Hamlet is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601. The play, set in Denmark, recounts how Prince Hamlet exacts revenge on his uncle Claudius, who has murdered Hamlet's father, the King, and then taken the throne and married Hamlet's mother. The play vividly charts the course of real and feigned madness—from overwhelming grief to seething rage—and explores themes of treachery, revenge, incest, and moral corruption.
Shakespeare's longest play, and among the most powerful and influential tragedies in the English language, it provides a storyline capable of seemingly endless retelling and adaptation by others. During Shakespeare's lifetime, the play was one of his most popular works, and it still ranks high among his most-performed, topping the performance list of the Royal Shakespeare Company and its predecessors in Stratford-upon-Avon since 1879. The role of Hamlet is one of the most coveted and challenging in all of theatre.
The story of the Danish prince was drawn from the legend of Amleth, preserved by 13th-century chronicler Saxo Grammaticus in his Gesta Danorum, as subsequently retold by the 16th-century scholar François de Belleforest. Shakespeare's version is distinguished by its profound psychological depth and the complexity of its central character, whose soliloquies, including the iconic 'To be, or not to be,' have become some of the most quoted lines in the English language.
