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The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is a tragedy by William Shakespeare and one of his most well-known and oft-quoted plays. It was written at an uncertain date between 1600 and the summer of 1602.
Hamlet may be the most frequently produced work in almost every western country, and it is considered a crucial test for mature actors. Hamlet's "To be, or not to be" soliloquy (Act Three, Scene One), the most popular passage in the play, is so well known that it has become a stumbling-block for many modern actors.
Hamlet is one of the world's most famous literary works, and has been translated into every major living language. Even a Klingon language translation exists, although it has never been performed.
The play-within-the-play scene, portraying the guilt of Claudius 1875a href="1876.html" title="1876">1876.Have to see |
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Texts
There are three extant texts of Hamlet from the early 1600's in both Quarto and Folio format.
The play first appeared in print in 1603 in a version now known as the 'Bad Quarto'. This ion follows essentially the same plot as the play we know as Hamlet but it is much shorter and its language is often very different; for example, where the accepted version reads "To be or not to be, that is the question", the Bad Quarto reads "To be or not to be, aye there's the point". These differences, which usually seem aesthetically weaker than the other versions, have led to the suggestion that the text may have been published without the permission of the playing company, and put together by stenography or by minor actors recalling the lines of others by memory. In particular, the finger has been pointed at the character Marcellus as the likely culprit for the source of the "Bad Quarto" because his scenes and lines are rendered most "accurately" compared to other Quartos and when he is absent from stage the text diverges more. Most modern textual scholars find this theory fanciful, since a minor actor would be unlikely to have memorised the lines of other actors, even inaccurately.
The authorised 'Second Quarto' (Q2) was published in 1604, and was described on its title page as "enlarged to almost as much again as it was". This is the longest text of Hamlet to be published in the period.
The third ion was the version published in the First Folio of Shakespeare's complete works. This text is shorter but also contains scenes not in Q2.
Modern ions are a compromise between the Second Quarto text and the Folio text. Some conflate the two to produce one very long text. Others assume that the Folio text represents Shakespeare's final intentions and that the cuts were made by him; they therefore present the cut Q2 passages in an appendix.
In the theatre, performing the full, conflated Q2/Folio text takes around 4 hours. Because of this, most productions use a cut text. For example, the Royal Shakespeare Company's Artistic Director Michael Boyd staged Hamlet in the summer of 2004 using lines from various Quartos; his text was dubbed the "Boyd Quarto" by newspaper reviewers.
Some theatre companies have experimented with performing the Bad Quarto, which takes only 2 hours. They claim that while it reads badly on the page, in performance it is faster-paced and more direct than the 'official' versions.
Main characters
Prince Hamlet, the title character, is the son of the late King of Denmark, who was also named Hamlet. He is a student at a school in Wittenburg. He is charged by the ghost of his father to avenge his murder, which he finally succeeds in doing, but only after the rest of the royal house has been wiped out and he himself has been mortally wounded with a poisoned rapier by Laertes.
Claudius is the current King of Denmark, Hamlet's uncle, who succeeded to the throne upon the death of his brother. The ghost of King Hamlet tells Prince Hamlet that he was murdered by brother Claudius, who poured hebenon in his ear while he was asleep. Claudius is killed with a poisoned rapier by Hamlet who, for good measure, also forces him to drink the wine with which he had intended to poison Hamlet.
King Hamlet (referred to in the stage directions as Ghost) was Hamlet's father. At the start of the play, he is not long dead. He appears to Hamlet as a ghost and urges him to avenge his murder. King Hamlet was killed by poison emptied into one of his ears. Hamlet questions whether the spirit really is the ghost of King Hamlet or whether it is a malicious demon in disguise, and his question is never definitively answered.
Gertrude is Hamlet's mother, the widow of King Hamlet who became the wife of Claudius, a relationship considered incestuous in Shakespeare's time. She dies by accidentally drinking poisoned wine intended for Hamlet.
Polonius is Claudius's chief councillor, who is distrustful of Hamlet's relationship with Ophelia. He is a fatuous bore, and Hamlet frequently teases him while pretending to be mentally unbalanced. He is fatally stabbed by Hamlet while hidden behind an arras while trying to eavesdrop upon a conversation between Hamlet and his mother.
Laertes is Polonius's son, who deeply cares for Ophelia, his sister, and spends much of the play in France. In the end, he works with Claudius to rig a dueling contest, in which he kills Hamlet with a poisoned rapier to avenge the deaths of Polonius and Ophelia. Hamlet kills him with the same rapier, although at the time Hamlet did not realise it was poisoned.
