Today is celebrated as the Bard’s birthday (his actual date of birth isn’t quite certain). In the centuries that his plays and poems have been performed, they are still breaking new ground and finding new resonances, thanks to a new generation of directors and actors bringing them up to date. One of those actors is East London-born, twenty-eight-year-old Paapa Essiedu. Essiedu’s talent in theatre and the performing arts was recognized early on (he won a scholarship to the Forest School) and in 2012 he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 2016 he made history when he was cast, aged just twenty-five, as Hamlet in the RSC’s production of the play, directed by Simon Godwin—becoming the first black actor to ever play the Dane on stage in Stratford-Upon-Avon.
