Hamlet at Tennessee Shakespeare Company

the tragedy by William Shakespeare
directed by Stephanie Shine
April 4-21, 2024
Thursdays-Saturdays at 7:30 pm (no April 20 performance)
Sundays at 3:00 pm
Tabor Stage

generously sponsored by Pat and Ernest Kelly, and The Sims Family Charitable Trust

Preview:  Thursday, April 4 at 7:30 pm
Opening:  Friday, April 5 at 7:30 pm
Subsequent Thursdays/Fridays/Saturdays at 7:30 pm; Sundays at 3:00 pm (no April 20 performance)

William Shakespeare couldn’t have known he was penning the human psyche into physical existence with this play, nor that the phrases and words he would create within it would remain foundational to our 21st Century metaphor. But what he did know was a popular story of familial revenge. In adding a spirit world and a questioning conscience to it, Shakespeare was informed by his personal life: his son Hamnet had died at age 11, he had written Brutus in Julius Caesar three years later, his father died two years after that, and after two years of drafts he released Hamlet. This was the story-stepstone that the fatherless son/sonless father needed in order to launch into his final cosmic masterwork four years later – King Lear. The Prince of Denmark does not consider his state and decisions alone, though. He has an audience.