Other editions of book Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

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HAMLETTo be, or not to be, that is the question,Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to sufferThe slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep--No more--and by a sleep to say we endThe heartache and the thousand natural shocksThat flesh is heir to; 'tis a consummationDevoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep;To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub,For in that sleep of death what dreams may comeWhen we have shuffled off this mortal coilMust give us pause. There's the respectThat makes calamity of so long life.For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,The insolence of office, and the spurnsThat patient merit of th'unworthy takes,When he himself might his quietus makeWith a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,To grunt and sweat under a weary life,But that the dread of something after death,The undiscovered country from whose bournNo traveler returns, puzzles the will,And makes us rather bear those ills we haveThan fly to others that we know not of.Thus conscience does make cowards,And thus the native hue of resolutionIs sickl[i]ed o'er with the pale cast of thought,And enterprises of great pitch and momentWith this regard their currents turn awryAnd lose the name of action. Soft you now,The fair Ophelia!--Nymph, in thy orisonsBe all my sins remembered.

Dr. Johnson thought it necessary to play an apology for Shakespeare's magic; - in which he says, "A poet, who should now make the whole action of his tragedy depend upon enchantment, and produce the chief events by the assistance of supernatural agents, would be censured as transgressing the bounds of probability, be banished from the theatre to the nursery, and condemned to write fairy tales instead of tragedies." He then proceeds to defend this transgression upon the ground of the credulity of the poet's age; when "the scenes of enchantment, however they may be now ridiculed, were both by himself and his audience thought awful and affecting." By whom, or when (always excepting French criticism), these sublime conceptions were in danger of ridicule, he has not told us; and I sadly fear that this superfluous apology arose from the misgivings of the great critic's mind. Schlegel has justly remarked that, "Whether the age of Shakespeare still believed in witchcraft and ghosts, is a matter of perfect indifference for the justification of the use which, in Hamlet and Macbeth, he has made of pre-existing traditions. No superstition can ever be prevalent and widely diffused through ages and nations without having a foundation in human nature: on this foundation the poet builds; he calls up from their hidden abysses that dread of the unknown, that presage of a dark side of nature, and a world of spirits which philosophy now imagines it has altogether exploded. In this manner he is in some degree both the portrayer and the philosopher of a superstition; that is, not the philosopher who denies and turns into ridicule, but, which is still more difficult, who distinctly exhibits its origin to us in apparently irrational and yet natural opinions." - In another place the same admirable critic says - "Since The Furies of Æschylus, nothing so grand and terrible has ever been composed: The Witches, it is true, are not divine Eumenides, and are not intended to be so: they are ignoble and vulgar instruments of hell.

Hamlet is commonly regarded as one of the greatest plays ever written. Drawing on Danish chronicles and the Elizabethan vogue for revenge tragedy, Shakespeare created a play that is at once a philosophic treatise, a family drama, and a supernatural thriller. In the wake of his father’s death, Prince Hamlet finds that his Uncle Claudius has swiftly taken the throne and married his mother, Queen Gertrude. The ghost of the dead king then appears and charges Claudius with ‘murder most foul.’ Hamlet is called to revenge his father’s death: but will he be able to act before it is too late?

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