Hamlet

The third quarto of Hamlet (1605); a straight reprint of the 2nd quarto (1604)

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is a tragedy by William Shakespeare and is one of his best-known and most-quoted plays. The evidence suggests that it was complete and being performed by 1600, but had some topical references added (which still survive) the following year.

Hamlet is probably the most popular of Shakespeare's plays, judging by the number of productions. The plot of Hamlet is immensely well received: it is an exciting revenge tragedy of fratricide, murder, existientialist self-questioning and ghostly intervention. Moreover, Hamlet is Shakespeare's longest play, and the part of the Prince is by far the biggest role in any of them.

Sources

Hamlet and Horatio in the cemetery by Eugène Ferdinand Victor Delacroix

The story of the Danish Prince "Amleth", who plots revenge on his uncle, the current king, for killing his father, the former king, is an old one based on legend. Many of the story elements — Hamlet's feigned madness, his mother's hasty marriage to the usurper, the testing of the prince's madness with a young woman, the prince talking to his mother and killing a hidden spy, the prince being sent to England with two retainers and substituting for the letter requesting his execution one requesting theirs — are already here in this medieval tale, recorded by Saxo Grammaticus in his Gesta Danorum around 1200. A reasonably accurate version of Saxo was rendered into French in 1570 by François de Belleforest in his Histoires Tragiques.

Shakespeare's main source, however, is believed to be an earlier play — now lost (and possibly by Thomas Kyd) — known as the Ur-Hamlet. This earlier Hamlet play was in performance by 1589, and seems to have introduced a ghost for the first time into the story. Scholars are unable to assert with any confidence how much Shakespeare took from this play, how much from other contemporary sources (such as Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy), and how much from Belleforest (possibly something) or Saxo (probably nothing). But certainly, Shakespeare's Hamlet has elements that the medieval version does not: the secrecy of the murder, a ghost that urges revenge, the "other sons" Laertes and Fortinbras, the testing of the king via the play within the play, and the mutually fatal nature of Hamlet's (nearly incidental) "revenge".

Text

There are three extant texts of Hamlet from the early 1600s: two quarto editions, and one from the first folio.

The first quarto's rendering of the 'To be or not to be' speech

The text of the play we know today was essentially bequeathed to us in 1733 by Lewis Theobold, one of the first editors of Shakespeare. He combined the material he had from the two earliest sources of Hamlet that he knew about, the quarto of 1604/5 and the First Folio of 1623. The quarto had some material the folio lacked, and vice-versa. Basically, his approach was to include everything, since he didn't want to lose any of Shakespeare's words. (Of course it was not that simple: he still had to make many editorial choices for all those passages that were in both versions but differed somewhat in each. Plus there was much that made no sense in either.) Theobold's knowledge of Shakespeare's reading and of Elizabethan English allowed him to produce a version that became the standard for a very long time. Certainly, the "full text" philosophy that he established has held to the current day. Modern editors do essentially the same thing Theobold did, also using, for the most part, the 1604/5 quarto and the 1623 folio. However, in 1823 there was discovered another quarto publication of the play — the "bad" quarto — that was obviously corrupt as compared to the known 1605 quarto and 1623 folio versions, with garbled passages and mixed-up and missing scenes. It was drastically shorter than either of the other two and was published in 1603 — a year before the "good" quarto. Thus, the Good Quarto of 1604/5 is now called "Q2" and the Bad Quarto of 1603 is "Q1".

Publication date does not, however, indicate priority — Q1 was not an earlier version of a play that was then revised and bulked-up for publication in 1604. Rather, Hamlet (based on other evidence) had been written and in performance since 1600 or 1601 at the latest, and James Roberts had entered its particulars into the Stationer's Register in 1602, either an intention to print or a blocking entry to keep others from doing so. It seems, though, that the 1603 version was pirated by an actor who had played Marcellus and Voltemand and reconstructed from memory the acting version he had actually played in, and then printed in defiance of Roberts. Its printing was not authorized, and the title page of the 1604/5 quarto (Q2) that was finally printed by Roberts refers disparagingly to this 1603 version.

