Theatre
Hamlet
William Shakespeare · 1601
Synopsis
Elsinore. The old king has been dead for less than two months, and his widow has married the dead man's brother, who now reigns. Two nights running, sentries have seen on the ramparts a figure in armour like the dead king; on the third night, Horatio sees it too. They tell the son, who had wanted to go back to study at Wittenberg. He keeps watch. The thing beckons him to follow it, says it is his father, tells him he was poisoned through the ear in his garden, and demands vengeance while forbidding him to attempt anything against his mother. Then it vanishes as day approaches.
Context
The text has come down to us in three printed versions, in 1603, 1604 and 1623; the first, barely longer than half of the others, was reconstructed from memory by an actor, according to a debated hypothesis. The title role, of about fifteen hundred lines, is the longest of its author, in his longest play. The story takes up a Danish legend reported by Saxo Grammaticus, retold in French in the sixteenth century by Belleforest. The play was written around 1599-1601, a few years after the death of its author's son, Hamnet, at the age of eleven; the two names were then interchangeable.
Who it is for
A long play, which productions almost always cut; Kenneth Branagh's 1996 film gives the complete text. Annotated editions note the variants among the three texts.
Prizes and reception
The Shakespeare play most often brought to the screen, with more than a hundred filmed versions; performed or published in more than seventy-five languages since 1960.