Naomi Fry: [00:00:00] Can anyone do the speech? No, but I can just say to be, not to be and then like, uh, and then say like, uh, battle of, I can't, 
Vinson Cunningham: I can't even remember. No, I'm not a memorizer, unfortunately. God, whether it's his noble or, yeah. And then I'm like to be or 
Alex Schwartz: not to be. That is the question. I'm not gonna get far. I know I'm very.
Whether it's his noble in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Or, or, or what? Or Yeah. Take 
Vinson Cunningham: arms against the sea of troubles. 
Alex Schwartz: Thank you. Sea and bypass in them to die to sleep. Go Vincent, per chance to dream? Not yet. Oops. No more.
This is Critics At Large, a podcast from The New Yorker. I'm Alex Schwartz. I'm Nomi Fry. I'm Vincent Cunningham. 
Vinson Cunningham: Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here. How guys doing Turkey day? How was it? It was good. It was really nice 
Naomi Fry: actually. 
Vinson Cunningham: [00:01:00] It was nice.
I saw my family. I ate, there's still stuffing in my fridge. 
Naomi Fry: Yeah. Which for me is a little, I thought you were gonna say there's still stuffing in my belly. 
Vinson Cunningham: There's still, 
Naomi Fry: I'm stuffed like a Christmas goose, like a prize 
Vinson Cunningham: Turkey. Yeah. Um, I did have a lot of stuffing. My favorite food on Thanksgiving by far.
Mm-hmm. Uh, anyway, that done, it's December and that means we're officially in. Oscar movie season. So again, know, just get ready for some for some real cinema on this podcast. So recently the three of us saw Hamnet, which I'm sure will feature in a lot of these Oscar races. It's a fictionalized story about the writing of, of course, Hamlet, the Beloved Shakespeare play.
Directed by Chloe Zou, the movie Stars Paul Mescal as William Shakespeare and Jesse Buckley as his wife Anus.
        CLIP – Hamnet
It's a really interesting, complicated movie. I think on the one hand there's this really loose [00:02:00] biographical element about Shakespeare's perhaps most famous play. Uh, but on the other hand, it's a story about intense grief and I guess how to move through it.
Of course we're gonna hear everything about how you guys thought about it in the course of the show. But first impressions. 
Naomi Fry: Do you wanna know my first impressions? First impressions? Okay. I have a, I have a sense. What else? A couple words each. Yeah. Hated it. 
Vinson Cunningham: Hated it. Oh God. I can't wait to talk about this.
Naomi Fry: Okay. Know me so shockingly did not hate it. Good. Which, sure, I'm making progress. Was sure I was gonna hate it, but enjoyed it and thought it had. A bunch of things going for it. 
Vinson Cunningham: Cool. We got the whole gamut because over here Loved it. Wow. So today we're gonna talk about Hamlet and about Hamlet. Of course.
The play itself, Hamlet has never not been popular, right? It's been in production almost constantly since it was written over 400 years ago. And in that time it's [00:03:00] undergone all manner of revisions, updates, adaptations, re-imagining. Hamlet to me, is all about how the common difficulties of life, grief.
Betrayal, loneliness, indecision. Strike each of us with a unique and particular pain. It, it's also about how all of this lands specifically on a troubled young man in 2025. We hear a lot about the plight of young men, economic, interpersonal, on and on, uh, their propensity to shoot people, all that stuff.
And I want to know what is Hamlet's Hold on us now and does this contemporary narrative about men have anything to do with it? So that's today on critics at Large, who is Hamlet today.
________________


All right. Naomi Fry: Alright. Alright. Let's 
Vinson Cunningham: start with Hamnet. The film came out in select theaters during Thanksgiving week. It's going into wide release later this [00:04:00] month. I saw it in the great big Cavernous theater, three at Bam, which I love. It's directed by Chloe Zou, adapted from a novel of the same name by Maggie O'Farrell, who was.
Sort of the, uh, the co screenwriter with Chloe j. Um, can somebody lay out the premise before we jump upon it? 
Naomi Fry: Uh, I can, I can try, 
Vinson Cunningham: please. 
Naomi Fry: Okay, so. We're seeing William will Shakespeare behind the scenes, uh, as a man rather than a playwright, and he meets a girl, a woman who is.
Said to be the daughter of a witch, kind of like a, a wild girl, a girl of the woods. They, they live on the edge of a forest, and the movie opens, you know, with this vista, this beautiful vista where she's kind of like, [00:05:00] she's seen from above, kind of curled up in the roots of a, of an old oak tree or something.
I don't know if it's oak actually, but you know, and Shakespeare, whose name isn't mentioned, he's not known as his. The Shakespeare, he's just kind of like a hot guy with like facial hair who sort of skulks around, um, is very taken with this woman. Agnes. They kind of have this almost wordless courtship 
CLIP: wait I know who you are. Who am I? Well, I, I don't know you, but I've heard this. I'm the daughter of a forest witch. Yes, people say that, but that's why I am my mother's daughter. I've learned many things from her.What are you looking at you? Why?
