroring the King's murder. If Claudius flinches, he'll have the proof he required.

GERTRUDE

How fares my lord?

Audience gasps

CLAUDIUS

Give me some... Give me some light!

TENNANT

The King reacts. Hamlet is vindicated. Imagine what it must be like to realize that your--your worst fears are right. Because it's all been sort of... almost dealable with up until this point, but now I've got to do something. Hamlet gets the perfect opportunity to exact his revenge when he passes the King alone praying. But will he be able to seize the moment? In our production, director Greg Doran had a notion to draw out the tension. I think it is a thriller. I mean, once I had that in my head, that psychologically it was a thriller, then what you need to do is keep making the audience believe that they've never seen it before, and they don't know what's going to happen. When, for instance, he happens, after the play, to bump into his Uncle Claudius praying, and he suddenly has the idea that he could, while the man is praying, kill him, having absolutely in his mind established his guilt, thriller-wise, you in the audience should be thinking, "He's gonna do it." Now might I do it pat... now he is praying; and now I'll do't. We took the interval right there in the middle of the line. Again, quite a potentially bold, uh, decision to take the interval, in fact, in the middle of a... in the middle of a verse line. The scholars were appalled.

Laughs

TENNANT

What was the actual line? So you went, um... Uh, now might I do it-- Now might I do it pat, now he's praying; and now I'll do 't. Interval. Black out, yeah. Do you think-- How many of the audience do you think went, "My God, he killed his uncle"? I don't know. I hope some did. But did we start the second half-- Did we rerun the beginning of the second half then, or did you start, "And so he goes to heaven"? I started with the knife above his head, the lights went up like nothing had happened for 15 minutes, "And so he goes to heaven, and so am I reveng'd." And using the audience talked myself out of it. Right. Hamlet considers that, theologically speaking, if he kills his uncle while he is praying, whatever sins Claudius may have committed, he will go straight to Heaven, and that's no revenge.

HAMLET

Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge! Hamlet doesn't know what he's gonna do, so I think as Hamlet raises the knife above Claudius's head, in that nanosecond, he believes he's gonna kill him. It doesn't last, and he doesn't, because he's, again, straitjacketed by his own morality and his own fears and his own humanity, you could say. That makes me like him all the more, but it makes him like himself all the less.

Footsteps echoing

BATE

Hamlet asks some very serious questions about the morality of revenge, the morality of killing. We think of that as a very, very modern-- 20th, 21st Century thing. But Shakespeare is there before us.

Movie music playing

TENNANT

Hamlet is a deeply reluctant revenge hero, but in the very next scene, he will slip dangerously out of character.

POLONIUS

He will come straight. I'll silence me even here.

TENNANT

Hamlet's behavior has alarmed the King and his counselor, Polonius. Hamlet is summoned to his mother's bedroom... Mother? where Polonius is hiding, eavesdropping on their conversation. Mother. Withdraw; I hear him coming. Hamlet arrives ready to confront his mother about her marriage, but in a moment of madness will do something catastrophic.

HAMLET

Now, Mother, what's the matter? Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended. Mother, you have my father much offended.

GERTRUDE

Have you forgot me?

HAMLET

No, by the rood, not so! You are the Queen, your husband's brother's wife, and (would it were not so!) you are my mother. Nay, then I'll set those to you that can speak. Come, come, and sit you down. You shall not budge! You go not till I set you up a glass where you may see the inmost part of you. What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me? Help, help, help!

POLONIUS

Help! Help me! How now? a rat? Dead for a ducat!

Gertrude screams

POLONIUS

Dead!

TENNANT

Impulsively, Hamlet lashes out, believing he has finally caught the King, but instead, he has murdered Polonius. I think it happens very much in the heat of a very hot moment before he can really examine what he's doing. From that moment as he looks down at Polonius's corpse, I think he realizes, "There's no going back "and nothing will ever be the same now, "and I'm probab-- I've probably started on the path to my own destruction." But although everything has changed for Hamlet in that moment, the scene is not over. Something has been brewing for a long time. He still has to confront the person who he feels has betrayed him most, his mother. You modulate into a sort of total disgust... Yeah. at what she's doing. In this scene, all Hamlet's unspoken resentment and fury at his mother comes tumbling out. He is disgusted by her inconstancy, her stupidity, and worst of all, as he sees it, her promiscuity. You cannot call it love; for at your age the heyday in the blood is tame, it's humble, and waits upon the judgment; and what judgment would step from this to this? O Hamlet, speak! To live In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love over the nasty sty! Speak to me no more! A son confronting his own mother's sexuality is an uneasy enough prospect for a modern audience, but "Hamlet"has barely been out of performance in 400 years, so previous generations have clearly found their own way of coming to terms of such taboo material. Ah, Michael.

