Shakespeare did this unconsciously, we might say.
And so first the playwright seeks to engage his audience, and only then, by happenstance and indirection, to inspire and to inform. A play is to divert, to entertain, to allow us to identify with others who trials and tribulations are so like our own. How they would have bemused and delighted an Elizabethan audience.Branagh's ambitious Hamlet is also one of the most accessible and entertaining, yet without the faintest hint of any dumbing down or abbreviation. Playwright who wrote with precious few stage directions-interpretation was left to the direction and the actors, an open invitation that Branagh rightly accepts.The use of flashback scenes of things implied, such as the amorous union of Ophelia and her Lord Hamlet abed, or of a vast expanse of snow darkened with distant soldiers to represent the threat of Fortinbras' army from without, and especially the vivid remembrance in the mind's eye of the new king's dastardly deed of murder most foul, helps us all to more keenly appreciate just what it is that torments Hamlet's soul.
