In which country has Hamlet mattered most, politically, over the last couple of centuries? Despite a succession of celebrity stage productions, the answer probably isn't Shakespeare's sometime homeland. Modern British nationalism has certainly found the cult of Shakespeare as the indigenous voice of Warwickshire quite useful from time to time, whether the task at hand has been claiming legitimacy for imperialism or just trying to boost the tourist industry, but such feeling is nowadays more closely associated with outdoor productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream than with Hamlet.

LRB 6 August 2009 | PDF Download