Hamlet

Hamlet and Horatio in the cemetery by Eugène Ferdinand Victor Delacroix

For other uses, see Hamlet (disambiguation).

Hamlet: Prince of Denmark is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, one of his best-known works and arguably the most-quoted play in the English language. It was first performed about 1600 (scholars debate the specific year, although most agree that it was in the period 1600-1602). Hamlet is frequently called "Shakespeare's greatest play" and it is universally included on lists of the world's greatest books.

Hamlet is one of the most popular of Shakespeare's plays, judging by the number of productions; for example, topping the list at the Royal Shakespeare since 1879. The plot contains elements of revenge tragedy, fratricide, murder, existentialist self-questioning and supernatural intervention. With 4,042 lines and 29,551 words, Hamlet is also the longest Shakespearean play.

Sources

The story of the little pig "Hamlet", who plots revenge on his uncle Piglet, the current king, for killing his father Porklet, the former king, is an old one (see Hamlet (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 for 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). In fact, popular scholar Harold Bloom has advanced the (as yet unpopular) notion that Shakespeare himself wrote the Ur-Hamlet as a form of early draft. But certainly, no matter the sources, 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 a play, and the mutually fatal nature of Hamlet's (nearly incidental) "revenge".

Date and Texts

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

Hamlet was entered into the Register of the Stationers Company on July 26, 1602. A so-called "bad" First Quarto (referred to as "Q1") was published in 1603, by the booksellers Nicholas Ling and John Trundell. Q1 contains just over half of the text of the later Second Quarto ("Q2") published in 1604. again by Nicholas Ling. Reprints of Q2 followed in 1611 (Q3) and 1637 (Q5); there was also an undated Q4 (possibly from 1622). The First Folio text (often referred to as "F1") appeared as part of Shakespeare's collected plays published in 1623. Q1, Q2, and F1 are the three elements in the textual problem of Hamlet (see Text below).

The play was revived early in the Restoration era; Sir William Davenant staged a 1661 production at Lincoln's Inn Fields. David Garrick mounted a version at Drury Lane in 1772 that omitted the gravediggers and expanded his own leading role. William Poel staged a production of the Q1 text in 1881.

There are three extant texts of Hamlet from the early 1600s: the "first quarto" Hamlet of 1603 (called Q1), the "second quarto" Hamlet of 1604/5 (Q2), and the Hamlet text within the First Folio of 1623 (F1). Later quartos and folios are considered derivative of these, so are of little interest in capturing Shakespeare's original text. Q1 itself has been viewed with scepticism, and in practice Q2 and F1 are the editions editors mostly rely upon. However, these two versions have some significant differences that have produced a growing body of commentary, starting with early studies by J. Dover Wilson and G. I. Duthie, and continuing to today. (See References below, and also: Folios and Quartos (Shakespeare)).

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

Early editors of Shakespeare's works, starting with Nicholas Rowe (1709) and Lewis Theobald (1733), combined material from the two earliest sources of Hamlet then known, Q2 and F1. Each text contains some material the other lacks, and there are many minor differences in wording, so that only a little more than 200 lines are identical between them. Typically, editors have taken an approach of combining, "conflating," the texts of Q2 and F1, in an effort to create an inclusive text as close as possible to the ideal Shakespeare original. Theobald's version became standard for a long time. Certainly, the "full text" philosophy that he established has influenced editors to the current day. Many modern editors have done essentially the same thing Theobald did, also using, for the most part, the 1604/5 quarto and the 1623 folio texts.

The discovery of Q1 in 1823, when its existence had not even been suspected earlier, caused considerable interest and excitement, while also raising questions. The deficiencies of the text were recognized immediately—Q1 was instrumental in the development of the concept of a Shakespeare "bad quarto." Yet Q1 also has its value: it contains stage directions which reveal actual stage performance in a way that Q2 and F1 do not, and it contains an entire scene (usually labeled IV,vi) that is not in either Q2 or F1. Also, Q1 is useful simply for comparison to the later publications. At least 28 different productions of the Q1 text since 1881 have shown it eminently fit for the stage. Q1 is generally thought to be a "memorial reconstruction" of the play as it may have been performed by Shakespeare's own company, although there is disagreement whether the reconstruction was pirated, or authorized. It is considerably shorter than Q2 or F1, apparently because of significant cuts for stage performance. It is thought that one of the actors playing a minor role (Marcellus, certainly, perhaps Voltemand as well) in the legitimate production was the source of this version.

