Where Is Everyone?

A castle isn’t occupied by just a King and Queen. There have to be guards, servants, cooks, guests, etc., yet Shakespeare only mentions three in the opening act. I suppose it’s all implied, but I would still like to know what Shakespeare envisioned the setting of Hamlet to look like, and how much of a role he had in the actual designing of the set (I’ve found descriptions of the Globe Theater’s layout, but not of what Shakespeare’s sets looked like). Did he intend the fictional Elsinore to be viewed/imagined exactly like Kronborg Castle, in Helsingor, Denmark?

To take a guess, I would say he kept his sets minimal, since that is how most modern play adaptions are. Modern movie adaptions on the other hand, place great detail into set design, so perhaps it’s just a matter of what the medium allows for (changing the background for every scene during a live performance seems like a daunting task). I’ve only been able to find one film adaption that keeps the set minimal, and that is the 1969 British adaption by director Tony Richardson.



“a small budget and a very minimalist set, consisting of Renaissance fixtures and costumes in a dark, shadowed space. A brick tunnel is used for the scenes on the battlements. The Ghost of Hamlet's father is represented only by a light shining on the observers.”