Naomi Fry: they make love [00:06:00] and she they do, she, they do, they make love on a table. That is laden with, with fruits. 
Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm. With, with 
Naomi Fry: significantly apples. With apples. Wow. And, uh, she, she gets pregnant. They get married. She has, uh, first, uh, a girl and then a little bit later gets pregnant and again, and has twins. Meanwhile, it suddenly emerges that, uh, will Shakespeare is Shakespeare. That is, it emerges suddenly about mid movie that he's a writer and that he is kind of stagnating in the countryside and must go to London. anus stays home with the kids. And then the plague comes. What ends up happening is that, uh, one of the twins named Hamnet, uh, dies. And then grief comes, horrible grief. Uh, and [00:07:00] Anus sort of, you know, almost loses her mind from this grief. Towards the end of, of the movie, we, for the first time. Are in London with, uh, Shakespeare, who it emerges, has written a play. The play is Hamlet and the implication is that, um. He was deeply affected by the death of Hamlet, his son, and in response to it has written this play about Prince, Hamlet and Denmark, the play that we know as Hamlet.
I will say that what I liked about this movie and surprised me in. Is, there's no valuability in it, right? It's, it's, it's quite wordless. There's a long stretches of silence and a lot of focus on nature and kind of the, the lived environment that these characters, um, are in. And this is before, again, it is revealed that Shakespeare's Shakespeare.
I really enjoyed that. I thought it was beautiful. I, in my, [00:08:00] as I get older, I'm kind of like. I find myself more in touch with a pastoral, I'm like, oh. I'm like enjoying these wooded scenes of like, whatever, uh, mushrooms being dug from the earth. Yeah. I was like, this is like some Scandinavian movie from the eighties.
Like, I really like this. You know? Yeah. And so this is all before the whole like hamlet hamnet playwriting thing happened. And later I liked it less. 
Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm. 
Naomi Fry: Uh, although I didn't hate it, but I also didn't think it totally worked. 
Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm. 
Naomi Fry: Okay. Now I'll shut up 
Vinson Cunningham: Alex. I mean, I know what we, we know what you thought, we know what you thought, but we are eager to hear.
I know. And 
Naomi Fry: I bet I'll also look kind, 
Alex Schwartz: like, agree with you. No. Here's what I wanna say to start, if you. Love this movie. I am really glad you love this movie, and I don't mean to say that in a condescending way. I wanted to love this movie. It sounds like such an asshole. If asshole, you like it. I love it.
Yeah, it's, I'm [00:09:00] sorry. Maybe I, I know you didn't, I didn't. I'm happy for you. Salt in the movie. No, I, I, I, I understand there's this hamnet is sweeping the nation. All I hear is not a dry eye is to be seen. I didn't cry like a baby. Good. You know, and that's great. I wish I had cried. I wish I had had. Your 
Naomi Fry: heart is made of.
Stone outs. Well, 
Alex Schwartz: no, but I wish I had felt, I wish I had had these feelings. This been moved by this grief. And instead I have, I have an, I have Quibbles and I have bigger problems with the movie Hamnet. Mm-hmm. So I have read the novel Hamnet on which the movie is based. Okay. Maggie o Farrell's novel. The stuff you love know me is stuff I really didn't like in this movie to me. This movie felt romantic adjacent. We have the strong, noble heroine who is of course, [00:10:00] iconoclastic.
God forbid she's an ordinary woman. Mm-hmm. No, she has to be singular. She's gotta be someone who modern woman look at and think, if I had lived in 1595, I wouldn't have been ordinary. House Frow. I would've been her. I would've been an yes barefoot wandering into the forest with my kestrel above me because I'm cool and free.
I would've had my hair down once my mother died in front of me in childbirth. I too would've renounced the church because I'm a free thinker. Can I just say 
Naomi Fry: something? Yes, of course. I think we found my romantic. We found your romantic hand. Is it this is it. We found it. I think we found at at least that part, that aspect of it.
You know how I was like romantic, like the Latin tutor with 
Alex Schwartz: a single earring. Yeah. Arrives to teach Latin. And by the way, the movie doesn't make this totally clear, but both in life, in the real, we know very, very little about Shakespeare's life and the life of Anne Hathaway, his wife. Um, but one thing we do know is that he was 18 when they got married.
She was 26 and she was pregnant. So something had gone down. 
[1]Vinson Cunningham: Right. 
Alex Schwartz: Vincent, defend this movie. I, 
Vinson Cunningham: [00:11:00] well, here's the thing. Nomi's point about the pastoral. I think first of all, I deeply relate to about sort of, uh, as life goes on, being more attracted to yes, um, sort of nature as an object of observation and study.
I guess I've always had that part that. Part of me, but I do feel that it has grown, um, in this movie though I think it is important, and I don't think it's just about the affect of the character being sort of, she's a woodsy woman against the people of, or, you know, she's a witchy person against the church and the church and et cetera.
Even though I am interested in that sort of alternative spiritualities and how they clash in this, uh. Movie. It's kind of interesting, but I think much more importantly, the work with landscape is so good. I think there are so many beautiful images of, you know, the huge tree and this little, it's gorgeous.