Bad as the Bad Quarto is, it does however give us, as through a glass darkly, a glimpse of how Hamlet was mounted in Shakespeare's day. Q2 and the Folio provide full-text rather than "acting" versions of the play. They are too long and their stage directions — in Q2 in particular, though still to some degree in the Folio — are insufficient. A performance text had to be short enough and precise enough about entrances, exits and stage business to provide a playable script to run through in two hours or so of an Elizabethan afternoon. If Q1 has any use, it is in showing us something of what was done rather than what was said. For while "Marcellus" failed often and egregiously to reproduce the wording of speeches, he was unlikely to forget whether Hamlet jumped into the grave to fight Laertes, or Laertes jumped out.

John Dover Wilson made an heroic study of Q2 that started modern editors thinking more critically about its reliability. Today, while some use Q2 as the base text for the play while still (as is traditional) including any extra material from the First Folio text, there are others who assume that the First Folio Hamlet, with its excisions and additions vis a vis Q2, is the more reliable, and that where Q2 disagrees with the Folio, Q2 is wrong. This implies a somewhat different play, especially in a few key areas. Hibbard and Edwards, for example, would leave out the "trust as I will adders fanged...hoist with his own petard" speech that Hamlet makes as he is leaving his mother's "closet". This speech is illogical — it contradicts Hamlet's later telling Horatio that he only learned of the king's treachery when he was on shipboard. But it is such a lovely — and famous! — little speech! Likewise, the "how all occasions do inform against me...my thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth" soliloquy would have to go. In fact, the Folio Party would cut that scene (Act IV, scene iv) to a bare half-dozen lines, just to allow Fortinbras to march briefly through the play so the audience can be ready for him when he comes back at its end.

A detail of the engraving of Daniel Maclise's 1842 painting The Play-scene in Hamlet, portraying the moment when the guilt of Claudius is revealed.

This is another painful excision — of one of the most-loved speeches in literature. But it is quite possible that Shakespeare wanted it gone: it contributes nothing to the action and seems out of place as Hamlet is being hustled under guard out to a sea voyage.

List of characters

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

Prince Hamlet, the title character, is the son of the late King, also named Hamlet. He is just back from Wittenberg, where he was a sometime student at the university.

• Claudius, King of Denmark, Hamlet's uncle

Claudius is the current King of Denmark, Hamlet's uncle, who succeeded to the throne upon the death of his brother, the old King Hamlet. He also, in short order, married Gertrude, his brother's widow. He is revealed to be the killer of King Hamlet.

• Gertrude, Queen of Denmark, Hamlet's mother

Gertrude is Hamlet's mother. Widowed by King Hamlet's death, she rather too quickly wedded Claudius. In Shakespeare's England marriage to the brother of one's deceased husband was considered incest by the Church.

• Ghost appearing to be Hamlet's father, the former king

The ghost is, in form, the old King Hamlet, but may be an evil spirit. The old king has died recently, so his spirit, while suffering in Purgatory, could be walking at night, vexed and vengeful.

• Polonius, counselor to the king

Polonius (who was known as Corambis in the "bad" first quarto) is Claudius's chief advisor and father to Ophelia and Laertes. He is old, and often humourously played as fatuous and long-winded.

• Laertes, his son

Laertes is a young aristocrat who has been living in Paris, come home for the coronation of Claudius. "Laertes" is, of course, the name of Odysseus's father in Homer's epics.

File:Ophelia 1894.jpg

Ophelia by John William Waterhouse.

• Ophelia, his daughter

Ophelia is Polonius's daughter. She and Hamlet have had a romance, although whether it was mainly in the form of letters, gifts, and significant looks, or had advanced further, is not clear.

• Reynaldo, his servant
• Horatio, Hamlet's friend and fellow-student

Horatio is a friend of Hamlet's from Wittenberg. Apparently a Dane, he had come to Elsinore for old Hamlet's funeral and has stayed on. He is viewed as a "scholar", and converses easily with almost everyone in the court, from the guards to the royals.

• Marcellus, Barnardo, Francisco, officers of the watch
• Voltemand, Cornelius, ambassadors to Norway
• Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, former schoolfellows of Hamlet

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are old school-fellows of Hamlet. If they knew him at university, it must have been a while ago, as they seem not to know Horatio, a "scholar" from Wittenberg. Both their names were extant in Denmark at the time Shakespeare composed Hamlet, so he could have gotten them from a number of sources.