MICHAEL DOBSON

David. Hello. How you doing? Fine, fine. Thank you for coming along.

TENNANT

Theater historian Michael Dobson has tracked the stage history of what has become known as "the closet scene." A closet, really, in Shakespeare's time, means a kind of private office. It's in your private apartments, it's probably near your bedroom, but it's not actually a bedroom. Right. One of the earliest representations we have of this scene shows Thomas Betterton playing Hamlet in the 17th century, with two chairs placed a fair distance apart. Shall I be Mother? Yeah, you be Gertrude. OK. You sit there and Betterton has been sitting down, talking to his mother, apparently from about this distance. With tea and sandwiches possibly. Well, yeah, it's all terribly respectful. It is. Only in later productions does the scene tend to move to the bedroom, with Sigmund Freud's influence suggesting that Hamlet might actually be in love with his mother. It doesn't get manically all about what they're doing on the bed really until John Barrymore... Right. in the States in the Twenties. Right. And he's read Freud, and he says that, you know, as far as he's concerned, Hamlet is mother-fixated. He decides to actually stage it that way, decides that his Hamlet is explained by his relationship with his mother. So how much do we know about his staging in particular? What did he do? He kissed his mother on the lips. I mean, that's the big sign that he gives that this is really what it's all about and that it's not normal. Right, right. He's the first one who does that. And that line is then taken up by Olivier. However you decide to play the closet scene, by the end of it, Hamlet is at the mercy of the man he loathes. After Hamlet has killed Polonius, things are changed forever. The King, now knowing that his life is in danger, is determined to get rid of Hamlet and sends him away overseas. Events are spiraling out of control. From here on in, the play shifts a gear. Hamlet is banished to England, and although he eventually manages to escape his captors and return to Denmark, in his absence, Ophelia, his one time love and the daughter of Polonius, has lost her mind and drowned herself. Unaware of this, on his way back to Elsinore, Hamlet happens upon a freshly dug grave, little knowing it is meant for Ophelia. Here, in one of the play's most recognizable moments, Hamlet comes face to face with mortality....his clutch. Here's a skull now. Hath lien you i' th' earth some three-and-twenty years. Whose was it? This same skull, sir, was, sir, Yorick's skull, the King's jester. Let me see. Hamlet beside Yorick's grave is perhaps the most enduring image the play throws up. The danger is that familiarity will rob the scene of its impact. In staging the play, we were blessed with a powerful reminder of Yorick's humanity. We're on our way now to the RSC's props repository to look at something that was a very important part of our production. Hello. I'm David. And I'm Catherine. Hi, Catherine, how you doing? I'm OK, thank you. There you go. Brilliant. This is our Yorick. There was a Polish composer and pianist called Andre Tchaikowsky, and when he died in the early eighties, he bequeathed his head to be used in a production of Hamlet with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He wanted to play Yorick. So here he is. This is Andre. He was introduced to us by our director, Greg, on the first day of rehearsals as the final member of the company. There was a variety of reactions, I think, to having a... to having a real human head in the production. Some people found it quite difficult. I must say personally I was rather excited by it. It's one of the clichs of the play now, an actor holding a skull, and I suppose the trouble with a clichis that it loses meaning, but, um, if you represent it with an actual person's skull, a real bit of human, then Hamlet's speech about Yorick and about staring into the-the-the-- the skull of a man he knew well becomes all the more potent when-when-- when you're aware that you're holding somebody's head quite literally in your hands. There he is. Andre was there. I feel very pleased to have helped him fulfill his ambition. Here hung those lips that I have kiss'd I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? Quite chap-fall'n? The play pauses to hold a mirror up to mortality, but before long, Hamlet is back at court confronting his own destiny. Will he be a revenging hero? Can he kill a king? In London, at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, students are rehearsing the play's final scene. Move more, and it will look faster, but it will actually be slower for you. OK. On returning to the court, Hamlet gets involved in a contest between himself and Laertes, the son of Polonius, the man he killed. Great, that's when I want you to start moving. This contest will involve the entire court. It is the climax of the play. Another hit. See? And yet Hamlet, told at the beginning of the play to take revenge for his father's death, has planned none of this. It was the King's idea. Instead of finally deciding that he is going to do what he has said all along that he's going to do, he gets involved in a wager that his uncle, of all people, has put on his skills at fencing, and there's no plan that Hamlet has articulated that's gonna lead from this sword fight in the court to vengeance on his uncle. It seems to happen randomly. So, ironically, this contest is not Hamlet's plan, but the King's plot to kill him. Claudius has enlisted Laertes, eager to avenge the death of Polonius. A blunted sword will be exchanged for a sharp one. You may choose a sword unblunted, and, in a pass of practice, requite him for your father. I will do it. Laertes also plans to put poison on the point of his sword to make sure Hamlet will die. Hamlet knows none of this, and although he has misgivings about how the fight will turn out, he now seems determined to surrender to his fate. If your mind dislike anything, obey it. I will forestall their repair hither and say you are not fit. Not a whit, we defy augury; there's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. He's a very, very different character. His mood is different. There's a wonderful sort of serenity and resignation about him at that point. If it be not now, 'tis to come; if it be not to come, 'tis now. the readiness is all. Let be. That great almost sort of Oriental idea of let it be. What will be will be. The real inner peace that he's reached there. And so the contest begins. Come on, sir! No! Judgment! A hit, a very palpable hit. Hamlet starts well. He wins the first point.

