Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
The one Shakespearian tragedy from which almost every speaker of English can quote at least one or two phrases, Hamlet is also one of the most difficult to date. The Revenge of Hamlet Prince [of] Denmark, ‘lately acted by the Lord Chamberlain his servants’, was entered in the Stationers’ Register in July 1602, and printed in quarto in 1603 as The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark: this edition attributes the play to Shakespeare but is drastically shorter than either a subsequent quarto (1604/5, 1611, 1622, 1637) or the play as printed in the Folio (1623). Contemporary allusions to Hamlet are complicated by the existence of an earlier play on the same story, cited by Thomas Nashe in 1589, documented in the repertory of the Admiral’s Men in 1594 and mentioned by several other writers, but this lost *‘ur-Hamlet’, already in existence before Shakespeare is known to have written anything, is very unlikely to have been a first draft of Shakespeare’s own. It is not listed among his works by *Meres in 1598, for example, and a possible pun in Nashe would attribute it plausibly to Thomas *Kyd. External and internal evidence between them suggest that Shakespeare wrote his own Hamlet around the turn of the 17th century: Gabriel Harvey refers approvingly to Shakespeare’s play in a manuscript note written between 1598 and early 1601, while stylistic evidence, although in some respects contradictory, places it just before Troilus and Cressida, around 1600.
Text: The discrepancies between the three substantially different texts of the play have vexed its editors ever since the publishers of the ‘good’ quarto of 1604–5, indignantly distinguishing their version from the apparently illicit ‘bad’ quarto printed the previous year, declared it to be ‘newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much again as it was, according to the true and perfect copy’. It seems likeliest that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet in about 1600 (producing the version printed as the ‘good’ quarto), but had revised it by 1602 to produce the acted version which was printed in the Folio and which also lies behind the first, ‘bad’ quarto of 1603 (a *reported text, very probably assembled by the hired actor who played Marcellus, Valtemand, and Lucianus, whose scenes are more fully and accurately rendered than the rest of the play). There is no complete assent on the relations between the three texts, however: some editors have favoured the ‘good’ quarto, insisting that the Folio text, though in places puzzlingly superior, mainly reflects unauthorized cuts by actors, while others, including those of the Oxford edition, see the Folio as Shakespeare’s own mature revision of his earlier draft. The ‘bad’ quarto, further disputed over by editors, is also valuable despite its obvious errors and inconsistencies (and eminently actable, as sporadic modern revivals have demonstrated): its vivid stage directions may supply genuine details of the play’s early performances omitted by the other printed versions, and its variations in character names—Polonius, for example, is here called Corambis, and Reynaldo is Montano—may result from an accidental conflation with the lost ur-Hamlet, in which the reporter had perhaps also acted.
Sources: Shakespeare’s chief source was the Norse folk tale of Amleth, written down in Latin by the Danish historian Saxo *Grammaticus (fl. c.1200) and expanded by the French writer François de *Belleforest in his Histoires tragiques (7 vols., 1559–80), though it is possible that Shakespeare knew the story only at second hand via the lost earlier play. Belleforest’s version was translated into English in 1608 in a version, The Historie of Hamblet, which itself incorporates phrases from Shakespeare’s play, but the savage old Scandinavian legend is worlds away from the Renaissance tragedy Shakespeare made of it. Although Saxo provides the originals for most of Shakespeare’s main characters and much of his plot (while Belleforest further supplies the adultery of Amleth’s mother and uncle before the murder of his father), in the old story no ghost has to return to demand vengeance. The identity of the King’s killer is not a secret, and Amleth, feigning near-idiocy as a ruse, needs no prompting to undertake his revenge against the usurper. Deported to England, he kills his companions, as in the play, by tampering with their commission, but he reaches England himself (where he marries the King’s daughter) before returning in disguise to get the entire court drunk while they celebrate his supposed death, upon which he burns down their hall, kills his uncle, and proclaims himself king. It is impossible to imagine Belleforest’s Amleth commissioning the performance of ‘The Murder of Gonzago’, musing in the graveyard, or making fun of Osric, and Shakespeare’s additions to this material (if they do not derive from the ur-Hamlet, as we know from Nashe the Ghost does) also include Ophelia’s madness, Laertes’ revenge and the character of Fortinbras.
Gregory Doran’s 2008 Hamlet at the RSC was a sell-out, superstar vehicle for its protagonist and antagonist (David Tennant and Patrick Stewart, respectively), drawing avid Shakespearians and sci-fi fans in equal droves.