• Fortinbras, Prince of Norway

Fortinbras is the Norwegian crown prince. He is the son of King Fortinbras, who was killed in battle by Hamlet's father, so he, too, has vengeance on his mind. His firm and decisive action contrasts with Hamlet's procrastination. His name means "strong arm".

• Captain in the Norwegian army
• First Player
• Other Players
• Osric, Lord, Gentleman, courtiers

Osric is a courtier, "full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse", who referees the sword fight between Hamlet and Laertes.

• First Clown, a gravedigger and sexton

A popular character, he is almost never cut in performance. What would Hamlet be without Yorick's skull?

• Second Clown, his assistant
• Sailor
• Messenger
• Priest
• English Ambassador
• Lords, Attendants, Sailors, Soldiers, Guards

Plot summary

Marcellus, Horatio, Hamlet, and the Ghost by Henry Fuseli.

The plot focuses on the revenge of Prince Hamlet, whose father, the late King of Denmark, victor over the Polish army, died suddenly while Hamlet was away from home at Wittenberg University, purportedly bitten by a venomous snake. Prior to the opening of the play, the King's brother Claudius has been proclaimed king, who cemented his claim to the throne by marrying Hamlet's mother Gertrude, the widowed Queen.

Setting the story

The play opens on the battlements of Elsinore Castle, seat of the Danish monarchy, where a group of sentries are visited by the ghost of the recently deceased King Hamlet. Hamlet's friend Horatio joins the soldiers on their watch and when the ghost appears, bids it to speak. They suspect it has some message to deliver, but it vanishes without speaking.

The next day, the Danish court meets to celebrate the wedding of Claudius and Gertrude. The new King urges Hamlet not to persist in his grief. When he is alone, Hamlet expresses his anger at the accession of his uncle Claudius to the throne and his mother's hasty remarriage. Horatio and the guards come to the scene and tell him of the appearance of the ghost of his father. Hamlet determines to investigate this.

Joining Horatio on the watch on the battlements that night, the ghost appears again. It beckons him to come along with him and then reveals a fearful secret: his father was murdered. He was poisoned through the ear by Claudius, and the Ghost commands Hamlet to avenge him. Shocked by this discovery, Hamlet returns to Horatio and the sentries, making them swear an oath not to reveal details of the night's events to anyone.

"But know, thou noble youth,

The serpent that did sting thy father's life

Now wears his crown."

[Act 1, Scene 5]

Main Action

While the play is part of the tradition of the "revenger tragedy," much of the action revolves around Hamlet's internal deliberations as he tries to ascertain whether or not the ghost he has seen is really his father. According to the medieval Christian cosmology, the ghost might be his father's aggrieved spirit or it might be the Devil taking his father's appearance in order to take Hamlet's soul to hell. In order to test the veracity of the spirit, Hamlet undertakes to test the king's conscience through putting on an "antic disposition" (feigning madness), in the hope that his behavior might uncover the truth, and provide an opportunity to kill Claudius.

Hamlet and Ophelia by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Feigning insanity, Hamlet delights in making a fool of Polonius, the king's chief councillor, and the voice of common sense and probity in the play. Unfortunately, in a world polluted by Claudius' treachery, such probity is out of place. Polonius, convinced of Hamlet's madness, is certain that it stems from his unrequited love for his daughter Ophelia, whom both he and Laertes, her brother, forbade to continue her relationship with Hamlet. As court councillor, Polonius also has to fear for his status at court, so his advice also serves the purpose of absolving himself of any guilt before the King. He suggests arranging a meeting between Hamlet and Ophelia during which Polonius and Claudius will spy upon them both.

Because of his feigned madness, Hamlet puts Claudius in the same position as he is–trying to ascertain whether of not Hamlet is being truthful or not. He calls in Hamlet's schoolmates, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, hoping that in an unguarded moment they will be able to determine whether or not he is truly mad. But Hamlet quickly sees the intention behind his schoolmates' sudden visit.

To sound out his uncle, he enlists a company of travelling performers to stage an existing play, The Murder of Gonzago, which he has modified to re-enact the circumstances of his father's murder.

"The play's the thing

Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King."

[Act II, scene II]

Shortly after the play begins, Claudius, who cannot bear to watch, rises calling for lights. The king's anguished reaction to the performance (which Horatio also notices) convinces Hamlet of his guilt. Now suspecting Hamlet's true purpose, Claudius arranges for Hamlet to be deported to the Danish territories of England along with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, where he is to be killed upon arrival.