Ophelia is Polonius' daughter. She and Hamlet have had romantic feelings for each other, although they (at least implicitly) have been warned that it would be politically inexpedient for them to marry. Jilted by Hamlet as part of his insanity ruse, her father's death causes her to actually go insane, and she drowns herself, possibly accidentally.
Horatio is a friend of Hamlet's from university. He is not directly involved in the intrigue among the royals, which enables the author to use him as a foil or sounding board for Hamlet. Hamlet commissions him to name Fortinbras King of Denmark and tell Hamlet's story. He is the most important character alive at the end of the play, though he threatens to commit suicide.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are old school-fellows of Hamlet, who were summoned to the castle by Claudius to keep a watch on Hamlet. Hamlet soon suspects that they are spies. They die off-stage in England, executed by the King's warrant for Hamlet's death, altered by Hamlet to name them.
Fortinbras is the Norwegian crown prince who has only a couple of brief scenes in the play, but who delivers its final lines and appears to represent the hope for a better future for the Danish monarchy and its subjects.
The next day, at a meeting of the Danish court to celebrate the wedding of Claudius and Gertrude, Hamlet expresses his anger at the accession of his uncle Claudius and his mother's hasty remarriage. Horatio comes on the scene and tells him of the appearance of the ghost. Joining Horatio on watch on the battlements that night, as he delivers a speech censuring his uncle for drunkenness, Hamlet meets the ghost, who tells him that his father was indeed poisoned through the ear by Claudius, and commands Hamlet to avenge him. Hamlet is unsure whether the ghost he has seen is truly his father, and suspects that it might be the devil taking his father's appearance in order to cause havoc. He therefore sets out to test the king's conscience through putting on an "antic disposition" (acting insane), in the hopes that by his outrageous behavior he might cause the truth to come out, or otherwise acquire the opportunity to put an end to Claudius.
Hamlet uses his feigned insanity to taunt Claudius and Gertrude, and takes an especial delight in making a fool of Polonius. Claudius, perhaps suspecting Hamlet's ruse, asks his sometime schoolmates Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to monitor him, but Hamlet does not let his guard down. He enlists a company of travelling performers to stage an existing play 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
The king's anguished reaction to the performance (which Horatio also notices) convinces Hamlet of his guilt. Shortly afterwards, Claudius privately expresses his disgust at what he has done, and offers up a prayer of repentance. Hamlet discovers him 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. In a double irony, after Hamlet slips away, Claudius concludes that he is unable to repent in his current state of mind; thus, if Hamlet had not attempted to arrogate to himself the destiny of Claudius's soul, rather than just his life, he would have gotten the ultimate justice he sought. By trying to go beyond the ghost's orders, he has doomed his efforts to failure.
Hamlet confronts his mother about the murder of his father and her sexual relations with her new husband, and during their conversation, he stabs Polonius, the king's Polish-born councillor, who has been hiding behind a tapestry, thinking it may have been Claudius. King Hamlet's ghost makes a reappearance to rebuke Hamlet, either for abusing his mother or for allowing the opportunity to kill Claudius to slip by. Hamlet's mother cannot see the ghost. Hamlet resumes his insane act, but Claudius, who has figured out Hamlet's real motivation, sends Hamlet to England, supposedly 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. On the way to England, Hamlet's ship is attacked by pirates, who take Hamlet prisoner but then return him to Denmark.
Meanwhile, Hamlet's romantic partner Ophelia goes mad, having been deeply disturbed by Hamlet's feigned rejection of her, and driven to madness by the death of Polonius, her father. She sings a number of rustic melodies that Shakespeare may have pilfered from the English folk tradition. In what may have been a suicide attempt, she falls into a river and drowns. Hamlet, returning from his voyage, meets Horatio in a graveyard outside Elsinore just as Ophelia's funeral cortege arrives there. Hamlet finds the skull of Yorick (see skull as a symbol), and proclaims of it, "Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft."
Laertes, son of Polonius and brother of Ophelia, who is standing in an open grave when Hamlet lands on top of him, is determined to kill Hamlet to revenge the havoc that has been wreaked on his family. He and Claudius engineer a scheme to kill Hamlet while making the death look like an accident. To this end, Claudius instructs Laertes to challenge Hamlet to a fencing match. Unknown to Hamlet, Laertes will be fighting with a sharpened and poisoned foil, instead of the customary blunted and unpoisoned blade. In addition, Claudius prepares some poisoned wine for Hamlet to drink as a toast, in the event that Laertes is unable to hit him.