Synopsis: 1.1 Sentries at the Danish royal castle of Elsinore are insisting to the student Horatio that they have seen a ghost resembling the late King Hamlet when the Ghost appears again: they resolve to tell the old King’s son, Hamlet.
1.2 The new King Claudius, old Hamlet’s brother, recounts to his court that he has married his brother’s widow Gertrude, and sends ambassadors to Norway to protest against young Fortinbras’ plans to repossess by force the lands won from his royal father by old Hamlet. With the consent of Laertes’ father, the counsellor Polonius, Claudius permits Laertes to return to his studies in France, before turning to his silent, black-clad nephew Prince Hamlet, urging him, with Gertrude’s backing, to abandon his excessive grief over his father’s death, and denying him permission to return to university at Wittenberg. Left alone, Hamlet reflects in horror over his mother’s hasty remarriage before his fellow student Horatio and the sentry Marcellus arrive to narrate the apparition of the silent ghost: Hamlet agrees to meet them on the battlements that night.
1.3 Laertes, taking leave of his sister Ophelia, warns her against trusting Hamlet as a suitor: after Polonius has seen Laertes off, with many proverbs, he too urges her to break off her relationship with the Prince.
1.4–5 On the battlements, the ghost of Hamlet’s father beckons the Prince away from his companions, and relates how, so far from having died of a snake bite as was announced, he was murdered in his sleep by Claudius, who had already seduced Gertrude: he urges Hamlet to spare Gertrude but to avenge him on Claudius, before departing, asking to be remembered. Hamlet vows to remember nothing else, and when his companions return, though he does not recount what the Ghost has told him, he swears them to secrecy, hinting that he may feign madness later on.
2.1 Polonius sends a servant, Reynaldo, to spy on Laertes’ conduct in Paris, before a shocked Ophelia recounts how she has been visited by Hamlet, apparently mad: Polonius decides Ophelia’s rejection of Hamlet has driven him insane, and resolves to inform Claudius.
2.2 Claudius and Gertrude welcome Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, student companions of Hamlet summoned from Wittenberg, whom they send to the Prince to attempt to discover the cause of his mental disorder. Claudius receives the ambassadors he earlier sent to Norway, who recount how a rebuked Fortinbras has now redirected his efforts against Poland, before Polonius expounds his theory that Hamlet’s madness has been caused by frustrated love. They plan to spy on Hamlet at a future, engineered meeting with Ophelia, but meanwhile Polonius alone meets Hamlet, who insults him repeatedly under a guise of insanity and speaks darkly of Ophelia. Polonius is replaced as his interlocutor by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, from whom Hamlet exacts an admission that they have been sent by Claudius and Gertrude, and to whom he expresses his profound disenchantment with life before reviving when they tell him an acting company is on its way. They discuss theatrical affairs before the players arrive, when Hamlet has their chief tragedian recite a speech about the destruction of Troy. He confidentially requests them to act ‘The Murder of Gonzago’ before Claudius and the court, with a new additional speech by himself. Left alone, Hamlet berates himself for seeming so much less impassioned about his father’s murder than the player does about the legendary Queen Hecuba, but concludes that by watching Claudius’ response to the play, which resembles his father’s death, he can satisfy himself as to his uncle’s guilt.
3.1 Disappointed by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s report, Claudius hides with Polonius to watch Hamlet encounter Ophelia. Hamlet arrives, and reflects on suicide, action, and the fear of death before seeing Ophelia, whom he hysterically instructs to retreat to a nunnery: after he leaves, Ophelia laments that he has lost his reason. Claudius, distrusting his nephew, resolves to send him to England, while Polonius undertakes to overhear, unseen, a conversation between Hamlet and Gertrude.
3.2 Hamlet instructs the players on the art of acting before briefing Horatio about the secret purpose of the performance he has commissioned, urging him to watch Claudius. The court arrives and settles to watch the play. A player queen makes promises of eternal fidelity to a player king, vowing never to remarry should he die: while the player king sleeps, his nephew Lucianus pours poison into his ear, just as the Ghost had described the means of his own murder. At this point Claudius rises and demands lights, and the court disperses in disarray, Hamlet and Horatio agreeing that Claudius is guilty. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and then Polonius, summon Hamlet to speak privately with his mother.