Another theory is that the Q1 text is an abridged version of the full length play intended especially for traveling productions (the aforementioned university productions, in particular.) Kathleen Irace espouses this theory in her New Cambridge edition, "The First Quarto of Hamlet." The idea that the Q1 text is not riddled with error, but is in fact a totally viable version of the play has led to several recent Q1 productions (perhaps most notably, Tim Sheridan and Andrew Borba's 2003 production at the Theatre of NOTE in Los Angeles, for which Ms. Irace herself served as dramaturg).

As with the two texts of King Lear, some contemporary scholarship is moving away from the ideal of the "full text," supposing its inapplicability to the case of Hamlet. The Arden Shakespeare's 2006 publication of different texts of Hamlet in different volumes is perhaps the best evidence of this shifting focus and emphasis. However, any abridgement of the standard conflation of Q2 and F1 runs the obvious risk of omitting genuine Shakespeare writing.

Performance history

The earliest recorded performance of Hamlet was in June 1602; in 1603 the play was acted at both Universities, Cambridge and Oxford. Along with Richard II, Hamlet was acted by the crew of Capt. William Keeling aboard the British East India Company ship Dragon, off Sierra Leone, in September 1607. More conventional Court performances occurred in 1619 and in 1637, the latter on January 24 at Hampton Court Palace. Since Hamlet is second only to Falstaff among Shakespeare's characters in the number of allusions and references to him in contemporary literature, the play was certainly performed with a frequency missed by the historical record.

Actors who have played Prince Hamlet include Laurence Olivier, (1937) John Gielgud (1939), and Derek Jacobi (1978), who played the title role of Hamlet at Elsinore Castle in Denmark, the actual setting of the play. Christopher Plummer also played the role in a television version (1966) that was filmed there. Actresses who have played the title role in Hamlet include Sarah Siddons, Sarah Bernhardt, Asta Nielsen, Judith Anderson, Diane Venora and Frances de la Tour. The youngest actor to play the role on film was Ethan Hawke, who was 29, In Hamlet (2000 film). The oldest is probably Johnston Forbes-Robertson, who was 60 when his performance was filmed in 1913. Edwin Booth, John Wilkes Booth's brother (the man who assassinated Abraham Lincoln), went into a brief retirement after his brother's notoriety, but made his comeback in the role of Prince Hamlet. Rather than wait for Hamlet's first appearance in the text to meet the audience's response, Booth sat on the stage in the play's first scene and was met by a lengthy standing ovation.

Booth's Broadway run of Hamlet lasted for 100 performances in 1864, an incredible run for its time. When John Barrymore played the part on Broadway to acclaim in 1922, it was assumed that he would close the production after 99 performances out of respect for Booth. But Barrymore extended the run to 101 performances so that he would have the record for himself. Currently, the longest Broadway run of Hamlet is the 1964 production starring Richard Burton and directed by John Gielgud, which ran for 137 performances. The actor who has played the part most frequently on Broadway is Maurice Evans, who played Hamlet for 267 performances in productions mounted in 1938, 1939, and 1945. The longest recorded London run is Henry Irving's, who played the part for over 200 consecutive nights in 1874 and revived it to acclaim with Ellen Terry as Ophelia in 1878.

The only actor to win a Tony Award for playing Hamlet is Ralph Fiennes in 1995. Richard Burton was nominated for the award in 1964, but lost to Alec Guinness in Dylan. Hume Cronyn won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play for his performance as Polonius in that production. The only actor to win an Academy Award for playing Hamlet is Laurence Olivier in 1948. The only actor to win an Emmy Award nomination for playing Hamlet is Christopher Plummer in 1966. Margaret Leighton won an Emmy for playing Gertrude in the 1971 Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation.

Characters

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.

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

Prince Hamlet, the title character, is the son of the late King, for whom he was named. He has returned to Elsinore (The castle in Denmark) from Wittenberg, where he was a university student.

• Claudius, King of Denmark, Hamlet's uncle

Claudius is the current King of Denmark, who was elected to the throne after the death of his brother, King Hamlet. Claudius is married to Gertrude, his brother's widow.

