Staging Emotions: Hamlet Speakeasy News [Video]

This short video is a great way to have pupils study how actors express emotions when they speak a text on stage, even something as short as Hamlet’s classic line “To be or not to be”.

In this performance for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death in 2016, Paapa Essiedu, who was playing Hamlet at the time at the Royal Shakespeare Company, is interrupted in the famous speech by Tim Minchin, Benedict Cumberbatch, Harriet Walter, David Tennant, Rory Kinnear, Sir Ian McKellen,  Dame Judi Dench and  King Charles (who was the Prince of Wales at the time). Each tells Essiedu to stress a different word in the speech.

It would also be a good way to illustrate sentence stress in English, asking pupils how the different stresses change the meaning.

This would be a good addition to Shine Bright LLCER File 13 “Staging Emotions”, exploring Shakespeare: master of emotions.