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 and orders him to tell the true story of the royal family's troubles to the world at large, thus restoring Hamlet's good name. Hamlet also recommends that the Norwegian prince, Fortinbras, be chosen as rightful 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
Sources
Hamlet, or Amleth, was a legendary Danish prince (see: Hamlet (legend)) whose exploits were recorded by Saxo Grammaticus in his Gesta Danorum around 1200 AD; François de Belleforest adapted Saxo's story in his Histoires tragiques (1570). Shakespeare's main source, however, is believed to be an earlier play about Hamlet (the Ur-Hamlet), which is attributed to Thomas Kyd and is known to have introduced a ghost to the story. Some scholars, however, believe that the Ur-Hamlet may have been written by Shakespeare himself. Shakespeare may also have taken some elements from Kyd's other play, The Spanish Tragedy, especially the hero's procrastination.
Hamlet as a character
Hamlet is possibly the most discussed and contentious character in the whole of world drama and indeed in the whole of Western literature. While conceding he is one of Shakespeare's greatest creations, critics are at loggerheads over the inner motivations and psyche of this character. His relationships with the various characters of the story, including his father, his uncle Claudius, his mother Gertrude and his beloved Ophelia, have all been subjected to multiple speculations, including modern psychological theories. Critics as varied as Goethe, Coleridge, Hegel, Nietzsche, Turgenev, Freud, T. S. Eliot, and Asimov have written essays on him, all with their own special insights. Besides being Shakespeare's most demanding role (with over 1,400 lines), Hamlet is also the most introspective. Actors have traditionally struggled with this role, and it can be safely said that any one performance can capture only some of the many facets of the creation.
The plot summary above presents perhaps the simplest view of Hamlet, as a person seeking truth in order to be certain that he is justified in carrying out the revenge called for by a ghost that claims to be the spirit of his father. The most standard view is that Hamlet is highly indecisive. The 1948 movie with Laurence Olivier in the title role is introduced by a voiceover: "This is a story of a man who could not make up his mind."
Others see Hamlet as a person charged to carry out a duty that he both knows and feels is right, yet is unwilling to. In this view, all of his efforts to satisfy himself of King Claudius' guilt or his failure to act when he can are evidence of this unwillingness, and Hamlet berates himself for his inability to carry out his task. After observing a play-actor performing a scene, he notes that the actor was moved to tears in the passion of the story and compares this passion for a fictional character, Hecuba, in light of his own situation:
- "O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
- Is it not monstrous that this player here,
- But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
- Could force his soul so to his own conceit
- That from her working all his visage wan'd;
- Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
- A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
- With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!
- For Hecuba?
- What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
- That he should weep for her?" w/.
And he acknowledges to himself the terrible deed he must avenge, yet responds only with words:
- "Yet I,
- A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
- Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
- And can say nothing; no, not for a king
- Upon whose property and most dear life
- A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward?
- w/.
- But I am pigeon-liver'd, and lack gall
- w/.
- Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
- That I, the son of a dear father murder'd,
- Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
- Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words"
- Act II, sc. ii
Hamlet's verbose and painful analyses of his situation and actions encourage many others to see his struggle as something far more existential in nature, having less to do with the revenge drama than with the human condition.
- "The time is out of joint: Oh cursed spite,
- That ever I was born to set it right."
- Act I, sc. v
Another view of Hamlet, advanced by Isaac Asimov in his Guide to Shakespeare, holds that his actions are attributable not to indecision, but to multiple motivations: his desire to avenge the wrong done to his father, coupled with his own ambition to succeed to the throne. The tragic error committed by Hamlet, in Asimov's view, is his overreaching wish to see Claudius damned, and not merely dead, which prevents him from killing Claudius at the opportune moment.
Hamlet's hesitations may also be rooted in the religious beliefs of Shakespeare's time. The Reformation had generated debate about the existence of purgatory (where King Hamlet claims he currently resides). The concept of purgatory is a Catholic one, and was frowned on in Protestant England. A devout Protestant might therefore presume the Ghost to be a spirit from Hell that must be ignored.
Hamlet in cinema
According to the Internet Movie Database there have been 22 theatrical movies titled simply Hamlet plus another 16 with that title that were 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.
