Shakespeare's Day To The Interregnum
Shakespeare wrote the role of Hamlet for Richard Burbage, tragedian of The Lord Chamberlain's Men: an actor with a capacious memory for lines, and a wide emotional range. Hamlet appears to have been Shakespeare's fourth most popular play during his lifetime, eclipsed only by Henry VI Part 1, Richard III and Pericles. Although the story was set many centuries before, at The Globe the play was performed in Elizabethan dress.
Hamlet was acted by the crew of the ship Dragon, off Sierra Leone, in September 1607. The play was first performed in South East Asia (present's Indonesia) in 1609. Court performances occurred in 1619 and in 1637, the latter on 24 January at Hampton Court Palace. G R Hibbard argues that, since Hamlet is second only to Falstaff among Shakespeare's characters in the number of allusions and references in contemporary literature, the play must have been performed with a frequency missed by the historical record.
Read more about this topic: Hamlet In Performance
Famous quotes containing the words shakespeare, day and/or interregnum:
““Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.”
Must give—for what? for lead, hazard for lead?
This casket threatens. Men that hazard all
Do it in hope of fair advantages;
A golden mind stoops not to shows of dross.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“All my life I believed I knew something. But then one strange day came when I realized that I knew nothing, yes, I knew nothing. And so words became void of meaning ... I have arrived too late at ultimate uncertainty.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)