In an unguarded moment, Claudius privately expresses his disgust at what he has done, and offers a prayer of repentance. Hamlet comes upon Claudius at prayer and prepares to kill him, but then stops, reasoning that he does not want his revenge to have the result of sending the repentant Claudius to Heaven. However, Hamlet leaves too soon, before Claudius reveals that he is unable to repent in his current state of mind. Had Hamlet not attempted to arrogate to himself the destiny of Claudius's soul, rather than just his life, he would have killed Claudius at that moment.

File:Eugène Delacroix, Hamlet and His Mother.JPG

"Hamlet and His Mother" by Eugène Delacroix

Hamlet confronts his mother about the murder of his father and her sexual relations with her new husband. During their conversation, he stabs Polonius, who has been hiding behind a tapestry and eavesdropping on their conversation. Initially suspecting his victim was Claudius, he appears unrepentant and unconcerned when Polonius is revealed, continuing to admonish his mother. King Hamlet's ghost makes a reappearance to rebuke Hamlet. Hamlet's mother cannot see the ghost, but sees him conversing with it, convinced that her son has really gone mad.

Claudius, who has finally understood Hamlet's real motivation, sends Hamlet to England, purportedly for his safety, but accompanied by a sealed letter to the English ordering his death. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are sent along to ensure the orders are carried out. Through a deux ex machina, Hamlet's ship is attacked by pirates, Hamlet discovered his uncle's intentions and sends Rosencranz and Guildenstern in his place to their deaths in England.

During Hamlet's absence, Ophelia, gravely disturbed by Hamlet's rejection and the death of Polonius, goes insane. She sings a number of rustic melodies that Shakespeare may have borrowed from the English folk tradition. Meanwhile, Laertes, her brother, leads a mob to Elsinore when he hears of his father's death. He also discovers his precious sister's madness, and is even more inclined to avenge his family. Claudius turns Laertes's anger on Hamlet, and they plan to have Laertes fence with Hamlet in a fixed fencing match. Laertes will be using an unbated and poisoned foil. In addition, Claudius prepares some poisoned wine for Hamlet to drink as a toast, in case Laertes is unable to hit him.

"I will do't.

And, for that purpose, I'll anoint my sword.

I bought an unction of a mountebank,

So mortal that, but dip a knife in it,

Where it draws blood... it may be death."

[Act 4, Scene 7]

"I'll have prepared him a chalice for the nonce, wheron but sipping,

If he by chance escape your venomed stuck,

Our purpose may hold there."

[Act 4, Scene 4]

But as they are plotting, Queen Gertrude enters and informs Laertes that his sister drowned in what is a suspected suicide. Laertes runs out of the room, grief-stricken.

File:Hamlet+ophelia.jpg

Hamlet and Ophelia, a Symbolist interpretation by Mikhail Vrubel (1884).

Returning from his voyage, Hamlet meets Horatio at a graveyard outside Elsinore castle just as Ophelia's funeral cortege arrives there, where a gravedigger (jester/clown) is digging. Hamlet finds the skull of Yorick (see skull as a symbol), an old jester to the court who carried him on his back during his childhood days, and proclaims, "Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft." As Hamlet broods on mortality, the cortege arrives with the King, Queen and Laertes. Hamlet is so distraught to learn of Ophelia's death that he leaps into the open grave and grapples with Laertes.

The scene then moves back to the castle, where Hamlet tells Horatio all that has happened at sea, and how he made his escape. There was a sea-battle in which pirates overtook the ship on which Hamlet was sailing. During the confusion, Hamlet found instructions from Claudius to the English court that Hamlet should be killed immediately upon his arrival in England. Hamlet re-writes this death warrant for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern instead. Suddenly, Hamlet and Horatio are interrupted by Osric, who comes to tell them that Claudius has set a large wager that Hamlet can out-fight Laertes (who is famous for his swordsmanship) in a fencing match. Horatio advises Hamlet against this, but Hamlet counters with the fact that if he does not die now, his death will be still to come.

