In Julius Caesar they talk of chimneys, which wouldnt be invented for another thousand years, and in Henry IV they talk about Machiavelli, who wasnt even born yet then. Shakespeare may have SAID its in the days of ancient Rome or medieval Denmark or whatever, but he didnt dress his characters up like they were, he used the costumes of his own time.įor the same reason his plays are full of anachronisms.įor example, in King John the English and French have cannons-in Robin Hoods day. Well, in Shakespeares time their costume and scenery was that of their own day for all of their plays. Some people are complaining that its set in the 19th century and that wasnt Shakespeares time. They will be seeing it more as Shakespeares audiences saw it: a play with sword fights and battles, and mighty kings and nobles, murder and incest and evil schemes and ghosts-and great art, if one cares to look for it, but in Shakespeares day most didnt, any more than most people do now.īranaghs overacting, and his forcing of his interpretation of the story on the viewer, may detract from Shakespeares art somewhat, but it is better that modern audiences get a piece of it, rather than nothing. Shakespeare is hard to understand for the vast majority of people nowadays many people are not even inclined to try, because of its reputation as Serious Literature and its archaic English. What I think speaks very much in this plays favor is that it is accessible.

In my opinion, those actors who were not big-name celebrities generally did a better job though I would except Billy Crystal and Robin Williams.Īnd Charlton Heston, too, but I wasnt sure if he was playing at being a hack.) A lot of the ambiguities in the play were clearly resolved one way in the flashbacks. In Pace Performed by Plcido Domingo Text researched and adapted by Russell Jackson See more.īranagh was really over-the-top, doing a lot of yelling mostly. Two versions should have been theatrically released at the same time: a complete 242-minutes directors cut shown only in selected venues (large key cities) and a shorter, wide-release version that ran about two-and-a-half hours.Īfter some critical backlash, Castle Rock decided to release the complete 4 hours everywhere in the US and use the shorter version for some overseas territories.

Forty thousand brothers could not with all their quantity of love make up my sum. When Hamlet and Polonius are walking down a hallway discussing Hamlets sanity, in one shot Hamlet is holding a skull mask, and in the next its gone.

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