Yeah. Cave under the root system and. Bodies being very small against the sort of grandeur of the landscape. [00:12:00] Uh, there's a scene where a childbirth scene, actually, there's a big storm and the, the river water is seeping into the room where Andy says, giving birth, and she can sort of, she connects this to, you know, Williams on his way somewhere.
He is on a boat, like the panic of that. All of that to me, makes the first half of the. A movie very clearly, like about nature. Mm, about all of our frailty, our sort of, um, how subject we are to forces outside of ourselves, how much we are out of control, et cetera, et cetera. Um, there's a moment where, uh, and this is mother-in-law, William's mother has an almost direct to camera monologue.
It's the only real monologue in the movie. And she's saying like, you have to know that, uh. Things can go wrong. It's in the middle of this sort of plague scene, and she's like, you can't take it for granted that your child lives and breathes and the heart is beating in their chest. Uh, this, 
Alex Schwartz: I think she [00:13:00] says, you have to always keep your guard up.
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. It's basically that like it can go away any moment, and therefore, and it's like a, a disquisition on, uh, maybe the connection between love and nature that, uh, we are not in control over those items which we love and therefore, you know, we have to sort of surrender. The second half of the film, which, you know, there's a huge shot of the globe.
All of its sort of, first of all it's exterior and then inside all of its ropes and pulleys and, uh, the background sort of scene painting, which is a painting of a forest, not unlike the real forest, the real forest that we've been looking at, sort of cinematically, um, and. It's, uh, so for me it was about nature.
On the one hand, it's really a, a a two act system. This movie nature on the one hand, artifice on the other, and how our lives as people who are human animals, but also making things, people [00:14:00] that are attracted to art creators and people who receive creations deal with artifice, mostly to negotiate our relationships to, to nature.
So. That all I found really intellectually stimulating. Yes, I did cry in the middle of the movie and I also just thought the performances were incredible. 
Naomi Fry: Yeah. I, I, I want, like Jesse Buckley does 
Vinson Cunningham: amazing. Paul Mezcal is just like fucking batting a thousand in the thing. There's one moment when it doesn't work, when he's like, when, when looking over.
Thames and like says the Tobe not to be speech. I was like, Jesus fucking Christ, stop. And I was like, thank you. So that was like flawed. That moment it did not work. But he could have just stood there looking at us with his eyes and I'd be like, God, they're both to me just outta control. Uh, in this movie.
I just, 
Alex Schwartz: Jesse Buckley is very good. You know, this movie. I think we should raise the issue here, that one critique of this movie that's going around, is that Hmanet pulls at the heartstrings.  I think what that critique is supposed to mean is that. It really delves into the particulars of the way that this child dies. Like you see a very horrible death of a kid. It's not glossed over, it's, it's, um, you are, you're with anus, as she screams in the room as as her son dies. It's, it's a little bit like the critique that art is manipulative. I've also seen this movie called Manipulative Well Art.
Vinson Cunningham: Duh. 
Alex Schwartz: It's supposed to manipulate. Duh. So that's okay. But what I, guys this movie didn’t get me at all. The grief parts of it didn’t. I felt, yes I felt that much like Hamlet that Chloe Zhao would like to play upon me as upon a pipe, she tried to play upon me and I did not feel played upon and I think a big part of why is that I could not connect Uh, because I love Hamlet. The much bigger issue I have with all of this, with Hamnet as a book and also as a [00:16:00] film 
Vinson Cunningham: mm-hmm. 
Alex Schwartz: Is that I don't find it illuminates anything about Hamlet, the play. In fact, I don't understand it as a reading of Hamlet period. Tthe Raisin detra for this whole thing is to say. This is the origin of this work of art. This work of art came around so that as a way for Shakespeare to deal with his own feelings of grief and sorrow, and also to address, literally address his wife who communication completely cracks between them after mm-hmm.
The death of their son and it's repaired. It's very modern, like therapeutic process. Mm-hmm. It's art therapy. Hamlet is art therapy, is what this movie says. And of course. What can be presented on stage in the film is very, very little of the play because it makes no sense with the actual play. Hamlet.
Like I'm watching this thinking, [00:17:00] oh, I wonder what Anez, who's standing in the theater thinks about Hamlet's absolute hatred for his mother and his fury, his mother. Mm-hmm. I'm wondering about that. I'm wondering what she thinks about the character of Ophelia, who in turn is set up and betrayed by Hamlet and driven mad and driven to death.
Yeah. By what Hamlet does. And so the complexity and the intensity and all the many hundreds of meanings that are in the play, Hamlet. Boiled down to this, it just breaks the illusion to me. Yeah. And I don't understand. Mm-hmm. What is concretely being said? Anyway, go ahead. Charge at me. 
