William Shakespeare’s plays have become some of the most influential works of literature today, many of which are still read four hundred years after the playwright's death. One of these works is Hamlet, the story of the Danish prince as he seeks revenge for the murder of his father, the previous King of Denmark. The play performed on a stage, however, has also been turned into a countless number of films. In a 1996 version of Hamlet, director Kenneth Branagh uses flashbacks and inserts other scenes that aren’t found in William Shakespeare’s written version of the play to add another layer to the meaning of the work, and give the audience a better understanding of the play and the characters themselves. These additional scenes, in particular the scene involving King Hamlet’s murder, enhance the meaning of the play, and fill in the imagination of the audience in a way that can’t be done by Shakespeare’s words alone.
With only Shakespeare’s words, the audience of the written play knows that King Claudius killed his brother because of his desire for power. One of the scenes used to enhance the meaning of the play is the one where Branagh shows the King Hamlet’s murder, done by his brother. The first time this scene appears in the movie, it’s
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The actor portraying the murdered king looks as if he’s about to explode, holding his head, and screaming, but due to the voice over, there is no sound coming from his screams. When no sound is coming from the scream, the scream could be too agonizing for the audience to hear. It shows the audience how excruciating the pain was for the king as he was poisoned by his brother. It also helps with Hamlet, as the audience can know understand that he feels the pain of his father’s murder, seeing it as he understood it to have