3.3 Claudius, alarmed, tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern they must take Hamlet to England at once. Alone, he prays that he may be forgiven for murdering his brother despite his inability to renounce Gertrude and the crown. Hamlet, unseen, finds him at prayer, and is about to kill him, but postpones his vengeance until another occasion for fear of sending his uncle’s soul to Heaven rather than to Hell.
3.4 Polonius hides behind the arras in Gertrude’s closet: Hamlet arrives and retorts so violently to her rebukes that she fears he may kill her. Polonius cries out and Hamlet, thinking it is Claudius, stabs him fatally through the arras. Hamlet, hinting at his father’s murder, and comparing pictures of his father and his uncle, reproaches his mother for her remarriage: as he rants, the Ghost, unseen by Gertrude, reappears and urges him not to be distracted from his revenge. Hamlet assures Gertrude he is not insane and makes her promise secrecy before dragging off Polonius’ body.
4.1–3 Claudius, learning of Polonius’ death from Gertrude, sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to seek Hamlet: with great difficulty they bring the morbidly joking prince before Claudius, who tells Hamlet he is to be sent at once to England for his own protection but who discloses in soliloquy that he is sending letters along with the Prince instructing the English authorities to kill him.
4.4 Fortinbras leads his army, by permission, across Danish territory. (In the ‘good’ quarto of the play, Hamlet, on his way to England, sees this and reflects self-critically on the contrast between Fortinbras’ vigorous ambition and his own slow revenge.)
4.5 Ophelia, mad since her father’s death, comes to Gertrude and to Claudius, singing distractedly: Laertes, at the head of a mob, arrives to demand vengeance for Polonius’ death, for which he blames Claudius, but his anger dissipates when he sees his sister, who distributes herbs. Claudius promises to explain the circumstances of Polonius’ death and to assist Laertes’ revenge against the real criminal.
4.6 Horatio receives a letter from Hamlet explaining that he alone has returned to Denmark on board a pirate ship which intercepted his.
4.7 Claudius, conspiring with Laertes, also receives word from Hamlet: the two resolve that Laertes shall kill Hamlet as if by accident in a fencing match, Laertes’ unblunted point made the more lethal by venom, with a poisoned drink ready for the Prince should this fail. Gertrude arrives and narrates how the mad Ophelia has drowned.
5.1 Two gravediggers are jesting at their work. Hamlet, arriving with Horatio, banters with one of them, before learning that one of the skulls they have just uncovered is that of the jester Yorick he knew as a child. His reflections on mortality are interrupted by Ophelia’s funeral procession, and when Laertes leaps into her grave in extravagant grief Hamlet steps forward, declares himself to the assembled court, and leaps in too. The struggling Laertes and Hamlet are parted, and Claudius promises Laertes that their planned revenge will be immediately put into motion.
5.2 Hamlet tells Horatio how, on board ship, he secretly unsealed Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s letter to the English King and, discovering its contents, substituted a forgery telling the King to have Rosencrantz and Guildenstern killed instead. The affected courtier Osric brings Laertes’ challenge to a fencing bout, which a fatalistic Hamlet, despite his forebodings, accepts. Claudius, Gertrude, and their court arrive and, after ceremonial apologies, Hamlet and Laertes duel. Hamlet is winning at first, and declines the poisoned cup, from which Gertrude unwittingly drinks. Laertes wounds Hamlet, but in a scuffle they exchange rapiers and he too is wounded with the envenomed point. Gertrude collapses, knowing she has been poisoned, and dies, and the dying Laertes tells Hamlet of the plot to kill him, blaming Claudius. Hamlet stabs Claudius and forces him to drink some of the remaining poison: he dies, and Hamlet and Laertes exchange forgiveness before Laertes’ own death. Hamlet prevents Horatio from drinking poison, begging him to live on in order to tell his story, and, after hearing the approach of Fortinbras’ army and prophesying that Fortinbras will be the next king, the Prince dies. Fortinbras, accompanied by the English ambassadors who have come to report the deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, takes control and makes arrangements for Hamlet’s military funeral.