Vinson Cunningham: No, I just, for me. No, no, no. I just don't. Maybe the movie purports to do that, but I don't think the movie's trying to explain Hamlet at all. It's almost like Hamlet, and maybe you and I could see this as a critique of, of, of the movie. And I look, I like what you said about like, if you are gonna invoke Hamlet, all of a sudden all of Hamlet comes to someone who has read the play. I, that is like, I think that's a really good critique, but I, to me, what is good about the movie is that Hamlet is almost just like capital A artwork in this movie. It's a, it, it's a kind of theorem about the place of art in our otherwise inartful lives. Um, if it were trying to be a one-to-one, here's Hamlet, here's, uh, this autobiographical thing.
I wouldn't like it either, but I just like didn't read it that way at 
Alex Schwartz: all. Well, I'm happy for you because it's pretty hard when a text precedes a movie saying that Hamlet and Hamed it are the same name, and the whole thing is hammered on your head as hard as possible that this is why Hamlet came to be, to ignore it.[00:19:00] 
Didn't the scenery totally remind you of the background home screen for Mac OS, Sequoia? We're all looking at it. Baby. Minimize your browser windows and you'll be in hamnet. Oh, that's so funny 
Vinson Cunningham: that those, well, that's, that tree is so much more gnarly than that. It looks like, that looks like the scenery in the, in the play.
Naomi Fry: Nothing wrong with that 
Vinson Cunningham: in a minute. It's our favorite Hamlets. On critics at large from the New Yorker,
:: MIDROLL 1 :: 
do you guys remember the first Hamlet that you ever saw? Or, or the, the first time he read it, whatever. And did that like make a deep impression on. 
Alex Schwartz: I love this question because I was gonna say, it's, for me, it wasn't seeing, it was reading. 
Vinson Cunningham: Same deal. 
Alex Schwartz: [00:20:00] Absolutely. Reading and not only do I remember it, I have my first original copy of Hamlet, oh my God.
That I read in high school. I have my little Alex Schwartz, you know, grade 12 thing in there. Oh my God. With the Roman numeral for 12 and all of my notes. Oh my God. Just to give you a sense of how advanced. My thinking about this was, uh, at the time, I'm going through my notes right now. So when Hamlet first appears, um, you know, and, and the king, the new king Claudius, who is of course brother to Hamlet's father, old King Hamlet, has married Gertrude Hamlet's mother.
Two months after, married, two months after Hamlet's father was buried. The body 
Naomi Fry: not yet warm, cold, uh, the body, 
Alex Schwartz: not yet cold. Yep. So he says, and this is the first time we hear, um. Hamlet speak, I believe. Um, the king says, but now my cousin Hamlet and my son and Hamlet says, A little more than kin and less than kind.
And I just wrote, brilliant, [00:21:00] 
Vinson Cunningham: which you were right about. Brilliant. 
Alex Schwartz: God, just hand it to that Shakespeare. He can do it. 
Vinson Cunningham: I feel like I, no. Yeah, to me, Hamlet was hugely important. I did also encounter it in school. Reading Hamlet was the way I learned a lot else. So, you know, I was taught IIC pentameter and how to scan poetry via Hamlet.
I was, we'd like the study of literary devices, alliteration, uh, ra the beginning of a line in the same way over and over. And so, yeah, it couldn't be more. Formative. How about you, nami? 
Naomi Fry: I never studied it. 
Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm. 
Naomi Fry: I mean, I remember the Kenneth Braa adaptation from the mid nineties, from 1996, I believe. 
        CLIP – Keneth Branagh as “Hamlet” 
And I, it was, I, I remember it in the context more of Kenneth Brena than, than of Hamlet. That's fair. You know, that period where he was like, he was doing Shakespeare and everybody was like, he is [00:22:00] the second coming Yes. Of, you know, whatever. Like the genius of Kenneth Brena, you know, his, his coupledom with Emma Thompson before they separated.
That is my context for Hamlet because I'm an idiot. Um, and it's like four hours long and it's, I, I remember. Uh, I'm sorry. I'm such a Philistine. Like, I remember not being extremely, I remember like dragging my, my feet through it because I was like, this is important. You know what I'm saying? Of 
Alex Schwartz: course. I know what you're saying.
And I think to insult yourself as a Philistine is, is just, it's wrongheaded wrong. It's completely wrongheaded. 
Naomi Fry: Um, 
Alex Schwartz: so, uh, you know what? I think it's Kenneth Brena. Who's to Blame? 
Naomi Fry: It might be Kenneth Brena. Let's just blame him. And so I am looking forward to our discussion today. Because, uh, we each 
Vinson Cunningham: mm-hmm.
Naomi Fry: Brought a little, yeah. Bit of hamlet to the table, right? Little versions, little piece. We each have our little thing that we're gonna. Talk about, right? 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah, I will, I will happily start [00:23:00] the sort of show and tell portion. Yes, please do. Of our, because I'm looking 
Naomi Fry: forward to I, the, the, what you're gonna share with us.
Uh, I will just say that I watched the trailer for it. I've never watched it and I was like, God, I have to watch 
Vinson Cunningham: it. It's, you do, this is Hamlet, or as it is sometimes known. Hamlet 2000, 
        CLIP – “Hamlet 2000” 
directed and adapted by the filmmaker Michael Alma. It stars Ethan Hawk as Hamlet. Who is a film student who's back from college because of the death of his father, who was the, uh, CEO of the Denmark Corporation, 
Naomi Fry: played by Sam Shepherd.
