Victoria Everitt as Lord Montague Much has been written about
the relationship between three pairs of fathers and sons in
Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In all three relationships the father’s
death precedes the son’s, but two sons, Hamlet and Laertes, seek
personal revenge for their fathers’ murders and are in turn
murdered, while another son, Fortinbras, prince of Norway, seeks
only to complete his father’s life work (to reclaim land from
Denmark) and survives the tragedy. Scholars have long
conjectured that the death of Shakespeare’s own father in 1601
may have inspired some of these intense father-son dynamics in
Hamlet, which was first performed near the time of John
Shakespeare’s death. It does give one food for thought. When I
was cast as Lord Montague in Romeo and Juliet, I chose to focus
on the relationship between Lord Montague and his son Romeo as
my springboard for characterization. It is evident throughout
the play that Juliet has a complex and volatile relationship
with both her mother and her father, wh