The first such movie, Le Duel d'Hamlet, was produced and directed by Cl?ment Maurice in France in 1900, and starred Sarah Bernhardt (reprising her stage role) as Hamlet. Pierre Magnier played Laertes.
1920's (?): Silent Shakespeare, directed by (?)
- This is a parade of early attempts at screen Shakespeare, in the silent films. Hamlet's in there, somewhere.
1948: Hamlet, directed by Laurence Olivier
- Received four Academy Awards:
- Best Picture - Laurence Olivier, producer
- Best Actor - Laurence Olivier as Hamlet
- Best Costume Design (Black and White) - Roger K. Furse
- Best Art Direction and Set Decoration (Black and White) - Carmen Dillon and Roger K. Furse
- It was nominated for a further three awards
- Best Director - Laurence Olivier
- Best Supporting Actress - Jean Simmons as Ophelia
- Best Music Score - William Walton
- Notable other appearances include Patrick Troughton as the player king, Eileen Herlie as Gertrude, Stanley Holloway as the gravedigger, Peter Cushing as Osric, Felix Aylmer as Polonius, Terence Morgan as Laertes, John Gielgud as the uncred voice of the ghost, and Christopher Lee as an uncred spear carrier.
1957: A King in New York, directed by Charlie Chaplin
- Although this is not technically a movie of Hamlet, there is a scene where Chaplin does a rendition of the "To Be Or Not To Be" speech, which is on par with (and possibly above) most popular versions of Hamlet.
1960: Hamlet, directed by Franz Peter Wirth
- A German television production used as a 10th-season episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
- Hamlet played by Maximilian Schell; English dubbing of King Claudius by Ricardo Montalban and Polonius by John Banner
1969: Hamlet, directed by Tony Richardson
- Hamlet played by Nicol Williamson, Claudius played by Anthony Hopkins, Ophelia played by Marianne Faithfull
1974: "Hamlet", as episode 43 of Monty Python's Flying Circus.
1990: Hamlet, directed by Franco Zeffirelli
- Hamlet played by Mel Gibson, Gertrude played by Glenn Close, Polonius played by Ian Holm, Ophelia played by Helena Bonham Carter
1996: Hamlet, directed by Kenneth Branagh
- A "full text" version, this movie runs in excess of 4 hours.
- Set in the 19th century
- Hamlet played by Kenneth Branagh, Claudius played by Derek Jacobi, Gertrude played by Julie Christie, Ophelia played by Kate Winslet
2000: Hamlet, directed by Michael Almereyda
- Set in modern Manhattan
- Hamlet played by Ethan Hawke, Polonius played by Bill Murray, Ophelia played by Julia Stiles
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.
Tom Stoppard wrote a popular play and movie Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead in which the two title characters contemplate their roles as minor players in a bigger drama. While not a production of Hamlet, many of the lines of dialogue are lifted from this play.
The play features strongly in the film Renaissance Man, in which Danny DeVito utilises the plot and characters to introduce a group of under-achieving soldiers to critical thinking.
Also, the famous play has often been satired on television, such as on The Simpsons, which did its own shortened version (episode "Tales From The Public Domain"). The following is the cast:
- Homer Simpson as King Hamlet
- Bart Simpson as Prince Hamlet
- Moe Szyslak as King Claudius
- Marge Simpson as Queen Gertrude
- Chief Wiggum as Polonius
- Lisa Simpson as Ophelia
- Ralph Wiggum as Laertes
- Carl Carlson as Rosencrantz ("Rosencarl")
- Lenny Leonard as Guildenstern ("Guildenlenny")
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)
Instrumental works based on Hamlet include:
- Nocturne in G Minor, Opus 15 No. 3 by Frédéric Chopin, inspired by Hamlet
- Hamlet (1858), symphonic poem by Franz Liszt
- Hamlet and Ophelia, symphonic poems by Edward MacDowell
Contemporary popular music includes:
- 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.
External links
- Wikisource - Hamlet's soliloquy
- Free eBook of Hamlet at Project Gutenberg
- Search and analyze the text of Hamlet on-line or in a downloadable eBook
- Hamlet - HTML/XML version, including search function
- The Tragedie of Hamlet - HTML version of this title.
- Hamlet on the Ramparts - from MIT's Shakespeare Electronic Archive
- Hamletworks.org Multiple versions of Hamlet, numerous commentaries, concordances, facsimiles, etc.
- 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
