Events › Holding up a Mirror to Nature: Hamlet and Hamnet

An exploration of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Maggie O'Farrell’s novel Hamnet.  

This course invites participants into an examination and conversation around Shakespeare’s most iconic tragedy HAMLET and the novel HAMNET by Maggie O’Farrell. 

Through a close reading of Shakespeare’s text, themes, characters and historical contexts alongside some careful selections from the novel participants will get to contrast and compare, discuss and discern fact from fiction and how Shakespeare’s life might have inspired his artmaking and how that art has inspired ever more.

Our sessions will spend the majority of the time on an overview of Hamlet, including a few deep dives on famous speeches, themes, and characters. We will explore what is lost and gained by drawing a thread between Shakespeares’s life (fact and fiction) and the original play of HAMLET and the novel and film and play called Hamnet.

Whether you are a Shakespeare skeptic, die hard fan of Hamlet (or Hamnet the novel, film or play or whether you are brand new to the bard (or to any of his mythology!) - this session is for you.

Sponsored by Bellevue Friends of the Library

Please register if you would like to receive email relevant to the class.

Reasonable accommodation for people with disabilities is available by request. Email access@kcls.org at least seven days before the event. Automated closed captioning is always available for online events.