Hamlet was entered into the Register of the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers on

Hamlet: Prince of Denmark is a tragedy by William Shakespeare personal tour guide in malaysia . It is one of his best-known works, and also one of the most-quoted writings in the English language. [1] Hamlet has been called "the first great tragedy Europe had produced for two thousand years" [2] and it is universally included on lists of the world's greatest books. [3] It is also one of the most widely performed of Shakespeare's plays; for example, it has topped the list of stagings at the Royal Shakespeare personal tour guide in malaysia Company since 1879. [4] With 4,042 lines and 29,551 words, Hamlet is also the longest Shakespeare play. [5]
Hamlet is a tragedy of the "revenge" genre, yet transcends the form through unprecedented emphasis on the conflicted mind of the title character. In a reversal of dramatic priorities, Hamlet's inner turmoil—his duty to his slain father, his outrage with his morally compromised mother, and his distraction over the prevailing personal tour guide in malaysia religious imperatives—provide the context for the play's external action. Hamlet's personal tour guide in malaysia restless mind, unmoored from faith, proves to be an impediment to action, justifying Nietzsche 's judgment on Hamlet that "one who has gained knowledge . . . feel[s] it to be ridiculous or humiliating [to] be asked to set right a world that is out of joint." [6] Hamlet's belated decision to act, his blundering murder of the innocent Polonius, sets in motion the inexorable tragedy of madness, murder, and dissolution of the moral order.
The story of the Danish prince, "Hamlet," who plots revenge on his uncle, the current personal tour guide in malaysia king, for killing his father, the former king, is an old one. Many of the story elements, from Hamlet's personal tour guide in malaysia feigned madness, his mother's hasty marriage to the usurper, the testing of the prince's madness with a young woman, the prince talking to his mother and killing a hidden personal tour guide in malaysia spy , and the prince personal tour guide in malaysia being sent to England with two retainers and substituting for the letter requesting his execution for one requesting theirs are already here in this medieval tale, recorded by Saxo Grammaticus in his Gesta Danorum around 1200. A reasonably accurate version of Saxo was rendered into French in 1570 by François de Belleforest in his Histoires Tragiques. [7]
Shakespeare's main source, personal tour guide in malaysia however, is believed personal tour guide in malaysia to have been an earlier play—now lost (and possibly by Thomas Kyd )—known as the Ur-Hamlet. This earlier Hamlet play was in performance by 1589, and seems to have introduced a ghost for the first time into the story. [8] Scholars are unable to assert with any confidence how much Shakespeare took from this play, how much from other contemporary sources (such as Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy ), and how much from Belleforest (possibly something) or Saxo (probably nothing). In fact, popular scholar Harold Bloom has advanced the (as yet unpopular) notion that Shakespeare himself wrote the Ur-Hamlet as a form of early draft. [9] No matter the sources, personal tour guide in malaysia Shakespeare's Hamlet has elements that the medieval version does not, such as the secrecy of the murder, a ghost that urges revenge, the "other sons" (Laertes and Fortinbras), the testing of the king via a play, and the mutually fatal nature of Hamlet's (nearly incidental) "revenge." [10] [11]
Hamlet was entered into the Register of the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers on July 26, 1602. A so-called "bad" First Quarto (referred to as "Q1") was published in 1603, by the booksellers Nicholas Ling and John Trundell. Q1 contains just over half of the text of the later Second Quarto ("Q2") published in 1604, [12] again by Nicholas Ling. Reprints of Q2 followed in 1611 (Q3) and 1637 (Q5); there was also an undated Q4 (possibly from 1622). The First Folio text (often referred to as "F1") appeared as part of Shakespeare's collected plays published in 1623. Q1, Q2, and F1 are the three elements in the textual problem of Hamlet.
The play was revived early in the Restoration era; Sir William personal tour guide in malaysia Davenant staged a 1661 production personal tour guide in malaysia at Lincoln's Inn Fields. David Garrick mounted a version at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1772 that omitted the gravediggers and expanded his own leading role. William Poel staged a production of the Q1 text in 1881. [13]
There are three extant texts of Hamlet from the early 1600s: the "first quarto" Hamlet of 1603 (called "Q1"), the "second personal tour guide in malaysia quarto" Hamlet of 1604/5 ("Q2"), and the Hamlet text within personal tour guide in malaysia the First Folio of 1623 ("F1"). Later quartos and folios are considered derivative of these, personal tour guide in malaysia so are of little interest personal tour guide in malaysia in capturing Shakespeare's personal tour guide in malaysia original text. Q1 itself personal tour guide in malaysia has been viewed with skepticism, and in practice Q2 and F1 are the editions upon which editors mostly rely. However, these two versions have some significant differences that have produced a growing body of commentary, starting with early studies by J. Dover Wilson and G. I. Duthie, and continuing into the present.
