Branagh went on to make some great films, like Shackleton and Warm Springs, both great films, but Hamlet is not spoken of in critical circles as a great film. In Branagh’s film, we have a sumptuous environment of wealth and luxury.

It also affects the atmosphere Shakespeare intended, which was a minimal physical backdrop of battlements, castle walls and huge bare stone halls. However, advancing the period by several hundred years confuses the political background to the play – for example, the tribute that England paid to Denmark in the medieval period doesn’t make sense in the Napoleonic setting. It makes sense cinematically because every scene is filled with the luxury of a late eighteenth-century royal court. That changed the austerity that Shakespeare intended to the more opulent Empire style of Napoleonic Europe. Shakespeare set the play in the medieval period, and he had his reasons for that, but Branagh chose to set it in Napoleonic times. He went on to direct Much Ado About Nothing in 1993, again to wide critical acclaim. It has since become recognised by many critics to be the best film version of any Shakespeare play ever. Long before he started his career in film-making Branagh advocated full-length productions of Shakespeare’s plays on film, and when he had the chance to put his money where his mouth was, he directed a full-length Henry V in 1989. He complained that Shakespeare “has left in superfluous and inconsistent scenes which even hasty revision should have noticed.” It’s possible that Shakespeare didn’t intend it to be that long and that subsequent editing included things that Shakespeare would have excluded for his own production. Even a four-hour stage performance of the play is risky for a director. Moreover, although it is four hours long – much longer than any film has a reasonable right to be – Branagh managed to make it riveting. Whatever else one may say about Kenneth Branagh’s 1996 film adaptation of Hamlet, it is a visual joy. Each Shakespeare’s play name links to a range of resources about each play: Character summaries, plot outlines, example essays and famous quotes, soliloquies and monologues: All’s Well That Ends Well Antony and Cleopatra As You Like It The Comedy of Errors Coriolanus Cymbeline Hamlet Henry IV Part 1 Henry IV Part 2 Henry VIII Henry VI Part 1 Henry VI Part 2 Henry VI Part 3 Henry V Julius Caesar King John King Lear Loves Labour’s Lost Macbeth Measure for Measure The Merchant of Venice The Merry Wives of Windsor A Midsummer Night’s Dream Much Ado About Nothing Othello Pericles Richard II Richard III Romeo & Juliet The Taming of the Shrew The Tempest Timon of Athens Titus Andronicus Troilus & Cressida Twelfth Night The Two Gentlemen of Verona The Winter’s Tale

This list of Shakespeare plays brings together all 38 plays in alphabetical order.

Plays It is believed that Shakespeare wrote 38 plays in total between 15.

Hamlet movie