When the match begins, Hamlet wins the first two rounds, and Gertrude drinks some of the wine to toast him, unaware that it is poisoned (although some critics and performances treat this as a deliberate suicide [1]). Hamlet is hit with the sword and fatally poisoned, but in the ensuing brawl, he swaps blades with Laertes, and deals a deep wound to Laertes with the poisoned sword as well. The Queen dies from the wine, warning Hamlet that the drink is poisoned. With his dying breath, Laertes also confesses the whole plot to Hamlet. Enraged, Hamlet kills Claudius with the poisoned weapon, forcing him also to drink the poisoned wine, at last avenging his father's death.

Horatio, horrified at the turn of events, seizes the poisoned wine and proposes to join his friend in death, but Hamlet wrests the cup away from him. He orders him to tell his story to the world to restore his good name. Hamlet also recommends that the Norwegian prince, Fortinbras, be chosen as the successor to the Danish throne. Hamlet dies, and Horatio mourns his passing:

"Now cracks a noble heart: Good night sweet prince:

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!"

[Act V, scene II]

Fortinbras enters with English ambassadors. Shocked by the carnage, he orders a military funeral for Hamlet, whilst Horatio offers to relate the whole tale.

Hamlet as a character

File:Smoktun.jpg

Innokenty Smoktunovsky as Hamlet in the acclaimed 1964 film by Grigori Kozintsev.

See main article Prince Hamlet.

In this play, Prince Hamlet is by far the major presence: his problem is central to the plot, and his public wit and private speculations dominate the action. The part of the Prince is far longer than any other in all of Shakespeare's plays. While this most popular tragedy has many dark corners (Is the ghost good or evil? Why did Ophelia die?), yet the biggest mysteries of all concern Hamlet's character, his psychology, and his real motivations. Can we make any sense of him at all? There has been no dearth of speculation on these and many other questions about this central character in Western literature.

Performances, adaptations, influences and references

Hamlet in cinema and TV

According to the Internet Movie Database there have been 22 theatrically released movies entitled Hamlet, plus another 16 made for TV. Another 50 productions have included this name as part of the title or have used a foreign language variation of the name.

There have also been permutations of this play in the silver screen. The Chinese film, The Banquet ("Ye Yan"; 2006), starring Zhang Ziyi is a loose adaptation of this Shakespeare play.

For more details, see Shakespeare on screen (Hamlet).

Prequels

• The Mystery of Hamlet King of Denmark, or What We Will (Bond Wheelwright, 1950) by playwright Percy MacKaye is a series ("tetralogy") of four plays written as prequels to Hamlet itself, written by MacKaye to expand upon Shakespeares original characters. The four plays are:
  • The Ghost of Elsinore
  • The Fool in Eden Garden
  • Odin Against Christus
  • The Serpent in the Orchard

References to Hamlet

A number of films have also used lines from Hamlet's soliloquy as film titles. See To be, or not to be for a list of these films.