Vinson Cunningham: Sam Shepherd is the ghost. His first time appearing to Hamlet is through A-C-C-T-V camera. Uh, Kyle McLaughlin is, uh, uncle Claudius, which I love. Comic McLaughlin is like the most sinister looking, we've talked about him on our David Lynch episode. Just he's the perfect guy to be Uncle Claudius, Diane vi Nora, as.
Gertrude, leave Schreiber as laity. Very good. [00:24:00] Julia Styles beautiful as Ophelia. Um, and it's got so much going on. First of all, the, the choice of Hamlet as a film studio student corresponds a little bit to what I was saying about Chloe J, which is that it really takes seriously cinema as medium. And, um, Hamlet is always looking at screens and.
Whether it is the information from the ghost, the way he finds out certain key plot points is all through this sort of like mechanisms of surveillance. So it's very contemporary in this way. Um. His to be or not to be occurs in a blockbuster video. He's walking down the aisles. And the funniest thing is that every single one of the little genre markers says action on it.
        CLIP – Ethan Hawke “To be or not to be” 
Um, and he is just going through the aisle, sort of incredible. Sometimes it's in, in voiceover, sometimes he's sort of muttering to himself. He's wearing a little snow cap with flaps over the ears. 
Naomi Fry: It's one of those Guatemalan [00:25:00] hats. Yeah, woolen, Guatemalan, like ear 
Vinson Cunningham: big. The earps with the, with the strings coming down from each flap.
Yes. Ethan Hawke, who I've always loved and was in his twenties, and I think importantly is kind of a young man when he does this. Uh, he just has that wounded, angry indecision. He's a perfect hamlet. And Alomeda at every step is kind of choreographing these wonderful set pieces, whether it's in a a a, a fancy Manhattan apartment or sort of walking down a glass hallway.
Everything is just so. Downbeat, evocative and strangely, it is easily, easily, and I really like Hamlet. It is easily my favorite. Hamlet.
Michael Alomeda, you'll always be famous to me. 
Alex Schwartz: I saw it. I just haven't seen it in many, many years, but I remember being very into it. There's, [00:26:00] there's a scene in the Guggenheim. 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. Yeah. Now, do you have a favorite? 
Naomi Fry: I do. Well, so I was wondering which, uh, version of Hamlin I should rewatch, and then Tom Stopper died.
Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm. 
Naomi Fry: My husband said, why don't you watch Rosen Krantz and Gild Stern are dead and it's a. Some version of Hamlet, the, you know, play written by stopper and first staged in 1966, but then of course, was made by Stopper as well, directed by Stopper as a movie in 1990. Now the stopper play and, and which I've never seen it staged, but I, I rewatched the movie is a classic kind of, um, you know, postmodern gambit, right?
It's, it's, it's kind of switching, switching the focus, kind of like turning the dial on Hamlet to these side characters, right? Mm-hmm. Rose Krantz and [00:27:00] Gilder are. The friends of Hamlet who are used by King Claudius to, uh, help conspire against Hamlet and take him off to England to be killed. Minor characters.
And so it's turning the dial on them from minor to major and it's also turning the dial from tragedy to comedy. And I. Remember watching this movie when it came out again, the nineties being like, oh, this is, this is smart. You know, this is like, I wanna be smart. This is like, oh, it's postmodernism. It's like they're, it's quoting the play, but it's actually about, you know, it's kind of like shifting the stakes of it, et cetera, et cetera.
And then I like was like, okay, I guess I'll watch it. It'll probably be annoying. And I was like, okay, I love this. Beautiful. 
Alex Schwartz: There's nothing better than that. 
Naomi Fry: Yes, first of all. Tim Roth. We love to love, as we say frequently, and Gary Oldman so good in this movie, so charming, so funny. There is a scene [00:28:00] where they talk about death and they're like, okay, what does it mean to be to be dead? Basically?
        CLIP – Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
It really, uh, this is a stupid thing to say, but it really makes you think about the stakes of Hamlet 
Vinson Cunningham: by, 
Naomi Fry: and the stakes of what it means to be alive by kind of like shifting the perspective of it, right? Because. 
Alex Schwartz: Why is that a stupid thing to say? No, it's like, it's like, let's go, 
Naomi Fry: let's go big or go home.
No, but it's like, that's what it's all about on the pod. It's really, it really makes you think about life and death. Okay. No, me, you know, I, I just think that it's like, it's nice to think of like the minor as major. 
Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm. Uh, Alex, I know you kinda wanted talk about some stage adaptations. 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah. I mean, Hamlet is the most theatrical play ever written.
Mm-hmm. It is a play that is obsessed with theater, that has theater at its very heart and center. The play that Hamlet stage is the [00:29:00] mousetrap. To catch the conscience of the King Hamlet is constantly talking about acting. Um, this is a play that is meant to be performed and indeed has been since it came out.
