Shakespeare in the news | January 2026

We’re sharing some of the stories about Shakespeare from the news in December 2025 and January 2026, including filmmakers continued fascination with the “To be or not to be” speech from Hamlet; the similarities actor Luke Thompson finds with Shakespeare and Bridgerton; how King Lear ended up in a Beatles’ song; new scientific experiments to find Richard III’s voice; and remembering Tina Packer of Shakespeare & Company.

To Be or Not to Be: That Is the Question Filmmakers Can’t Resist

Right now, Shakespeare’s soliloquy can be heard onscreen—not once but twice—in Hamnet. But as New York Times movie critic Alissa Wilkinson shares, the speech shows up in so many different ways on film that the words remain fresh.

In Chloé Zhao’s drama Hamnet, an adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel, we encounter the most famous soliloquy in English literature twice. In the first instance, Paul Mescal, playing Shakespeare, stands on the edge of a wall at night, looking at water below in which, presumably, he might drown himself. He is bereft at the loss of his 11-year-old son, who drew his last breath before the father could arrive. Bleary with grief, the Bard gets the words out slowly, as if trying to find his way through fog: “To be … or not to be? That … is the question.” You aren’t quite sure if he’ll make it all the way through or heave himself into the sea.

Later, this contemplation reappears in a much different mouth: that of a young actor, played by Noah Jupe, who looks like a little golden god, all blond curls and clear-skinned smiles. He nears the edge of the Globe Theater stage; it is the first performance of Shakespeare’s masterwork. “To be, or not to be?” he puts to the crowd, as if it’s a bit of a philosophical question they might all ponder together.

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In both scenes, the lines seem emotionally authentic: This passage can be an inquiry as well as a lament, at once an existential interrogation and a guttural cry. Read Hamlet’s monologue when you are idly pondering the meaning of life, and it is a great thought experiment. Read it when your heart is breaking, and it is a wrecked soul’s whimper.

This speech’s great emotional flexibility is among its wonders, and must have to do with its primal simplicity. The first and most famous phrase—to be, or not to be—is only six syllables long, only four unique words, each so short and easy that we learn them in the earliest weeks of literacy. The main building block of the phrase is an irregular verb, “to be,” that is both the most complicated of all verbs in English and the most common. It can be about existence, or occurrence, or the possession of a characteristic, all fundamental facts of living.

More …
Hamnet and the 400-year-old mystery around Shakespeare’s wife and son 

Luke Thompson Draws on His Shakespeare Roles for Bridgerton

There’s a new romantic lead for season 4 of Bridgerton, which begins streaming on Netflix this week. Luke Thompson, whose first acting job was at Shakespeare’s Globe and who more recently played Berowne in Love’s Labor’s Lost at the Royal Shakespeare Company, says: “In its essence, Bridgerton has a very Shakespearean sensibility… both deal with heightened reality and both have used historical settings—onscreen, Britain’s Regency era; in plays like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ancient Athens—to explore contemporary concerns.” There’s even a masked ball where Thompson’s character Benedict Bridgerton falls in love with a lady in disguise. “Very Shakespeare.”

Adjoa Andoh, who plays Lady Danbury in Bridgerton, is the recipient of the inaugural Director’s Residency for Artists and Intellectuals at the Folger

Actor, writer, and director Adjoa Andoh, best known for playing Lady Danbury in Bridgerton and its prequel Queen Charlotte, will be in residence at the Folger in April for a week of research in the collection and education and public programs, including a screening of Shakespeare’s Globe’s Richard II—the UK’s first all woman-of-color production—conceived, co-directed, and starring Andoh in the title role.

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Watch | Hamlet in the Round Discussion at the National Theatre  

Ian McKellen, Rory Kinnear, Adrian Lester, Alex Jennings, Michelle Terry, and Hiran Abeysekera share their insights and experiences playing Hamlet at the National Theatre and beyond, revealing the challenges and joys behind Shakespeare’s most iconic role.

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Twelfth Night Reunion
Judi Dench, Stephen Fry, Simon Callow, Robert Lindsay, Anne Reid, Gyles Terera, and Penelope Wilton talk about Shakespeare’s comedy of mistaken identity.  

Listen | The Beatles’ “I Am the Walrus” and Shakespeare 

The Beatles’ 1967 track, “I Am the Walrus,” draws from many sources, including avant-garde composer John Cage and Shakespeare’s King Lear. “Cage had a piece that started at one end of the radio’s range,” McCartney explained in a 2025 interview with The Guardian. “He just turned the knob and went through to the end, scrolling randomly through all the stations. I brought that idea to ‘I Am the Walrus’. I said, ‘It’s got to be random.’ We ended up landing on some Shakespeare, King Lear. It was lovely having that spoken word at that moment.”

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Hear the original BBC performance of Act IV, scene 6 of King Lear  

Watch | Reconstructing the voice of Richard III

Richard III expert Matthew Lewis follows a remarkable attempt to get as close as we can to how Richard spoke over 500 years ago. Voice coach Yvonne Morley-Chisholm and facial reconstruction specialist Professor Caroline Wilkinson and her team at FaceLab—having painstakingly recreated Richard’s face (based on his rediscovered skull in 2012)—use computer models to reanimate the face to speak Richard’s own words. Top experts from historic speech, regional pronunciation, anatomy, theater, history, psychology, and even dentistry contribute to the project.

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In Search of the Real Richard III 

Read | Five Shakespeare-inspired novels

The Five Books site ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview. For books inspired by Shakespeare and his play, Five Books talks with Sally O’Reilly, author of the Hagtale: A Macbeth Origin Story, who says: “There is so much breadth to Shakespeare, so much you can take from his work. It can inspire different kinds of writing that are quite tangential to the original plays.” O’Reilly recommends five creative retellings of Shakespearean stories—from a brilliantly absurdist Tom Stoppard play to an elliptical short story by Jorge Luis Borges.

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Quiz: Do You Know These Book Titles Inspired by Shakespeare? 

Remembering Tina Packer (1938–2026)

Director, actor, and teacher Tina Packer, a passionate and prolific interpreter of Shakespeare, passed away this month at 87. The founder and long-time artistic director of Shakespeare & Company in western Massachusetts, Packer directed all of Shakespeare’s plays over five decades; along with S&C co-founder Kristin Linklater, she trained and inspired numerous theater artists; and beginning in the 1990s, she performed “Women of Will” about Shakespeare’s female characters in 25 plays at theater and universities across the country. In a touching remembrance, WBUR in Boston wrote, “Theater in New England was never more alive than when Tina Packer was involved in one of her myriad ways.”