We’re back with the second part of HAMLET, featuring our fantastic guest and VP of Merch Dr Emer McHugh! This time, Polonius is finally concise, the Ghost just wants to go to bed, Horatio and Hamlet somehow end up naked together (whoopsie, how did that happen??), and James gets salty about the lack of stage time for the pirates. With cameos from pelicans, sparrows, and a Danish seal. CONTENT NOTE: Hamlet and this episode discusses suicide and self harm, murder by stabbing and poison, “madness”, grief and burial (including a disrupted funeral). Dr Emer McHugh @emeramchugh is Marie Skłowdowska-Curie Research Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast, working on the project ‘Shakespeare and the Irish Actor’. She specialises in early modern performance studies, Shakespeare and Ireland, histories of actors and acting, theatre and celebrity, gender and sexuality studies, and modern and contemporary Irish and British performance. Her monograph, Irish Shakespeares: Gender, Sexuality, and Performance in the Twenty-First Century, is forthcoming from Routledge. When not working, she’s reading, collecting vinyls, going to the cinema, or watching Frasier or Twin Peaks. Her favourite Christmas album is ‘Christmas’ (1999) by Low.