Um, you know, I would've loved to see 55-year-old Sarah Bernhardt performing this thing in the 19th century in Pantaloons. Exactly. What, what a skal That, that just, that is exciting just to think about, but. We do have some little giftee from the past on YouTube.  Here we have Richard Burton, who some people believe to have been the greatest Hamlet on stage. I mean, you know, let's just say in the 20th century. And this was a very famous production of Hamlet that was on Broadway in 1964. It was the longest running Hamlet in Broadway history, and it was directed by the eminent Sir John Gil.
Good. So here's Richard Burton [00:30:00] doing to be or Not to be.
        CLIP – Richard Burton as “Hamlet” 
So I really recommend checking this out on YouTube. There are very beautiful there, many more clips. It's very beautiful and it also is exciting. This is a hot blooded hamlet. Mm-hmm. And I like that. Yeah. Ugh. One of the challenges, I think, yes, Nomi, go 
Naomi Fry: for it. I should note, by the way, since this is an, an auditory medium rather than a visual medium that Richard Burton is wearing a VA black V-neck sweater with nothing on underneath, tell him Nomi, much like Michael Douglas in, uh, basic instinct.
It's, it's a sound I haven't heard since Delta Burke 
Vinson Cunningham: on designing women. I swear to God, that's such a good one. 
Alex Schwartz: It's, it's a V-Neck Richard Burton giving it his all. Um, you know, the thing that is, there's so many things that are brilliant about Hamlet, but one of the things that's brilliant about it [00:31:00] that's really, I would imagine a challenge for an actor 
Vinson Cunningham: mm-hmm.
Alex Schwartz: Is that you have to convey thought as it moves and Yes. That, you know, of course Shakespeare is externalizing thought in this completely. World shaking, amazing, brilliant way where Hamlet is deliberating and considering from the moment he knows and understands from his father's ghost that he's supposed to kill his uncle and take revenge.
He's deliberating how to do it, what to do if the ghost is real, if it's just a phantasm meant to trick him. And then of course, he's contemplating a different kind of action whether or not to go on living and. To be or not to be. The most famous words in the English language have to seem fresh and original.
So I'm always interested. 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. 
Alex Schwartz: When I see productions of Hamlet in how an actor makes that thought move, so. There was a recent production of Hamlet I saw that really, um, got me in that way mm-hmm. That I really enjoyed. Mm-hmm. It's the director, [00:32:00] Robert Ike, the English director who's in his thirties. Um, and he had mounted a production of Hamlet in England with Andrew Scott.
So Andrew Scott was 40 when he played this role. He. Is magnetic in his intensity. 
        CLIP:  Andrew Scott as “Hamlet”
He's able to swerve between the kind of sweetness and genuine loving nature of Hamlet when greeted by friend to this acid antic, very off-putting Hamlet. You see him really wearing his heart on his sleeve.
And then what happened was, uh, the pandemic, our pandemic 
Vinson Cunningham: mm-hmm. 
Alex Schwartz: Of 2020. And when the production came back and when it transferred to the United States. Ike made a decision to cast a much younger Hamlet, the actor Alex Hor, who's a really young guy. He seems young, he's in his early twenties, and he has this wiry, fidgety quality that reminds you that [00:33:00] Hamlet is a college student.
So was he just like fi literally fidgety or like, I mean Yeah, it was, yeah. He had, he had a kind of kinetic quality. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know? Mm-hmm. And he's dealing with the death of his dad at this extremely tender age. And one huge problem for me with Hamlet always always, not in a bad way, in a good way, is the Ophelia character, and his treatment of Ophelia. Why does this young woman get sacrificed for the sake of this greater scheme that doesn’t involve her at all? Does it have to do with hamlet’s deep anger and distrust with women, did he intend for it to happen? What is going on? and in the Alex Lawther version, there’s sex onstage. There’s some fire there. And it just reminded me of how messed up stuff is when you're in your early Joan is, it's messed up.
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah. You can burn really hot and then go really cold, even if your dad doesn't die in this crazy, terrible way. And what I liked about the law through production was just seeing a very young man. He wrestled with these questions and feeling him again to be human. 
Vinson Cunningham: when we're back. Is this 400 year old play more relevant now than ever? That's in a minute. On critics at large from the New Yorker.[00:34:00] 
:: MIDROLL 2 :: 
Vinson Cunningham: [00:00:00] Among the many responses to Hamlet that have appeared and there have been truly many kind of all around the gamut. Um, there was an op-ed in the New York Times. The upshot of it was in the course of calling it like a hamlet for the TikTok generation. Uh, it says every generation gets the Shakespeare it deserves.
This op-ed is by Drew Lichtenberg. Um, I wonder. Whether that thing just about this generational analysis of Hamlet, does that speak to you and does it have anything to do with why we're so captivated by this, again, very old story. 
Alex Schwartz: Well, tell me if I'm wrong, Vincent. 'cause I, I also read this op-ed and my sense of it was that, you know, of course this, the implication that every generation gets the Shakespeare deserves is that.