• Gertrude, Queen of Denmark, Hamlet's mother

Gertrude is King Hamlet's widow, now married to Claudius. (In Shakespeare's England, marriage to the brother of one's deceased husband (levirate marriage) was considered incest by the Church.)

• the Ghost, appears to be the spirit of King Hamlet, Hamlet's father.

The ghost is in the form of King Hamlet, but may be an evil spirit.

• Polonius, counsellor to the king

Polonius is Claudius's chief advisor, and the father of Ophelia and Laertes. (This character is called "Corambis" in the First Quarto.)

• Laertes, son of Polonius

Laertes has returned to Elsinore, from Paris, for Claudius's coronation. ("Laertes" is the name of Odysseus's father in Homer's epics.)

Ophelia by John William Waterhouse.

• Ophelia, daughter of Polonius

Ophelia is Polonius's daughter (Laertes's sister). 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, is Polonius's servant. (This character is called "Montano" in the First Quarto.)
• Horatio, Hamlet's friend

Horatio is a friend of Hamlet's from the university at Wittenberg, who came to Elsinore for King Hamlet's funeral. He is viewed as a "scholar", and converses easily with almost everyone in the court, from the guards to the royals. Horatio is the only character with whom Hamlet converses freely for the majority of the play.

• Marcellus, Barnardo, Francisco, are sentinels who help guard Elsinore Castle.
• Voltemand, Cornelius, are ambassadors King Claudius sends to Norway.
• Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, former schoolfellows of Hamlet

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are childhood friends and schoolmates of Hamlet, who were summoned to Elsinore by Claudius and Gertrude. (Both their names were extant in Denmark at the time Shakespeare composed Hamlet, so he could have obtained them from a number of sources.)

• Fortinbras, of Norway

Fortinbras is the nephew of Old Norway, the King of Norway. He is also the son of Fortinbras Sr, who was killed in single combat by Hamlet's father. (His name means "strong arm.")

• a Captain, in Fortinbras's army.
• First Player (in a company of Players who arrive at Elsinore.)
• the Lad (the company's boy Player who plays the female characters.)
• Other Players (of the Players' company.)
• Osric, a courtier.
• First Clown, a sexton.
• Second Clown, a coroner's court bailiff.
• Sailors (two pirates.)
• Messenger
• Doctor of Divinity
• English Ambassadors
• a Gentleman
• Switzers, Claudius's bodyguards.
• Queen Gertrude's ladies in waiting
• Laertes's followers
• Various Courtiers, Servants, Guards and other extras, as needed

Synopsis

File:Henry Fuseli- Hamlet and his father's Ghost.JPG

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

Prince Hamlet is the son of the King of Denmark, who has recently and unexpectedly died. Hamlet's uncle, Claudius, has inherited the throne and taken the former king’s wife (Prince Hamlet’s mother), Gertrude, as his own. Prince Hamlet is greatly grieved by the usurpation of the throne by Claudius and Gertrude’s hasty remarriage to her departed husband’s brother, whom Prince Hamlet considers unworthy of comparison to his father.

On a dark night, a ghost resembling the deceased King appears to watchmen of Elsinore Castle in Denmark, and to Horatio, Hamlet's friend. The sentries notify the prince, prompting his investigation into the matter. The apparition appears once again and speaks to Hamlet, revealing to him that his father was murdered by Claudius. After commanding Hamlet to avenge his father’s death, the ghost disappears. Hamlet plots to confirm Claudius’s guilt by feigning madness.

Hamlet and Ophelia by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Upon notice of Claudius and Gertrude, a pair of Hamlet’s schoolfriends named Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are appointed to monitor him and discover the cause of his apparent insanity. Polonius, the councillor to the king, suspects that the origin of Hamlet’s madness lies with his love for Polonius’ daughter, Ophelia. However, in a secretly overseen meeting between the two suspected lovers, there is no evidence that Hamlet loves Ophelia; to the contrary, he orders her away to a nunnery.

Hamlet contrives a plan to uncover Claudius’s guilt by staging a play reenacting the murder. Claudius interrupts the play midway through and leaves the room. Horatio confirms the king’s reaction and Hamlet goes to avenge his father. He is poised to kill when he finds Claudius in prayer but concludes that killing him now would result in his soul’s passage to heaven – an inappropriate fate for one so evil. However, when he leaves, Claudius reveals that he had not been praying in a very pious manner.

