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Yet it’s the Bard-infused setting for “Sing Sing,” Greg Kwedar’s deeply felt and finely acted prison film that stars Oscar-nominated Colman Domingo (“Rustin”) and Paul Raci (“Sound of Metal”), plus a brace of former offenders.

The film is compassionate while being cognizant of the convicts’ circumstances. These are imperfect people who, as one convict puts it, are struggling “to become human again.” 

The script, by Kwedar and Clint Bentley, is inspired by the prison’s real-life Rehabilitation Through the Arts program, which stages plays behind bars. Many of the film’s cast are former members of the program.

They include Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, a drug dealer and the film’s angry catalyst, who covets the role of Hamlet in an upcoming RTA comedy, “Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code.”

It’s a time-travel jape that nods to Shakespeare and a host of classic genre characters, including Robin Hood, Captain Hook, Freddy Krueger and a rampaging Egyptian mummy. There are so many characters because the inmates all want their turn in the spotlight.

Divine Eye’s ambitions put him in competition with a character based on a real person: Domingo’s John “Divine G” Whitfield, the RTA co-founder and chief playwright and its most committed Shakespearean actor. Divine G illustrates his obsession at the film’s start with a teary-eyed take on lovestruck nobleman Lysander in an RTA production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

The brusque Divine Eye and personable Divine G regard each other with a wariness born of differences and distrust.

Divine Eye is feared by other inmates — he shows why in a prison yard shakedown over a $500 drug deal — and his application to join the RTA seems at first like a bad joke until he starts quoting random lines from “King Lear.”

Divine G, who is serving 25 years to life for a murder he didn’t commit (he has proof), has made many friends in stir by volunteering as an advocate for his fellow inmates. He had understandably assumed the Hamlet role was his.

He’s flabbergasted and frankly annoyed by this unexpected rivalry. But in the kumbaya spirit of the RTA and the blessing of its get-‘er-done stage director Brent (a wry turn by Raci), Divine Eye’s desires to tread the boards as Shakespeare’s existentially embattled Danish prince is taken seriously.

Ramping up Divine G’s anxieties is an upcoming clemency hearing he’ll soon have with a board that will rule whether or not he deserves freedom. An ardent student of law, he prepares to argue his own case. Divine Eye, meanwhile, regards his own approaching parole board hearing with disdain and fatalism.

But maybe the two aren’t as dissimilar as they seem — they’re both fathers, for one thing — and Divine G can’t help but be impressed by Divine Eye’s commitment to acting.

The action takes place within the claustrophobic confines of the prison (the movie was shot at Sing Sing). It’s difficult to imagine artists gaining a foothold there. But enthusiasm and enterprise make up for the all-too-evident lack of Broadway polish.

Cinematographer Pat Scola (“A Quiet Place: Day One”) frequently emphasizes the imposing size of the prison and the physical smallness of the people within it.

Here’s where the Shakespeare and “Hamlet” connections make the greatest impact. As Divine Eye works at mastering Hamlet’s self doubts through his famous “To be or not to be” speech, he lingers over the line “To sleep, perchance to dream.”

Divine Eye treats it literally, not metaphorically. Perchance to dream, in a place like this? “Sing Sing” makes such reveries seem possible, including dreams of Oscars.