Yes, the factual details of Elizabethan theatre went astray. The attempt in the late 1990s to portray Shakespeare the wanton writer struggling for ideas, negotiating with patrons and theatre-owners, reinvigorated Shakespeare in popular culture. The greater the background world, the broader the context. A stage is but a stage, and it’s useful to be reminded of what imaginative twists a film adaptation can bring. This Hamlet of 2009 is to tragedy what Shakespeare in Love of 1998 was to comedy (despite the latter, ironically, portraying a tragedy itself).

Between theatre and film, the traditional and the contemporary, this felt like something unique. The 2009 film adaptation (dir: Gregory Doran), that I watched on the strength of the main actor, alerted me to a new sense of seeing theatre. “A Mirror Up To Nature”: David Tennant in the RSC’s Hamlet (2009) Teaching Hamlet to first-year undergraduates during a nervous first term in Geneva two years ago gives the play special personal significance.

David tennant hamlet full movie