Hamlet

Hamlet is a five-act stage play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been first performed sometime between 1599 and 1602. Based loosely on Saxo Grammaticus’s account of the Scandinavian legend of Amleth, Hamlet tells the story of the titular Prince of Denmark, who is visited by the ghost of his father. The ghosts tasks Hamlet with avenging his father’s murder at the hands of the villainous Claudius, who is also Hamlet’s uncle and the current king. However, Hamlet is plagued by doubts regarding both the ghost’s origins and the morality of murder, sending him into a spiral of guilt, doubt, and existential dread. Though some readers dismiss Hamlet as a cowardly and indecisive hero, his declining mental state and eloquent, tortured ruminations on death, madness, morality, and revenge have made the play one of Shakespeare’s most celebrated and frequently analyzed works. 

Since its initial performance, Hamlet has remained one of the most frequently performed dramas on an international scale. In addition to the productions based directly on Shakespeare’s work, Hamlet has also been the subject of numerous interpretations and adaptations, ranging from Bollywood musicals (Haider, 2014) to cartoons about regicidal lions (The Lion King, 1994). Furthermore, the many ambiguities within the plot of Hamlet—such as the true nature of Claudius and Gertrude’s relationship, or the romantic history between Hamlet and Ophelia—have inspired novels, plays, films, and other works that attempt to explain or expand upon aspects of the original text. 

The endless possibilities for reinterpretation and adaptation presented by Hamlet have led some scholars to refer to it as a near-universal story, applicable to almost any cultural or political climate. On a more technical level, Hamlet is also often credited with popularizing certain dramatic and literary tropes, such as feigned insanity and the play-within-the-play. Hamlet has gone on to inspire many notable works—such as John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, and David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest—and its many iconic phrases, such as “to be or not to be,” have cemented the play's place in the upper echelons of literary and popular renown.

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) was an English poet and playwright. Despite his widely accepted status as the greatest and most influential figure in the history of English-language literature, relatively little of his life is known. He grew up in Stratford-upon-Avon in a family of comfortable means. At eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children. As a young man, Shakespeare moved to London and became involved in the theater community as an actor, playwright, and company owner. Over the next two decades, his plays became increasingly popular, and his theater company thrived. In 1613, Shakespeare retired to Stratford-upon-Avon, where he died several years later of unknown causes. Given the immense erudition of Shakespeare’s work and the paucity of information about his life, some critics and readers have suspected that Shakespeare was in fact an aristocrat writing under a pseudonym. However, these suspicions remain unsubstantiated.

Shakespeare’s literary output includes a cycle of 154 sonnets, two narrative poems, and 39 plays that range across comedy, tragedy, and history. His formal virtuosity—especially his mastery of prosody, metaphor, and wordplay—are evident throughout all of his work, and his plays are celebrated for their rich dramatic structures and psychological depth.