Hamlet

Hamlet is, in many ways, Shakespeare’s biggest play. It’s certainly his longest (at 4,042 lines, an uncut performance takes around five hours) and probably his most famous: the “To be or not to be” speech, the Gravediggers scene, and many other moments are etched into the popular consciousness. Hamlet the character, too, is big: he dominates the play, speaking over 1,400 lines and covering pretty well every form of expression in the process: verse, prose, dense wordplay, proto-existentialist musing, and plenty of dark humor.

The play exists in an array of different forms. It has been interpreted almost continuously since its Elizabethan debut around the turn of the seventeenth century, and translated into most major languages. Texts of the play are notoriously problematic: there are significantly different Folio and Quarto versions, as well as a very different “bad” Quarto. It has been speculated that this was based on an early draft of the play or an actor’s recollected version. (For more, see our “Note on the Text.”)

It’s a testament to the power of the writing that a drama so broodingly inward—one that sometimes reads as if the author were writing to satisfy himself as much as his audience—has become so universal. As William Hazlitt proclaimed in 1817: “It is WE who are Hamlet.”

Hamlet editions:

The Arden Shakespeare
The Yale Annotated Shakespeare
The Oxford Shakespeare
The New Cambridge Shakespeare
Signet Classics Shakespeare