LAERTES

Again! Give him the cup.

TENNANT

He avoids a poison drink offered by Claudius in case Laertes should fail. I'll play this bout first; set it by awhile. But the queen, apparently unaware of the plot, drinks. It is the poison cup. Impatient to kill Hamlet, Laertes lashes out. Have at you now!

Spectators gasp

TENNANT

In the confusion, swords get exchanged, and Laertes is wounded with his own poison tip. How does the Queen? She swoons to see them bleed. No, no! The drink, the drink! O my dear Hamlet! The drink, the drink! With poison in his blood, Hamlet cannot escape his own death. But at last, he ensures the King will die, too. Here. Thou incestuous, murd'rous, damned Dane, drink off this potion! Is thy union here? Follow my mother! Hamlet has finally succeeded in avenging his father's death, although more by accident than design. He has had little control over any of this. Now Hamlet has to face his own death in the arms of his only true friend, Horatio. If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, absent thee from felicity awhile, and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, to tell my story. O, I die, Horatio! The potent poison quite o'ercrows my spirit. The rest is silence. That final speech, the sense of Hamlet looking into the afterlife. For someone who has fretted over whether there is one or not, it was settled in my mind that "the rest is silence"was him... was a sense of relief that actually "there's nothing else to worry about. "I'm staring into the afterlife now, "and it's just a void. Thank goodness for that."

LAW

I mean, the big question to me, and I still don't know the answer, "The rest is silence." Is that the rest of life, or is that the rest-- the rest in himself is silence and he doesn't have to speak anymore? Yeah, well... Do you know? There's a kind of beautiful sense of calm. I always felt very calm in that moment and quite happy. It's funny, my memory talking about it is much more about how I was feeling, and talking about it, I keep thinking I've got to talk about it like the part, but, actually, I'm trying to think where I was at. Yeah, but I think it's one of those you end up-- The two end up becoming very enmeshed, don't they? Yeah, I think they do.

TENNANT

For others, the fact that Hamlet bids Horatio to tell what has happened, to tell his story, means there will be life after the silence.

GARBER

What is so powerful about the end of "Hamlet"-- it's a deeply powerful ending-- is the moment when he transfers his story to Horatio, and he says, "In this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, to tell my story." So he will not have lived in vain. We are also being told to tell the story, to perform the play again. It does not end in nothing, it does not end in "the rest is silence." It ends, in fact, in the injunction to replay the play. If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart...

Crying

GARBER

absent thee from felicity awhile, and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain... to tell my story.

TENNANT

But am I any nearer to understanding why every successive age has identified with "Hamlet"? Of course, there's no answer to this, but do you have any sense what it is about it that's so unique? It--It tackles the fundamental themes of perhaps what we all ask. Why are we here? What is the point of us being here? All these huge things, which I think just dealing with being a living, breathing human being, we have to ask ourselves at some point, or feel at some point, are in this play. In the end, there is just no other character like him. I remember on the last day of filming thinking, I'm so proud to have done that. I'm so pleased that that's something I got to do, and now I will never go there again. And there was a huge relief to that, 'cause it was like having a weight lifted off your shoulders. And then, you know, whatever... What are we now, three years on? I do find myself-- I catch myself slightly fantasizing about doing it again and going back there and seeing what that would feel like, but I... That way madness quite literally lies.

Laughing

ANNOUNCER

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