1. William Shakespeare
Born ca and died ca. 1616

2. Martin Droeshout
Engraving

3. Chandos Portrait

4. Trinity Church, Stratford Upon Avon, Warwickshire, England 

10. Van Visscher's of 1616

11. A detail from Claes Jansz Visscher’s engraved panorama of London, Londinum Florentissima Britanniae Urbs (1616). The Globe theater is in the center foreground.

14. The King Drinks (ca. 1640), by David Teniers the Younger, depicts a popular ritual associated with Twelfth Night throughout Europe: the person who finds a dried bean in his serving of the “Three Kings cake” is pronounced king for the evening.

15. Two Young Men (ca. 1590), by Crispin van den Broeck.

16. British director Declan Donnellan production featured an all-male Russian cast that performed in a neutral white space with carefully selected props and costumes.
© Photostage

17. In contrast to Donnellan’s all-male cast, the 2007 production by Great Britain’s Royal Shakespeare Company was dubbed “odd and arbitrary in its cross-gender casting, particularly in its use of women to play some of the key [male] comic roles” (Billington).
© Photostage Royal Shakespeare Company / Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, England 05/09/2007

18. In addition to performing the title character, Kevin Kline directed the 1990 production of Hamlet for New York’s Public Theater. Both the performance and the production drew mixed responses from critics. Like actors and directors who have different, frequently conflicting, interpretations of Hamlet, critics also disagree about how the role should be played and whether a particular actor’s performance is a success.
© Martha Swope.

19. William Shakespeare, 1564–1616