What do the following oft-uttered quotes have in common?
   
“Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” “When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.” “There are more things in heaven and Earth… than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” “To be or not to be, that is the question.” “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” “This above all, to thine own self be true.” “What a piece of work is man!” “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” “The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.” “Brevity is the soul of wit.” “Murder most foul.” “Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.” “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” “Get thee to a nunnery!”

If you answered that these quotes were all penned by Shakespeare, you get a gold star. If you went so far as to note that every one of these famous quotes appears in Hamlet, please proceed to the front of the class, where you will be exempted from essay writing for the rest of the term. Hamlet may be the most quoted and quotable play ever written, and that is just one reason why it enjoys such popularity more than 400 years after it sprang forth from ol’ Will’s quill.

I can think of no better place to view a production of Hamlet than at the Mary Rippon Theatre on the University of Colorado campus during the Colorado Shakespeare Festival. Cloistered in the courtyard of CU’s Hellems building, the Mary Rippon’s outdoor location and theater-in-the-two-thirds-round design make it ideal for Shakespeare. An evening breeze cools the crowd and billows the smoke behind Hamlet and his ghost father on the parapets. The full moon shines brightly behind the players. Pine trees ringing the stage blur the line between the set and the theater itself. And from a more pragmatic perspective, the new, more comfortable seatbacks take back and ass pain completely out of the equation when one contemplates sitting through Shakespeare beginning to end.

As one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, Hamlet is a mainstay of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival. (After all, you have to give the people what they want, and Shakespeare-lovers are no exception.) This year’s production is directed by the CSF’s producing artistic director, Philip C. Sneed. Where most directors tackling Hamlet hew close to the accepted “best” version found in the Folio, Sneed, a true Anglophile and Bard lover, chose to mine both the First Quarto and the Second Quarto in addition to the Folio to create a deeper, broader Hamlet. The primary result of Sneed’s efforts is that even those keenly familiar with Hamlet will likely observe scenes or particular exchanges with which they are unfamiliar. The secondary result is that Sneed’s Hamlet runs a full three hours, which is neither good nor bad; it just is.

The set and the setting of Hamlet unite to produce a blank canvas of sorts on which audiences may project their own interpretations and flourishes. The period of the play is purposely vague. Some characters appear costumed in Elizabethan style while others wear blue jeans. Claudius is at all times in classic kingly trappings while Horatio, whether by intent or happenstance, bears a striking resemblance to Eric Stoltz’s heroin-dealing character, Lance, in Pulp Fiction. The sword is the most prominent weapon on display, but the gun makes its appearance as well. The minimalist set consists of stone elements, Roman columns and statuary but is largely covered in mottled, corded mystery.

As it competes for space with the four other offerings at this year’s CSF, Hamlet will only be performed 10 times. With only seven of those performances remaining, if you wish to spend some time with the melancholy Dane, I suggest you book your seats today.