Hamlet
Hamlet,a tragedy by Shakespeare , written perhaps, in its first version, in mid- 1599 , probably completed by 1601 : it was registered as ‘latelie Acted’ in July 1602 . A short text probably reconstructed from memory by actors was published 1603 and a good text, almost twice as long, 1604 – 5 . The Folio text ( 1623 ) adds some passages not in the second quarto, and omits others. References by Nashe , Lodge , and others show that a play on the same subject (now lost) preceded Shakespeare's; it was presumably a source. His chief non-dramatic source was Saxo Grammaticus 's narrative in his Historiae Danicae, as retold by Belleforest in his Histoires tragiques.
Old Hamlet, king of Denmark, is recently dead, and his brother Claudius has assumed the throne and married his widow Gertrude. Young Hamlet, returning from university at Wittenberg, learns from the ghost of his father that Claudius...
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