• The Disney movie The Lion King is partly based on Hamlet.^{[citation needed]}
• In the Onimusha video game series, many of the Genma bosses are named after some of the characters in Hamlet: Fortinbras is the Genma King, Rosencrantz, Claudius, Ophelia, Gertrude is the Genma hound dog, Guildenstern, and Osric.
• A King in New York (1957), directed by Charlie Chaplin, includes a scene in which Chaplin recites the "to be or not to be" speech, and is arguably on a par with other famous renditions.
• Tom Stoppard's popular play and movie Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead depicts the two title characters contemplating their roles as minor players in a bigger drama. Occasional scenes are taken directly from Hamlet.
• Tom Stoppard also has a short entitled The Fifteen Minute Hamlet which includes Philip Seymour Hoffman in the cast. The fifteen minute version is followed by an even shorter version.
• Hamlet Goes Business (Hamlet liikemaailmassa) (1987) by Aki Kaurismäki is a comic reworking of the story as a power struggle in a rubber duck factory.
• Episode 43 of Monty Python's Flying Circus (1974) is entitled Hamlet.
• The 1969 film The Magic Christian includes a scene where Guy Grand (Peter Sellers) has bribed a famous actor to perform "To be or not to be ..." as a strip-tease.
• The comedy Strange Brew (1983) is loosely based on Hamlet. Among other jokes, scenes takes place at Elsinore Brewery.
• The Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) character General Chang, a Klingon officer, was a Shakespeare aficionado, and opined that Shakespearian works were best experienced in the "original" Klingon. Indeed, Klingonists Nick Nicholas and Andrew Strader in 1996 published The Klingon Hamlet — a Klingon translation of the play. The Klingon version of the famous quote, which Chang recites in the film, is taH pagh taHbe' .
• Hamlet features strongly in the film Renaissance Man, in which Danny DeVito's character uses its plot and characters to introduce a group of under-achieving soldiers to critical thinking.
• In a Gilligan's Island episode entitled "The Producer," the castaways put on a musical production of Hamlet set to the music of Carmen.
• The Simpsons offered a shortened version of Hamlet in the episode "Tales from the Public Domain". After this, Homer claims that Hamlet was made into the film Ghostbusters.
• Transformers Beast Wars mirrored Hamlet's death in the episode "Code of Hero" in which former Predacon Dinobot takes on the entire Predacon team without backup utimately saving humanity before it evolved into today's current existence. With his Maximal comrades he quotes, "Tell my story, tell it truly, the good and the bad; and let me be judged accordingly. The rest is silence."
• The Brak Show referenced the basic plot of Hamlet in the episode "Braklet, Prince of Spaceland". In the episode, Brak's father is killed by Zorak, who also hypnotizes Brak's mother into believing that the two are married. Brak's father appears as a ghost, and informs Brak what has happened. Brak goes insane and makes a movie of the murder, which he shows to Zorak.
• The action movie and comedy film Last Action Hero starts with Arnold Schwarzenegger starring in the advert of a (fictional)action movie that is an adaptation of Hamlet.
• There was an episode of South Park in which Terrance and Philip's professional relationship failed, resulting in one of them moving to Canada to become a Shakespearean actor, subsequently performing Hamlet with other Canadian actors, with the ending of the play being shown in the episode.
• Egyptian director Youssef Chahine frequently cites from Hamlet in his films. His films Alexandria... Why? (1978) and Alexandria... New York(2004) feature performances of soliliquies. In Alexandria Again and Forever (1990) Hamlet appears as a film within the film.
• Princess Diaries 2: The Royal Engagement. Lily, the Princess Mia's best friend, refers to Mia's two chambermaids as "Rosencrantz" and "Guildenstern"
• René (Robert Lepage) quotes part of the "To Be or Not to Be" soliloquy during his portion of The Passion Play in the 1989 film Jésus de Montréal. The film also refers to Hamlet in its trailer.
• The Ninth Configuration featured mentally ill soldiers in an asylum, one of whom wants to stage an all-dog production of Hamlet — the title role, of course, going to a Great Dane.
• In Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, Harold and Kumar are neighbors of "Rosenberg and Goldstein", a Jewish mockery of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern. Also, Harold's love interest Maria visits the "Ophelia" movie theater.
• In Tales from the Crypt in the episode "Top Billing", a group of insane playwrights are attempting to stage a performance of Hamlet, and all they need is a skull.
• The "To Be Or Not To Be" soliloquy is used in the RTS game Age of Empires III, created by Ensemble Studios.
• In the cult British comedy film Withnail & I, Withnail's uncle Monty reminisces about giving up acting on realising that he would "never play the Dane" — how at that moment in a young man's life all ambition ceases. Withnail says it is a part he intends to play. The film finishes with Withnail in the rain making the speech from Hamlet "I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth" to some captive wolves.
• The play has been referenced in the 2003 remake of Freaky Friday. In an English class, the play is discussed, and in the course of the scene, the quote from the 1948 film starring Laurence Olivier is used as the answer to the question "Describe the character of Hamlet." The answer: "A man who couldn't make up his mind."
• In Dan Brown's book, Digital Fortress, former military man-turned-NSA employee Greg Hale quotes from the play: "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
• In an episode of the American TV series ER titled "Secrets and Lies," Dr. Kovac mentions that he played Hamlet while attending college in Croatia. When he was asked if he performed it in English or Croatian, he replied, "Croatian. Why would I perform it in English?" Dr. Carter then says he played Horatio and starts reciting the "To Be or Not To Be" soliloquy. When he starts to get the lines wrong, Kovac corrects him, first in English and then continues reciting the lines in Croatian.
• In the Star Trek The Next Generation episode "Hide and Q" Captain Picard quotes Hamlet: "What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god!" (II.ii.304-308).
• In the film Grosse Pointe Blank, one character recites to another: "What a piece of work is man! How noble... oh, **** it, let's have a drink and forget the whole damn thing."
• In the film The Big Lebowski Walter says, "Goodnight, sweet prince" at Donny's funeral.
• In both Tales of Interest Futurama episodes Bender's death is followed by the line "Goodnight, sweet prince."
• A recent successor to Inspector Morse, Inspector Lewis, aired an episode called "Lewis and the Ghost of Inspector Morse" which has many direct and indirect references to the play, and indeed Inspector Lewis uses a clue from his dead mentor to solve the case, an eerie parallel ^{[citation needed]}
• In Asterix and the Great Crossing Hamlet is referenced in two quotes by Danish vikings. One says: "There is something rotten in my kingdom", while holding a skull in his hand. Another one wonders whether he is a discoverer or not and thus says: "To be or not to be; that's the question."
• In the video game Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, after defeating Nupraptor and obtaining his head, the player can examine it in their inventory. Doing so prompts the character Kain to remark "Alas, poor Nupraptor, I knew him well. Well... not really."
• There is also an episode of the original Star Trek series where a play is produced to expose a character's guilt.^{[citation needed]}
• HamLeT is also the term for a ham, lettuce, and tomato sandwich — like a BLT only with (Danish?) ham instead of bacon — which has inspired the doubtful HamLeT's Sandwich Soliloquy.
• Hamlet is quoted in the Neil Jordan film, 'Interview With the Vampire'. Claudia, the child-vampire, quotes "Goodnight sweet prince, may flights of devils sing thee to thy rest."
• In the Canadian television series Slings and Arrows, the famous actor Geoffrey Tennant returns to the New Burbage Theatre Festival, the site of his greatest triumph and most humiliating failure, to assume the Artistic Directorship after the sudden death of his mentor, Oliver Welles. When Geoffrey returns to the theatre, he finds that it is haunted by the ghost of the recently departed Oliver. Oliver and Geoffrey's interactions are comically reminiscent of the dialogue between Hamlet and the ghost of his father. With Oliver haunting him, Geoffrey directs a remarkable production of Hamlet. The cast includes Due South's Paul Gross, Rachel MacAdams, and Mark McKinney.
• In the video game Xenosaga episode 1 "der wille zur macht Albedo" has a quote of "frailty thy name is woman"
• The Elephant 6 band name A Hawk and a Hacksaw paraphrases Hamlet's '...I know a hawk from a handsaw'.

