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A Shakespeare’s Globe performance of Hamlet at the “Jungle” Camp in Calais last week was cut short because “there were a lot of knives around”, organisers have revealed.

Actors performed the play on a makeshift wooden stage to an audience of around 250 people on Wednesday with synopses of the plot given out in Farsi, Arabic, Pashtu and Kurdish.

Dominic Dromgoole, Shakespeare Globe’s artistic director, said the performance was an example of “the ground-breaking tour’s ability to reach displaced people across the world”.

At the time it was reported the production was cut shot because of the cold, but Tom Bird, the executive producer of The Globe said the real reason was because of the presence of knives.

He told The Times: “People were trying to cut through to the backstage.

"There were a lot of knives around.

"That’s what really put me on edge. They were visible and out.”

A Globe spokeswoman said: “We were aware of knives being present, but this was one of several factors that led us to lightly shorten what was always going to be a shortened version of the production.”