Review - Hamlet (DVD)

This classic BBC DVD is terrific. Starring David Tennant, Patrick Stewart and Penny Downie, Hamlet is intense and intimate. Elsinore is depicted as a place of shadows, mirrors and conspiracies, as this family tragedy unfolds. At 3 hours and 37 minutes, it is well worth your attention. Almost every speech has a phrase that is now engrained into our language and cultural zeitgeist. Superlative performances and production. Wendy

The Sonnets

Warwick Collins has imagined Shakespeare's life during the time he was exiled from London when theatres were closed as a result of the plague in 1592-4. In conjuring this time, Collins gives a context for 32 of the 154 Sonnets and explores some of the political events as the periphery to the poet's work. He postulates a theory as to the 'dark lady' who has fascinated Shakespearean scholars over the centuries. He may or may not be right - but it is an interesting conceit and a pleasant way to re-acquaint yourself with some of the best-known poems of all time. You get a flavour for Elizabethan life and the insecurities of a young man with his way to make in the world. And I couldn't resist including one of my favourite sonnets below!

Wendy

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.