Years before Hamlet uttered, "To be or not to be," things were not yet rotten in the State of Denmark. In Elsinore, an inspired prequel to Shakespeare's classic, both family and kingdom are poisoned by power, lust, envy, betrayal, and murder.  Elsinore imagines the years before Hamlet avenges his fathers' murder - allowing us to experience the precise moment before Hamlet begins - so we empathize even more how the noble prince is made distraught and melancholy by his father’s death and fueled to avenge Claudius' marriage to his mother and succession to the throne.