The current generation does not deserve a very, Shakespeare deserves a bad one. Shakespeare, yes. Yes. Um, there's the, the image that that accompanies this op-ed is Shakespeare being reigned upon by a kind of crown of rain clouds [00:01:00] and, um, poor Shakespeare, poor Shakespeare, and, and the writer Drew Lichtenberg is annoyed.
I think it's fair to say that, um, Paul Mescal, as he says, grunts, wordlessly, mope, seyed, and sides with inexpressible longing that he's kind of this. Inarticulate, which is a surprising choice. Um, gloomy beef cakey guy. Mm-hmm. And he's not into it. And he's not into the biographical Yeah. Reading. 
Vinson Cunningham: He calls it mumble chorus Shakespeare.
Um, I, I saw this movie with. My friend John Pilsen, he is a great photographer. He is also like one of the best people to watch a movie with. And he brought me, he brought to my, uh, recollection the essay by TS Elliot. It's called Hamlet and His Problems. Oh God. And it's Elliot saying, you know, Hamlet's actually a failed artwork.
And I won't recapitulate his arguments, which, most of which I disagree with. But it is a really good, the beginning is really [00:02:00] interesting 'cause he is saying, um. It is been kept alive, this play, and it has an inflated reputation because in the person of Hamlet, certain kinds of, like creatively minded critics are always like writing themselves into it, you know?
Mm. That, uh, no matter who's reading it, they're write, reading themselves into it, and therefore it, it becomes better than in their minds than it really is on the, on quote unquote, the page. Um, I disagree with the sort of. End diagnosis of the play. But I think that's like, it's not just critics who do this.
All of us do this, and that's actually why the play is good. Look, interpretation is part of the, the, the greatness of the play. So why is it that Hamlet is still relevant today? 
Naomi Fry: I think it is about ambivalence and ambiguity. Like I don't think there is one way to read it, and I think. That's why it's, it's, it's productive for reinterpretation.[00:03:00] 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. No, that's why I think it endures is because every generation has its version of the incomprehensible, like every, it's not just the death is always eluding us and ruining our consciousness is, and all these, but it's not just death, it's politics, it's society. Every body has to deal with their own version of, um.
This does not make sense and yet it is. One thing I've been wanting to ask you about is whether Hamlet is itself about a sort of crisis of masculinity. Um, and it just so happens that we are in 2025 in the middle of another crisis of masculinity on a totally societal scale. Does Hamlet speak to that for you at least today?
Alex Schwartz: Oh, as directly as if it had been written into our times. Right. Like, which I think is kind of crazy. Hamlet in is talking to Horatio. We're in Act one. We're very, very early in the play. He's talking to [00:04:00] Horatio, and Horatio is about to tell him that he saw the ghost of his father, and Horatio says, I saw him once.
He was a goodly king, and Hamlet says he was a man. Take him for all in all. I shall not look upon his like again. Mm-hmm. He was a man. This question of what is a man? What makes a man, what makes it's, it's said in the play like it's. He was a king. No. What's better than a king is to be a man. 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. 
Alex Schwartz: And all we hear about these days, I feel we hear about other things too, but a great deal of what we hear about is no one knowing what a man should be.
Yeah. And here is Hamlet who does know what a man should be. It's my dad, but he's gone, and now he doesn't know how to embody that for himself. 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. 
Alex Schwartz: That is why I see Hamlet in our times. I don't know if this strikes you guys as like totally off the mark or too. Cute and neat. 
Naomi Fry: Yeah, no, I mean, I, I think I, I think obviously like any, any kind of it, it's not like a one-to-one.
You're not saying this, you [00:05:00] know, Shakespeare was talking about the manosphere like 400 years ago or, or whatever. I'm kind of saying, but, but yes, but I do think there are resonances, you know, the idea of not measuring up, right. The idea of. We used to have a sense back in the whatever are the good old, old days, whether it's like when daddy was alive or when, you know, the Make America great again of it all right, of of, of like, we knew what men were, men were men, women were women, you know, we weren't walking around bemoaning, you know, being fail sons essentially.
Right. And I think too, that. The question of what is a man that is an issue that we find endlessly fascinating. Fascinating and endlessly important because men, not just men, [00:06:00] women too, but, but the question of like, man making the world and whether that ability to make the world is slipping or. Ascendant or, or whatever it may be, is, is a determining question how the world looks.
And so being given a text that we can look at to think of the variety of ways it, it can go. Mm-hmm. That question can go is, is still more important than ever. 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. Yeah. There is that like generational thing of that's what, that's how I've always read the, you know. Shall not see his like again, like there is an era of manhood that has passed and like, you know, we talk about these statistics.
Female students outnumbering, uh, male students at colleges and universities by like three to two. These days, uh, men are more likely to live with their parents, et cetera. Men die by suicide by increasing increasing amounts. I will just [00:07:00] say anecdotally, men don't even know how to dress anymore. You know, wow.
It's, it's a mess out there. Um, just 
Alex Schwartz: look at Richard Burton and his V-neck for inspiration. Yeah, 
Vinson Cunningham: that's right. And there is this dialectic. You know, when you talk about the, the grimace things, even, you know, political assassination, there is this sense where it's like in the absence of any positive guidance about how to be a man.
