49 Fun Facts About Hamlet

What is the play's full title?

The full title is The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark; the 1623 First Folio prints it as 'The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke', while the early quartos call it a 'Tragicall Historie'.

Who has murdered Hamlet's father and married his mother?

Marcellus's line about something being 'rotten in the state of Denmark' is usually read as pointing at this fratricide.

What is the name of Hamlet's mother?

Gertrude, Hamlet's mother and Queen of Denmark, remarried her dead husband's brother within two months, prompting Hamlet's 'Frailty, thy name is woman' in his first soliloquy.

Which friend does the dying Hamlet charge to stay alive and tell his story?

Horatio, Hamlet's fellow student and confidant, is told to 'absent thee from felicity awhile' and report the cause aright; he is left alive to do so at the end.

How does Hamlet kill the king's eavesdropping counsellor?

Polonius is eavesdropping on Hamlet and Gertrude behind an arras when he cries out; Hamlet stabs wildly, thinking it might be the king.

How does Ophelia die?

Gertrude reports that a willow branch broke and dropped her into the brook; a 1569 coroner's report on a drowned girl called Jane Shaxspere may have inspired it.

Where does Ophelia's brother go at the start of the play, before returning in a rage in Act 4?

Ophelia's brother goes back to France; their father later sends the servant Reynaldo to Paris to check on how his son is behaving there.

Who is Ophelia's brother, who fights Hamlet in the final duel?

Laertes, Ophelia's brother, fences Hamlet with an unbated, venom-tipped rapier; the weapons change hands in a scuffle and both men die of the same poison.

Which two old friends are sent to spy on Hamlet and later escort him to England?

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, summoned by the king to sound Hamlet out, carry sealed orders for his execution in England; Hamlet rewrites the commission so they die instead.

What is the title of the play Hamlet has the travelling actors perform to test Claudius's guilt?

Hamlet asks the players for The Murder of Gonzago, inserting a dozen lines of his own, and tells the king it is called 'The Mousetrap'; the king halts the performance.

Why does Hamlet decide NOT to kill the king when he catches him alone and unarmed?

He reasons that killing a man at prayer would send him to heaven; ironically Claudius admits he cannot truly repent.

Whom does the dying Hamlet name as his successor to the Danish throne?

Fortinbras, the Norwegian prince, receives Hamlet's 'dying voice' for the election and marches in as the play ends to claim the kingdom and order a soldier's funeral.

Whose skull does Hamlet hold in the graveyard scene?

Yorick, the old king's jester who once carried the boy Hamlet on his back, has lain in the earth 23 years, by the gravedigger's count, when his skull is turned up.

Which pianist left his skull to the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1982 hoping it would be used as Yorick?

André Tchaikowsky, a Polish-born pianist and composer, bequeathed his skull to the RSC on his death in 1982; David Tennant finally held it in the graveyard scene of the 2008 production.

At what point in the play does Hamlet deliver 'To be, or not to be'?

It's the 'nunnery scene': Ophelia is on stage waiting, and Claudius and Polonius are hidden nearby listening.

How does the 'bad' First Quarto of 1603 mangle the opening of the famous soliloquy?

Q1 of 1603 prints 'To be, or not to be, aye there's the point' (spelled 'I'), placing the speech earlier in the action; at about 2,200 lines it is roughly 60 percent of the Second Quarto.

Which character gives the advice 'Neither a borrower nor a lender be' and 'To thine own self be true'?

He's also the source of 'Brevity is the soul of wit', which is funny coming from the most long-winded man in the play.

Roughly how many lines does a conflated modern text of Hamlet, Shakespeare's longest play, run to?

A conflated modern text runs to about 3,900 lines (counts vary by edition, some reaching 4,000), roughly 30,000 words; an uncut staging lasts well over four hours.

How many early printed versions of Hamlet survive, each with lines the others lack?

Three survive: the First Quarto of 1603, the Second Quarto of 1604 and the First Folio of 1623; Q2 has around 230 lines absent from the Folio, which in turn adds about 70 of its own.

When did Shakespeare most likely write Hamlet?

It isn't in Francis Meres's 1598 list of Shakespeare's plays, and it alludes to Julius Caesar, dated to mid-1599.

Which 13th-century chronicler's 'Life of Amleth' is the play's main legendary source?

Saxo Grammaticus told the Amleth story in Books III and IV of his Latin Gesta Danorum (c. 1200); his prince also feigns madness and kills an eavesdropper in his mother's chamber.

Which 2022 Robert Eggers film retells the Amleth legend with Alexander Skarsgård?

Amleth is the son of Horvendill, king of the Jutes, in Saxo's telling; Eggers co-wrote the script with the Icelandic author Sjón.

What do scholars call the lost earlier play, possibly by Kyd, that Shakespeare may have reworked?

The Ur-Hamlet is known only from allusions: Thomas Nashe mocked 'whole Hamlets' of tragical speeches in 1589, and Thomas Lodge in 1596 recalled a ghost crying 'Hamlet, revenge'.

What was the name of Shakespeare's only son, who died in 1596 aged eleven?

Hamnet Shakespeare, twin of Judith, was buried in Stratford in August 1596; Hamnet and Hamlet were interchangeable spellings then, and Stephen Greenblatt links the father's grief to the tragedy.

Which German university city do Hamlet and his student friends attend?

Wittenberg, the university to which Hamlet asks to return, was Martin Luther's town, famous for the Ninety-five Theses of 1517; Marlowe's Doctor Faustus is a Wittenberg scholar too.

Which real Danish castle is the Elsinore of the play?

