Inside the fortress that inspired Hamlet

As Radiohead and the RSC launch an innovative reinterpretation of Hamlet, a visit to the play's setting in Denmark brings a new dimension to the tragedy.

There's a cold wind blowing from the Øresund Sound as I stand on a platform in front of Kronborg Castle in Helsingør, Denmark, looking out to Sweden. At one end of the platform, a pillar-box red guard post stands beside a row of impressive cannons facing the strait. I'm not here for the view though: I'm looking for ghosts. 

This windy spot is the exact location for the opening scene of Hamlet, Shakespeare's best-known tragedy. Here, two guards, Francisco and Bernardo, switch posts in the middle of the night and speak of the ghost of Hamlet's father. The castle behind me, a grand Renaissance pile built in 1574 complete with fairytale turrets, a moat and a grand banqueting hall, is where the rest of the lurid drama unfolds.

This year, the Royal Shakespeare Company is presenting no fewer than three variations on the story: a radical adaptation using Radiohead's album Hail to the Thief as its score (from 27 April); Fat Ham, a comic tragedy that transplants Hamlet's story into the Deep South (from 15 August); and a traditional take in Rupert Goold's production starring Luke Thallon (from 8 February). For context, the last time the RSC staged Hamlet was back in 2006. 

"There's something in the air right now saying that the play has resonance," says Tamara Harvey, co-artistic director at the RSC, noting that all three producers had approached the RSC to stage their productions in the same year. 

As a play that deals with themes of generational differences and changing world orders, not to mention the sense that "there's something rotten in the state of Denmark" – the idea that society's foundations no longer feel secure – it's hard to miss its appeal.

Today, nothing looks rotten in Helsingør – the modern-day name for Shakespeare's town of Elsinore. The sky is blue and the sun is glinting off a gold flag flying at the top of one of the turrets. I'm on a tour with castle host Louise Older Steffensen to uncover Kronborg's Hamlet connections. Our feet echo as we walk around the stone corridors and into the grand ballroom with its chequerboard floor and soaring wooden ceiling, as she tells me there is no evidence that Shakespeare ever visited Kronborg – but he certainly knew it well.

"We have contracts that tell us that Shakespeare's colleagues visited the castle," she says. "We know that the actors Thomas Pope, George Bryan and William Kempe were here for a season, performing plays for the Danish king. When they returned to England, they set up the Lord Chamberlain's Men, Shakespeare's company."

They may have brought back tales of what happened within its walls. A distinctive celebration is mentioned in the play: a toast followed by the bang of a kettle drum, a trumpet, and a cannon – and it comes from a tradition followed in the castle at that time.

In a dimly lit room next to the ballroom, the tapestries from that era are on display, their gilded threads depicting mythologised kings. Long curtains hang around the queen's bedchamber and around the castle, softening the sandstone walls, dampening sound and making it a fraction warmer – as well as providing opportunities for dramatic intrigue. 

Visiting the castle feels like being immersed in the play, walking down the large gallery where the silk dresses of the ladies-in-waiting would have rustled into its beautifully preserved church. It's as if the play itself has come to life, and the castle plays up to that theatricality. In the summer, special tours invite guests to participate in Hamlet-inspired murder mystery-style tours, and in the autumn, Hallowe'en tours take place in the creepy basements. Nobody, to date, has seen the ghost of Hamlet's father – but there have been other ghostly sightings, according to Steffensen and assorted castle guides.

More clues about the importance of this castle to Shakespeare emerge as Steffensen gives me a history lesson. James I married Denmark's teenage princess, Anne, in 1589. When Queen Elizabeth I died in 1603 and King James ascended to the throne, England had a Danish queen.

"The first quarto – written very early in 1603 – is set in Denmark," said Steffensen, "but there are no specific locations in it. After Anne becomes Queen of England, we get references to the castle itself."

King James became the patron of Shakespeare's company and their name changed from "The Lord Chamberlain's Men" to "The King's Men" in 1603. Queen Anne's castle in Denmark became an important location for the royal family and thus gained a starring role in the play.

We climb to the top of the cannon tower, a large flat space in a corner of the castle. Views reach across the moat to the yellow barracks buildings around it and to the town beyond. It's in one of these barracks buildings, the former infirmary that is now the headquarters of the town's Shakespeare Festival, where I find out more about the legacy of Hamlet in Helsingør.

Lars Romann Engel, CEO and artistic director of HamletScenen, the castle's professional theatre body, welcomes me into a hallway-cum-gallery of Hamlet actors through the decades. In a who's who of Hamlets, black and white headshots of Jude Law, Kenneth Branagh, Sir John Gielgud, Derek Jacobi, David Tennant, Richard Burton and Christopher Plummer cover the walls and stairwell.

Hamlet played a part in reinventing this town into a cultural hub after its shipbuilding industry collapsed in the 1980s, as the municipality devised a way to create a producing theatre at the Unesco-listed castle. Engel set up the town's Shakespeare festival, which takes place at the castle every August, showing adaptations of Hamlet in many guises; previous shows have included Spaghetti Western versions, dark German variants by experimental theatre Schaubüne and a sell-out staging starring Jude Law.

As well as Hamlet, the festival typically also produces a lighter Shakespeare work, often with music and other events. Both plays are performed in the open air with the castle as a backdrop; tickets book out a long way in advance and the audience typically shows up with a picnic.

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A trained theatre director himself, Engel directed a very successful adaptation of Hamlet in 2008, set in the castle's courtyard with tumbledown walls and crumbling masonry – starring a young Claes Bang as Rosenkrantz – and, after a mutual decision with the local municipality, set up the festival following its success. He has been running and directing the event for the past 17 years. 

"When you see Hamlet here, you know that you enter the myth," said Engel. "Now you are at the epicentre of it all. It's a special thing: it was actually here that it was written for."

Engel takes me on a tour of some of the other barracks buildings, ending in the Lapidarium, the sculpture storage room of the castle, where a full-size sculpture of Shakespeare sits beside a sleeping Viking warrior, Holger Danske. Danske is another significant figure for the castle: according to legend, when Denmark needs him, he'll wake up and come to its aid. A reproduction of this original model lurks in the gloom of the castle cellars. 

Engel is in the throes of arranging this year's festival, which will take place 6-24 August and feature both Twelfth Night and Hamlet, performed by The Lord Chamberlain's Men, who take a classical Elizabethan approach to the works and perform with an all-male cast. 

"This year we've taken a more classical approach," said Engel, "because right now the world is edgy. When we are a little afraid, we don't like it to be upside down and we want it to be more as we know it."

In testament to the endless ways the play can be reinvented, however, Engel also plans to put on Eddie Izzard's one-person Hamlet at the stage this year. It's often said that every minute of every day, Hamlet is being performed somewhere in the world. Shakespeare's most popular play in his lifetime has an afterlife, 425 years later, that surpasses all expectations.

"It's one of the greatest pieces of writing in the English language, dealing with the very nature of human existence," says Harvey. "A play wrangling with this fundamental issue with such complexity is always going to mean different things to different people."

Visiting Kronborg Castle, experiencing the "set" of the play in real life, certainly brings it to life. As I exit the castle, crossing the bridge over the moat, past the guardhouse to the grass fortifications around the castle, the sounds of marching feet echo through the sound system. I'm back in the world of the play, at the end of Hamlet, joining the march where the prince's body is taken away.

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