Hamlet in literature

• In his novel Ulysses, James Joyce includes a lengthy discussion about Hamlet, referring to it as one of a select few important artworks that outshine the rest.

"Art has to reveal to us ideas, formless spiritual essences. The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring? The painting of Gustave Moreau is painting of ideas, the deepest poetry of Shelley, the words of Hamlet bring our mind into contact with the eternal wisdom, Plato's world of ideas. All the rest is the speculation of schoolboys for schoolboys."

• Gertrude and Claudius, a John Updike novel, serves as a prequel to the events of the play. It follows Gertrude from her wedding to King Hamlet, through an affair with Claudius, and its murderous results, up until the very beginning of the play.
• Ophelia's Revenge, a novel by Rebecca Reisert, tells the story of Hamlet from Ophelia's point of view.
• Anton Chekhov wrote a feuilleton titled I am a Moscow Hamlet (1891), the mutterings of a gossip-mongering actor who contemplates suicide out of sheer boredom.
• Arthur Rimbaud wrote a long poem on Ophelia, likely inspired by a reproduction of the Waterhouse painting.
• In the novel The Journey of The Fool, Faust Amoyo tries to think of all books that can be written in 200 pages, he laughs when he speculates a version of Hamlet where the word is everywhere replaced by 'Danish Butthead'.
• In the novel Something Rotten, Jasper Fforde includes Hamlet as a major character.
• Throughout Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, the character John ("the Savage") quotes Hamlet, among other plays by Shakespeare.

Hamlet in music

At least 26 operas have been written based on Hamlet, including:

• Ambleto, by Francesco Gasparini (1706)
• Ambleto, by Domenico Scarlatti (1715)
• Amleto, by Gaetano Andreozzi (1792)
• Amleto, by Franco Faccio (libretto by Arrigo Boito) (1865)
• Hamlet, by Ambroise Thomas (1868)
• Hamlet, by Humphrey Searle (1968)
• Hamlet (?), by Sandor Szokolay (year?)

