William Shakespeare

Stratford-on-Avon is home to the famous Royal Shakespeare Company. In all probability this little, English village is also the place where the actor, theatre manager and writer William Shakespeare was baptised on 26th April 1564. Furthermore the church register tells us that 18 years later he married Anne Hathaway, and the 25th April 1616 he found his last resting place here. What remains is, using the word of Hamlet, silence.

William Shakespeare himself has not published one single of the 36 plays which bear his name. But in an unauthorized form the works have circulated after being performed at the theatre in London. Not until 1623 when his friends published the famous ‘folio edition’ were comedies, stories, and tragedies collected into one official entity.

About one hundred years later doubt was raised whether William Shakespeare was at all the author of the whole literary production. Could this have been produced by one single person? Could one person in fact have been so creative and clever? Could one person know so much about historical and political affairs? – And even have such a sense of the language – the so called five foot jambre – and possess a vocabulary which has been estimated to 15,000 different words?

This has been discussed ever since and numerous theories have been made. However, the evidence is lacking. It is nevertheless a fact that not only have we for 400 years been able to experience Hamlet but also a whole number of plays whose quality and richness have been able to interest and enrich changing generations, interpreted through directors, stage designers and actors, who to this very day have succeeded in making the plays relevant by using contemporary language and thereby adding current meaning and perspective to the texts.

Shakespeare Renaissance
That time hardly paid much attention to a link between William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Kronborg Castle. The link was not made until the end of the18th century. At that time you could experience a virtual Shakespeare revival. It came to Denmark via Germany. The Danish writer Johannes Ewald read Wieland’s translation of Hamlet and was immensely touched by the drama. A Danish translation of the work had been made in 1778 by head master Boye.

During the years 1778 – 80 the Danish painter Abildgaard portrayed Hamlet, in 1790 – 92 Rosenfeldt published two covers of the tragedy, and in 1796 Heusser’s Drama Society performed the first Hamlet in Denmark. This took place in the town of Odense (birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen). In 1813 William Shakespeare’s Hamlet tragedy was played for the first time at the Royal National Theatre in Copenhagen. This was Peter Foersom’s translation. Furthermore it is told how it was decided to raise a statue of the newly deceased Hamlet-actor and Shakespeare-translator Peter Foersom in the ‘Hamlet Garden’ in Elsinore.

Almost simultaneously with the emerging Shakespeare-revival a virtual Hamlet-cult, seeking a local attachment to Elsinore, took its beginning. The cosmopolitical Sound Duty Town (town of Elsinore dominated by foreign vessels passing through the Sound) was hereafter not only visited in large numbers by foreign traders and seamen, but now also literary interested foreigners, for whom Elsinore was Hamlet’s town and Kronborg his castle. They came as visitors to the town to look for memories about the famous prince.