Why should Hamlet die? Mortality in Elizabethan writing

‘To be, or not to be,’ How exactly does the poetry of Hamlet actualise the cultural awareness of death in Shakespeare’s time? In this talk, BRLSI Poetry Convenor Duncan McGibbon discusses the role of death in one of Shakespeare’s most celebrated tragedies. Exploring how a play encompassing mourning, a haunting, an offstage assassination, and a suicide, has come to be seen as singular rather than a representation of the cultural landscape of its time. With a comparative spotlight shone on Elizabethan writers, Andrew Marvell and Sir Walter Raleigh, if you love English Literature this is really one not to miss!

Duncan McGibbon is a published poet who has given many readings and talks both at BRLSI and in the community.