Kronborg, the castle at Helsingør on the narrowest point of the Øresund, is the play's Elsinore; a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000, it was rebuilt after a fire in 1629.

For which leading actor of his company did Shakespeare almost certainly write the role of Hamlet?

Burbage was the star of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, and the play was described in 1602 as 'latelie Acted' by them.

Which French actress famously played the prince in London in 1899 and filmed the fencing scene in 1900?

Sarah Bernhardt played the prince in Paris and London in 1899 and filmed the duel in 1900 for the Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre, the earliest known Hamlet on film; Asta Nielsen followed in 1921.

Whose 1948 black-and-white Hamlet won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Actor?

Laurence Olivier directed and starred, winning Best Actor while the film became the first British production to take Best Picture; Olivier was the first person to direct himself to an acting Oscar.

The 1948 film's prologue calls Hamlet the tragedy of a man who could not do what?

The 1948 film's opening voice-over declares 'This is the tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind', announcing the indecisive reading its heavily cut text pursues.

Who directed and starred in the first full-length, unabridged film of Hamlet in 1996?

Kenneth Branagh directed and played the prince in a four-hour, 70mm film using the full conflated text, with Billy Crystal, Robin Williams and Charlton Heston in supporting parts.

Which stately home stood in for the exterior of Elsinore in Branagh's 1996 film?

Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire provided Elsinore's exterior, its grounds dressed with snow for a 19th-century setting, while the mirrored state hall and other interiors were built at Shepperton Studios.

Who played Ophelia in Branagh's 1996 Hamlet?

Kate Winslet played Ophelia, fresh from Sense and Sensibility; Julie Christie was the queen, and comedian Ken Dodd appeared in silent flashback as the jester.

Which Hollywood action star played Hamlet in Franco Zeffirelli's 1990 film?

Glenn Close played his mother Gertrude, though she is only nine years older than Gibson.

In Michael Almereyda's 2000 version, Ethan Hawke plays Hamlet as what, in modern Manhattan?

Hawke's Hamlet is a film student who shoots his own video diary; the king runs the Denmark Corporation, Elsinore is a Manhattan hotel, and the Ghost first appears on security video.

Who played Claudius opposite David Tennant's Hamlet in the RSC production filmed for the BBC in 2009?

Patrick Stewart doubled the king and the Ghost in Gregory Doran's production; he had already played the same role in the 1980 BBC Television Shakespeare Hamlet opposite Derek Jacobi.

Which actor played Hamlet for a 12-week run at London's Barbican in 2015?

Benedict Cumberbatch played the prince at the Barbican from August to October 2015 in Lyndsey Turner's production, later screened in cinemas by NT Live; Andrew Scott followed at the Almeida in 2017.

Whose 1964 Broadway Hamlet, directed by John Gielgud, ran for 137 performances?

Richard Burton's 1964 Hamlet ran 137 performances at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre under John Gielgud, who voiced the Ghost; it was filmed in 'Electronovision' and briefly shown in cinemas.

Which 1994 Disney film is a loose animated retelling of Hamlet?

The Lion King maps the plot onto the savanna: Simba is the grieving prince, Scar the murderous uncle, and Mufasa the father who returns as a vision in the clouds.

Who wrote the 1966 absurdist play that follows Hamlet's two doomed courtiers from the wings?

Tom Stoppard's play premiered at the 1966 Edinburgh Fringe, showing the two courtiers killing time offstage; its title is the ambassador's line from the last scene, and it is constantly compared with Waiting for Godot.

Which 2014 Bollywood film relocates Hamlet to modern Kashmir?

Haider, the last of Vishal Bhardwaj's Shakespeare trilogy after Maqbool (Macbeth) and Omkara (Othello), stars Shahid Kapoor as a student searching for his disappeared father in 1995 Kashmir.

Which psychoanalyst developed his ideas about the Oedipus complex partly from analysing Hamlet?

Sigmund Freud linked Hamlet's delay to repressed Oedipal desire in The Interpretation of Dreams (1899); his follower Ernest Jones expanded the reading, which shaped the 1937 Old Vic staging and the 1948 film.

Which Soviet director's 1964 Hamlet used a Boris Pasternak translation and a Shostakovich score?

Grigori Kozintsev's black-and-white Hamlet, with Innokenty Smoktunovsky as the prince, used Pasternak's translation and Shostakovich's score; he followed it with King Lear in 1971.

Which chief counsellor to Elizabeth I is often suggested as the model for the play's long-winded adviser?

Burghley wrote 'Ten Precepts' of advice to his son Robert, much as Polonius lectures Laertes.

In the play within the play, how is the king Gonzago murdered?

That is exactly how the ghost says Claudius killed King Hamlet, which is why the re-enactment rattles the king.

What is Ophelia's father called in the 'bad' First Quarto of 1603?

Corambis is the First Quarto's name for Ophelia's father, with Montano for his servant; one theory holds the usual names were swapped for an Oxford performance to avoid echoing Robert Pullen and John Rainolds.

Fortinbras asks Claudius for passage through Denmark to attack which country?

Ordered by Norway to abandon his invasion of Denmark, Fortinbras instead requests passage for a march on Poland.

What is Claudius's backup plan if Laertes' envenomed foil fails to kill Hamlet in the fencing match?

Poisoned wine is the fallback: the king will offer Hamlet a 'chalice for the nonce' when he pauses to drink, and the queen drains it instead.

After the Restoration, which troupe secured Hamlet when the old plays were split between two patent theatres?

The Duke's Men under Sir William Davenant staged Hamlet from 1661 with Thomas Betterton as the prince, on a stage with painted movable scenery; Killigrew's rival company held the bulk of the old repertory.