Artistic features: Hamlet is characterized by an unprecedented range of dramatic techniques and styles, but the most central is that of the soliloquy: Hamlet’s ‘O that this too too solid flesh would melt…’ (1.2.129–58), ‘O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I…’ (2.2.553–607), and ‘To be, or not to be…’ (3.1.58–90) are among the most famous opportunities in the world’s theatrical repertoire for an actor to exhibit consciousness in action. The play combines a powerful impression of design (with, for example, its careful parallels between the families of Hamlet, Laertes, and Fortinbras) with an equally strong effect of casual improvisation, its inset stories (and, indeed, its play-within-a-play) perpetually cut short by new circumstances. The Prince himself seems to step outside the conventions of the *revenge tragedy to reflect on his own predicament and comment on his own volatile impromptu performances in the successive episodes which overtake him, to such an extent that, despite being the most familiar play in the world, Hamlet still seems one of the most excitingly unpredictable, its ending as abrupt and tragic an interruption as ever.
Critical history: It would be impossible, even in a book-length study, to do full justice to any more than the bare outlines of this play’s impact, not just in literary criticism and on the stage, but on Western culture at large: its characters have entered the realm of myth, and its motifs have been endlessly reworked, in *fiction (*Gothic and otherwise), *painting, *opera, and *film no less than in subsequent drama (from *Middleton’s Revenger’s Tragedy through 19th-century *burlesque to *Chekhov and *Stoppard and beyond). It has, indeed, had a profound effect on conceptions of Shakespeare himself, the rumour that Shakespeare originally played the Ghost (recorded by *Rowe in 1709) shaping many subsequent views of Shakespeare’s relations to his texts and their latter-day interpreters.
The play has held such an important place in the literary canon that the history of writing about Hamlet is practically the history of literary criticism itself, successive interpreters and schools of thought inevitably having to try out their ideas, sooner or later, on this most celebrated and enigmatic of texts. In the 18th century strict *Neoclassical critics such as *Voltaire objected to the indecorous gravediggers and to the concluding proliferation of onstage deaths, but its English popularity never wavered, Dr *Johnson defending its range and variety. The *Romantics found Hamlet’s interview with the Ghost particularly sublime, and were above all preoccupied with the Prince’s apparent paralysis of will, *Coleridge and *Hazlitt reflecting on the relations between thought and action in ways heavily influenced by *Goethe and *Schlegel. From then until the late 20th century much writing about the play was dominated by the question of Hamlet’s character, his sanity or otherwise, and why he delays. A. C. *Bradley influentially found the core of the play’s power in its juxtaposition of the scope of human thought with the limitations of mortality: other scholars continued to worry at a number of more local questions which the play deliberately leaves unresolved, such as the extent of Gertrude’s guilt, the nature of the Danish succession, and the precise status of the Ghost (who, apparently on temporary release from Purgatory, seems to belong to a Catholic theology rather than a Protestant one). The emergence of *Marxist criticism saw the Prince variously lauded as a revolutionary ahead of his feudal time and reviled as a vacillatingly uncommitted bourgeois intellectual, but the play has been more central to the development of *psychoanalytic criticism, and indeed of psychoanalysis itself. Since the time of *Malone Hamlet had been regarded as especially revealing of Shakespeare’s own emotional nature (its plot occasionally related both to the death of Shakespeare’s father John in 1601 and to the death of his son Hamnet in 1596), and in 1919 T. S. *Eliot famously declared the play an artistic failure on the grounds that Shakespeare’s depiction of Gertrude did not supply an adequate ‘objective correlative’ for the private sense of disgust with which he felt the play was nonetheless overburdened. Eliot’s concerns substantially overlap with those of Sigmund *Freud, who refers to the play in outlining his theory of infantile repression in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), and whose idea that Hamlet is immobilized in part because he too desires Gertrude and has entertained murderous wishes against his father was influentially developed by Ernest Jones in Hamlet and Oedipus (1949). Since then Hamlet’s dealings with Gertrude and Ophelia have continued to preoccupy psychoanalytic criticism and the *feminist and deconstructive strains which have derived from it, while historically inclined commentators of different shades have related the play to the fall of the Earl of *Essex, the Elizabethan succession crisis, Renaissance attitudes to *death, the Reformation, and the philosophy of *Montaigne, among much else.