The imperative is just to act. You just gotta do stuff. You know, laies is more of an a man of action than Hamlet. And Hamlet's thinking and moping is sort of feminized in the text of the play, Claudius tells, uh, Hamlet that his grief is an unmanly grief, right? That you gotta move on and you have to act.
And we see all this sort of, um. The today's conversations about violence seems so much to be about sort of misplaced action in the [00:08:00] absence of positive ways to be in the absence of, you know, establishing a household or being able to find a first job. There are just these spasms of violence, which we think of as like maybe uniquely American, but we can also think about in this as a kind of lacking a ladder to.
Quote unquote manhood, um, all one can do is kind of act out. 
Naomi Fry: Yeah. In that sense, I think Hamnet is a very liberal movie. Like it's, it's an answer to, to kind of the, the misplaced action. It's the idea of. Let us heal. You know, let us feel sad 
and pick up your pen. 
Yeah, pick up your pen. Run a play, and, and come to terms em.
Embrace your grief. Right. Embrace your grief instead of kind of like just striking out willy-nilly at all directions. Mm-hmm. You know, just act without thinking, think, write, reflect, and, uh. Feel better, and [00:09:00] this 
Alex Schwartz: is everything I hate about the movie, 
right?
Naomi Fry: I'm not, I'm not, this is not a value judgment. I'm just saying, 
I just want, in case anyone forgot, this is, it's, that is what it's 
saying, you know?
Instead, this is the, this is, it's like a new man vibe, right? Mm-hmm. It's, it's, it's not like, let's go back to toughing it out. 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah. I guess I would say, you know, I find it comforting that this kind of nostalgist take on a man's place is at least as old as 1601, which is our, I think our first. Known date of the performance of Hamlet.
Mm-hmm. Um, the deep misogyny in Hamlet too, which is something that is, it's, it's fascinating to contend with. Yeah. Just the anger. The anger, the anger, and to let the anger play out and express itself. And come to this resolution as it does, um, this very, very bloody resolution where no one can survive this, this situation.
Vinson Cunningham: Right. 
Alex Schwartz: I do think it's, I really don't wanna be like, the story of Hamlet is the story of moving [00:10:00] from darkness to light, you know? But there is something that happens in Hamlet. That I do think is relevant to this. Mm. There there is an absolute movement of the character and a transformation of the character that happens over the course of the five acts.
And so you begin with a young man who's in turmoil and chaos, and by the end of the play, a transformation has taken place that allows Hamlet to achieve what I think we would call in modern terms, a real sense of self and a sense of cosmic order. That he is a part of the world that he had felt was turned upside down.
And there was a moment in the final act of the play. In Act five, scene one, Laie arrives. There's about to be a big conflict. Hamlet has killed Polonious. Laie father, Laie sister Ophelia has drowned herself out of grief for Hamlet. And Hamlet identifies himself and he says, this is I Hamlet the Dane. And I think if you're just seeing this play, you're like, yeah, we know.
Like, got it [00:11:00] by now. 
Vinson Cunningham: Thank you. 
Alex Schwartz: But what he's really saying is, I know who I am. My father was Hamlet, the Dane. He was king of Denmark. I am Hamlet, the Dane. I am taking my rightful place. I'm coming to bear accountability. And I think very consequently, when the play ends, these two men kill each other's enemies and then forgive each other.
There is a sense of completion. Yeah. Of not letting these cycles continue. That is really something. And that is like talk about a weeper. Yeah. Hey. 
Vinson Cunningham: And it, it's, and, and sort of maybe it's meta too. It's like he also asks Horatio to tell us that even a, a, a cautionary tale, that communication, that art making itself is a, is a guide through life.
I know we like, you know, most of us feel a certain way about the didactic, but Hamlet seems to see his own life at the end of it as a kind of. Guide to others, 
Alex Schwartz: you know? Yeah. He says, yeah, in this harsh [00:12:00] world, 
Vinson Cunningham: draw th breath and pain to tell my story. 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah. 
Vinson Cunningham: Um, and so the telling is another one of the,[a][b][c][d] is the, is the thing maybe?
Naomi Fry: Yeah. Your tallying is the thing.
Vinson Cunningham: This has been critics at large. Alex Barish is our consulting editor, and Rhiannon Corby is our senior producer. Our executive producer is Steven Valentino. Alexis Rado composed our theme music. And we had engineering help today from James Yost with Mixing by Mike Kuman. You can find every episode of Critics at large at New yorker.com/critics.
We'll see you next week.






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[1] https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/shakespedia/william-shakespeare/shakespeares-wife-and-marriage/
[a]@mike_kutchman@condenast.com something about the way this beat lands here is making it sound like a rough edit. Does cleaning up Vinson's stumble here help?
_Assigned to mike_kutchman@condenast.com_
[b]yes I think that helped
[c]although once you focus on something like this you can't UN-hear it ... is the music still interfering?  I also made the first beat quieter
[d]Sounds way better -- thanks!!