Sergei Prokofiev also wrote incidental music to the play.

Instrumental works based on Hamlet include:

• Nocturne in G Minor, Op. 15 No. 3 by Frédéric Chopin, inspired by Hamlet
• Hamlet (1858), symphonic poem by Franz Liszt
• Hamlet and Ophelia, symphonic poems by Edward MacDowell
• Hamlet (1888), Fantasy Overture in F Minor, Op. 67 by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
• Hamlet (1888), Incidental music for a Russian stage production of the play, also by Tchaikovsky. This production used an edited version of the Fantasy Overture.
• Hamlet, the score for the 1963 film, by Dmitri Shostakovich.
• There is a willow grows aslant a brook, a symphonic poem by Frank Bridge, based on the speech of Queen Gertrude about the death of Ophelia.

Contemporary popular music includes:

• "What a Piece of Work is Man" from the 1967 musical Hair is Hamlet's speech from Act 2 Scene 2 set to music.
• The Dream Theater song "Pull Me Under" is influenced by, and makes reference to, Hamlet.
• Lou Reed's song "Goodnight Ladies", from his 1972 album Transformer, uses a line from Ophelia's mad speech (Act 4, Scene 5) as its chorus.
• Darling Violetta's song "Ophelia", from the band's debut album Bath-Water-Flowers, references Ophelia's death/suicide.
• Rasputina's song "Dig Ophelia" from the debut album Thanks for the Ether also references the death of Ophelia.
• Your Forgotten Love has a song entitled "Her Fair Judgment", with lyrics rearranged from Ophelia's mad speech.
• Arcturus' first album, Aspera Hiems Symfonia, makes reference to Hamlet's most famous soliloquy in the song The Bodkin & The Quietus.
• Folk singer Jewel makes a reference to Ophelia's suicide in the song "Innocence Maintained": Ophelia drowned in the water/pushed by her own weight.
• the title track of the album Elsinore by swedish musician Björn Afzelius is about a prince locked up in the castle of Elsinore.
• End Of All Hope, a song by Finnish metal band Nightwish, contains the line "The rest is silence".
• Bands Flaming Youth takes its name from the text ^{[citation needed]}, as does This Mortal Coil (from the end of the "To be or not to be" speech).
• The Band recorded a song called "Ophelia," released on their album Northern Lights - Southern Cross.
• Bob Dylan references Ophelia in the song Desolation Row.
• Abney Park has a song titled "Dear Ophelia" which is a theoretical letter from Hamlet to Ophelia
• Emilie Autumn has a song entitled "Opheliac" wherein the chorus references the drowning.
• Beyonce Knowles uses "To be, or Not to Be," as the first line in her song Freakum Dress on her 2006 album 'B'day'

Listen to

• Biblio File: Professor Joseph Khoury and Nigel Beale analyze Hamlet

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Crystal, David, & Ben Crystal, The Shakespeare Miscellany. New York, 2005.
• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Phillip Edwards, ed. Cambridge, 2003. Updated 1985 edition.
• Hamlet. G.R. Hibbard, ed. Oxford, 1987. (Oxford World's Classics)
• Hamlet. Harold Jenkins, ed. Methuen, 1982. (The Arden Shakespeare)
• Wilson, John Dover, The Manuscript of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Cambridge, 1934.

External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

Wikibooks has more on the topic of

Hamlet

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Hamlet

• Hamlet, available for free via Project Gutenberg
• the 'Bad Quarto' version of Hamlet, available for free via Project Gutenberg
• Hamlet on the Ramparts - from MIT's Shakespeare Electronic Archive
• Hamletworks.org Multiple versions of Hamlet, numerous commentaries, concordances, facsimiles, etc.
• Hamlet Summary - wiki summary of characters, scenes, discussion and essay topics.
• The Switzer's Guide to Hamlet An Extra's view of the Royal Shakespeare Company's 2004 production of Hamlet with Toby Stephens in the title role
• Slashdoc : Hamlet Scholarly essays on Shakespeare's Hamlet
• Hamlet in original and modern language
• "Nine Hamlets" — An analysis of the play and 9 film versions, at the Bright Lights Film Journal
• "HyperHamlet" - A project at the University of Basel
• "The Hamlet Weblog" - a weblog about the play.

	William Shakespeare and his works
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