Stage history: The play seems to have been an immediate success, performed in London, the universities, the provinces, on the Continent, and even at sea, as allusions by *Keeling, *Ratsey, and others, and the existence of *Der Bestrafte Bruder-mord, testify. The role of the Prince was almost certainly created by Richard *Burbage, and was assumed after his death by Joseph *Taylor. Popular enough to survive in performance during the Puritan Interregnum, albeit only as the *droll *The Grave-Makers, the play was assigned to *Davenant’s company at the Restoration, since which time an unbroken line of leading actors have measured themselves against its title role, starting with *Betterton (from 1661 until his retirement more than 40 years later) and extending through *Garrick, *Kemble, *Kean, *Macready, *Sullivan, *Forrest, *Booth, and *Irving to *Barrymore, *Gielgud, *Olivier, *Burton, *Pennington, and *Branagh, among many others. It would in fact be hard to list any major anglophone actors who have not played Hamlet. The play has been equally important, since the early 19th century, in the theatres of (in particular) *France, *Germany, *Russia, and *Scandinavia: furthermore the title role’s sensitive qualities have attracted not only actors but actresses, including Sarah *Siddons, Asta Nielsen, and, most famously, Sarah *Bernhardt. Long even without editorial conflation of the quarto and Folio versions, the play has usually been shortened in performance, the Fortinbras plot often disappearing entirely: over the course of his career Garrick gradually restored many formerly cut lines, but at the expense of the gravediggers, whom he excised, along with Ophelia’s funeral and Laertes’ death, in 1772. Broadly speaking, the 18th-century Hamlet was less indecisive than the Romantic one exemplified by Kemble, Kean, and their Victorian successors, who was an idealized figure too complex and imaginative for the corrupt world in which he found himself. In the 20th century, this tradition was notably sustained by Gielgud, who played the role at different times between 1930 and 1944, while his contemporary Olivier experimented with a Freudian approach to the Prince’s psychology in 1937. Since then the Prince has often been played less sympathetically (David *Warner’s sullen student in Peter *Hall’s production of 1965, and Ben *Kingsley’s determinedly ungraceful Prince in Buzz *Goodbody’s of 1970, stand out), while the play’s interest in an isolated, anxious, and possibly disordered consciousness has lent it ideally to the methods and concerns of modernism and postmodernism, notable avant-garde readings of the play including those of Charles *Marowitz, Peter *Brook, Heiner *Müller, and Robert *Lepage. Into the 21st century the role has continued both to attract star actors and to make reputations, most notably Simon *Russell Beale (2000) and Rory *Kinnear (2010) at the National Theatre, Ben *Whishaw (2004) at the Old Vic, and Samuel *West (2001), David *Tennant (2008), and Jonathan *Slinger (2013) for the RSC. From 2014 to 2016 Shakespeare’s Globe asserted Hamlet’s status as the most global of plays in an extraordinary logistical undertaking, touring a production of the play to every country on the planet.
Michael Dobson, rev. Will Sharpe
On the screen: A five-minute French version (1900) is the earliest on record, but the significant achievements on silent film are the 1913 Hamlet with Sir Johnstone Forbes-Robertson in the title role, and Svend Gade’s film with Asta Nielsen as the Prince (1920). Ernst Lubitsch’s 99-minute To be or not to be (1942) might be seen as opening the way for the sound films that were to follow, but the best-known Hamlet remains Laurence *Olivier’s 1948 film, in which the 40-year-old Olivier played the title role and was director. There is about the camera’s elegiac journey into and through the loneliness of the Prince a nostalgia which arguably reflects the mood of post-war Europe. Sixteen years later the Russian director Grigori *Kozintsev made his Hamlet (1964). Like Olivier’s, it was filmed in monochrome, but Kozintsev dramatized his images in a more arresting way. There is a starkly elemental basis to his cinematography and his is a more vigorously political view of the play than Olivier’s. Less cinematic was Tony *Richardson’s adaptation (1969) of his Round House theatre production, with Nicol *Williamson as a Hamlet who was more student than Prince. Franco *Zeffirelli’s Hamlet (1990) with Mel Gibson in the title role is a move away from psychological complexity, and is more consciously an attempt to present the drama in a fragmented cinematic style. Using little more than 30% of the full text, Zeffirelli’s priority was clearly to target a young audience with a racy film made up of short-duration shots. Kenneth *Branagh’s Hamlet (1996) incorporates the First Folio text uncut with some additions from the second quarto. The complete version lasting over four hours is filmed on a lavish scale and the cast lists an array of famous names even in the small parts. The inclusion of a number of American film actors moves the film away from the British tradition of casting established stage actors for Shakespeare film roles. A shortened two-hour version has been edited from the original. Branagh’s choice of late 19th-century costuming contrasts with Michael Almereyda’s modern-dress version, released in 2000, with Ethan Hawke as a New York businessman Prince and Sam Shephard as the Ghost.
Anthony Davies