Early editors of Shakespeare's works, starting with Nicholas Rowe (1709) and Lewis Theobald (1733), combined material personal tour guide in malaysia from the two earliest known sources of Hamlet, Q2 and F1. Each text contains some material the other lacks, and there are many minor differences in wording, so that only a little more than two hundred lines are identical between them. Typically, editors have taken an approach of combining, "conflating," personal tour guide in malaysia the texts of Q2 and F1, in an effort to create an inclusive text as close as possible personal tour guide in malaysia to the ideal Shakespeare original. Theobald's version became personal tour guide in malaysia standard for a long time. [14] Certainly, the "full text" philosophy that he established has influenced editors to the current day. Many modern editors have done essentially the same thing Theobald did, also using, for the most part, the 1604/5 quarto and the 1623 folio texts.
The discovery of Q1 in 1823, [15] when its existence had not even been suspected earlier, caused considerable interest and excitement, while also raising questions. The deficiencies personal tour guide in malaysia of the text were recognized immediately—Q1 was instrumental in the development of the concept of a Shakespeare "bad quarto." Yet Q1 also has its value: it contains stage directions which reveal actual stage performance in a way that Q2 and F1 do not, and it contains an entire scene (usually labeled IV, vi) that is not in either Q2 or F1. Also, Q1 is useful simply for comparison to the later publications. At least 28 different productions of the Q1 text since 1881 have shown it eminently fit for the stage. Q1 is generally thought to be a "memorial reconstruction" of the play as it may have been performed by Shakespeare's own company, although there is disagreement whether the reconstruction was pirated or authorized. It is considerably personal tour guide in malaysia shorter than Q2 or F1, apparently because of significant cuts for stage performance. It is thought personal tour guide in malaysia that one of the actors playing a minor role (Marcellus, certainly, perhaps Voltemand as well) in the legitimate production was the source of this version.
Another theory is that the Q1 text is an abridged version of the full length play intended especially for traveling productions (the aforementioned university productions, in particular.) Kathleen Irace espouses this theory in her New Cambridge edition, "The First Quarto of Hamlet." The idea that the Q1 text is not riddled with error, but is in fact a totally viable version of the play has led to several recent Q1 productions personal tour guide in malaysia (perhaps most notably, Tim Sheridan and Andrew Borba's 2003 production personal tour guide in malaysia at the Theatre of NOTE in Los Angeles personal tour guide in malaysia , for which Ms. Irace herself served as dramaturg). [16]
As with the two texts of King Lear , some contemporary scholarship is moving away from the ideal of the "full text," supposing its inapplicability to the case of Hamlet. The Arden Shakespeare's 2006 publication personal tour guide in malaysia of different texts of Hamlet in different volumes is perhaps the best evidence of this shifting focus and emphasis. [17] However, any abridgement of the standard conflation of Q2 and F1 runs the obvious risk of omitting genuine Shakespeare writing.
The earliest recorded performance of Hamlet was in June 1602; in 1603 the play was acted at both universities, Cambridge and Oxford . Along with Richard II, Hamlet was acted by the crew of Capt. William personal tour guide in malaysia Keeling aboard the British East India Company ship Dragon, off Sierra Leone , in September 1607. More conventional Court performances occurred in 1619 and in 1637, the latter on January 24 at Hampton Court Palace. Since Hamlet is second only to Falstaff among Shakespeare's characters in the number of allusions personal tour guide in malaysia and references to him in contemporary literature, the play was certainly performed with a frequency personal tour guide in malaysia missed by the historical record. [18]
Actors who have played Hamlet include Laurence Olivier , (1937) John Gielgud (1939), Mel Gibson, and Derek Jacobi (1978), who played the title role of Hamlet at Elsinore Castle in Denmark , the actual setting of the play. Christopher Plummer also played the role in a television personal tour guide in malaysia version personal tour guide in malaysia (1966) that was filmed personal tour guide in malaysia there. Actresses who have played the title role in Hamlet include Sarah Siddons, Sarah Bernhardt, Asta Nielsen, Judith Anderson, personal tour guide in malaysia Diane Venora and Frances de la Tour. The youngest actor to play the role on film was Ethan Hawke, who was 29, In Hamlet (2000). The oldest is probably Johnston Forbes-Robertson, who was 60 when his performance was filmed in 1913. [19] Edwin Booth, the brother of John Wilkes Booth 's (the man who assassinated Abraham Lincoln ), went into a brief retirement after his brother's notoriety, but made his comeback in the role of Hamlet. personal tour guide in malaysia Rather than wait for Hamlet's first appearance in the text to meet the audience's response, Booth sat on the stage in the play's first scene and was met by a lengthy standing ovation.
Booth's Broadway run of Hamlet lasted for one hundred performances in 1864, an incredible run for its time. When John Barrymore played the part on Broadway to acclaim in 1922, it was assumed that he would close the production after 99 performances out of respect for Booth. But Barrymore extended the run to 101 performances so that he would have the record for himself. personal tour guide in malaysia Currently, the lon