S2E3 A Play Full of Quotes

To Be Or Not To Be: Shakespeare Unlocked

In this episode we consult an online database, HyperHamlet, run by Professor Regula Hohl Trillini, which lists not just the way Hamlet has been endlessly quoted in the last four centuries, but also unpicks the way Shakespeare was in turn using quotes he'd scooped up from the books he'd read - quite possibly at school. We look at the theory of Professor Joel Altman, who suggested that the practice of rhetoric and the recycling of classical quotations, taught to all Elizabethan grammar school students like Shakespeare, led to Hamlet's philosophical despair. We also look at the value of Hamlet's argumentative, questing mind, and how useful it would be in today's struggle against extremism, radicalisation and fake news.