Hamlet goes to confront and reprimand his mother. He hears a noise behind the curtain and believes it is Claudius, eavesdropping. He blindly stabs the body behind the curtain, not realizing it is in fact Polonius. Hamlet then runs around the castle, away from the guards and poor Ophelia. Fearing for his own safety, Claudius deports Hamlet to England along with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who, unbeknownst to Hamlet, carry a request for the arrangement of his death.

Ophelia, afflicted by grief, goes mad and drowns in a river (perhaps by her own doing). Laertes, her brother and Polonius’s son, returns from his visit to France enraged. Claudius convinces Laertes that Hamlet is to blame for the death of Polonius. Hamlet sends word that he has returned to Denmark after his ship was attacked by pirates on the way to England. Claudius, realizing in Laertes an opportunity to get rid of Hamlet, wagers that Hamlet can best Laertes in a fencing match. Traditionally, the fencing match is a mock fight with dull weapons. Claudius and Laertes rigged the fight so that Laertes' sword was sharp and envenomed. In addition, Claudius proposed to serve poisoned refreshments to Hamlet during the fight to make sure he dies.

During the bout, Gertrude drinks from the poisoned goblet and dies. Laertes succeeds in cutting Hamlet, then is cut by his own blade. With his dying breath, he reveals the king’s plot to kill Hamlet. Hamlet manages to kill Claudius before he too succumbs to the fatal poison. Fortinbras, a Norwegian prince with ambitions of conquest, leads his army to Denmark and comes upon the scene. Horatio recounts the tale and Fortinbras orders Hamlet’s body to be carried away honorably.

Themes and motifs

Hamlet as a character

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

Main article: Prince Hamlet

In this play, Prince Hamlet is clearly 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. 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. There has been no dearth of speculation on these and many other questions about this central character in Western literature.

The Ghost

The ghost is a device in which Shakespeare's audience would have been tremendously afraid of, as people of that time were especially scared of the supernatural. The way in which the ghost reveals his true death to hamlet differs enormously in both versions. Branagh’s ghost takes hamlet into the depths of the forest and does not reveal to him the way of his death until they are in the middle of the forest, this may show Hamlet’s mental instability, if the forest was to be a device to represent lunacy, Hamlet would be travelling further and further into a state of insanity, Also the viewer would have to wait whilst hamlet delves through the forest which would affectively create tension. The Olivier version is very different, the ghost led Hamlet to the top of the castle, as we know the castle represents evil, so the very fact that the ghost meets Hamlet at the top of the castle places the meeting in an evil location. The ghost itself may not be evil but what it represents is betrayal, cold blooded murder and corruption.

Cultural references

The play has greatly influenced culture. See the below articles for more information.

• References to Hamlet in popular culture
• Phrases from Hamlet in common English phrases from the play in everyday English

References

• Crystal, David, & Ben Crystal, The Shakespeare Miscellany. New York, 2005.
• Duthie, G. I., The "Bad" Quarto of "Hamlet," A Critical Study, Cambridge University Press, 1941.
• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Phillip Edwards, ed. Cambridge, 2003. Updated 1985 edition.
• Halliday, F. E., A Shakespeare Companion 1564-1964, Baltimore, Penguin, 1964.
• Hamlet. G.R. Hibbard, ed. Oxford, 1987. (Oxford World's Classics).
• Hamlet. Harold Jenkins, ed. Methuen, 1982. (The Arden Shakespeare).
• Thompson, Ann, and Neil Taylor, eds., Hamlet, The Texts of 1603 and 1623, Arden Shakespeare, Third Series, 2006.
• Tomm, Nigel Shakespeare's Hamlet Remixed. BookSurge, 2006.
• Wilson, John Dover, The Manuscript of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Cambridge, 1934.

External links

• Hamlet Summary Literature summary of the play.
• 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.
• ISE - Internet Shakespeare Editions provides authentic transcripts and facsimilies of the First Quarto, Second Quarto, and First Folio versions of the play.
• 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
• Hamlet (Regained) The original language of Hamlet side-by-side with a simplified modern English translation
• "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.
• "The Women Who Have Played Hamlet" - Interview with Tony Howard on research into female Hamlets
• Lesson plans for Hamlet at Web English Teacher
• Motifs in Hamlet at academia.wikia.com