Hamlet - 'a hoop through which every eminent actor must, sooner or later, jump'
Max Beerbohm 1889

Hamlet: 'an uncome-at-able text. Its sinews are perplexed and self-involved, like strands of weed in a furious river'
Kenneth Tynan 1972

In a 1999 poll, Hamlet was voted the 'master-work' of the millennium. Enduringly popular, frequently performed, it is Shakespeare's most quoted play, and the image of Hamlet holding Yorick's skull an instantly recognisable symbol. Numerous major productions of the Hamlet are staged around the world every year. There are three extant Renaissance versions of the text, a 'bad' Quarto (Q1), thought to be a reconstruction from memory by one of the players, a good Quarto (Q2) and the Folio version. Most performances are based on a conflated version of Q2 and Folio. Since this runs for 4-5 hours, it is then often cut to the director's requirements. This has contributed to the range of different interpretations, as every personalised script tells a slightly different story.


In England ...
Written about 1600/1, when Shakespeare was at the height of his powers, Hamlet was immediately popular, as is clear from the numerous contemporary references, quotations and parodies. The title page of the First Quarto, printed in 1603, describes it as having been 'diverse times acted by his Highness servants in the City of London: as also in the two Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, and elsewhere' - a more widespread claim than that made for any other of Shakespeare's plays. Though we have no records of performances at the Globe, Hamlet was certainly played at court in 1619 before James I and in 1637 before Charles I. Hamlet was one of Richard Burbage's most celebrated roles; Shakespeare himself is traditionally believed to have played the Ghost.

... in Europe ...
Hamlet was not only popular within England. The play seems to have been performed in Germany by travelling English players as early as 1603, and a German adaptation was certainly performed in Dresden in 1626.

... and at Sea
There are also records of it being performed on board ship: William Keeling permitted amateur performances by the crew on his East India Company merchant ship in 1607 and again in 1608, in order 'to keep my people from idleness and unlawful games, or sleep.' It also served to entertain his visitors, and a degree of simultaneous translation and explanation in Portuguese was provided - adding another interesting level of metatheatre to Hamlet's commentary on The Mousetrap.


In 1642 the Puritans succeeded in shutting down the theatres; they remained closed for an entire generation, until the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. Hamlet was one of the earliest plays to be reintroduced to the repertoire.


From 1661 to 1709 the part of Hamlet was played by Thomas Betterton, 'instructed' by playwright and theatre-owner William Davenant. Davenant was Shakespeare's godson and had watched Burbage's successor, Joseph Taylor, perform the role. Despite the break in playing, Betterton's performance may then be a close copy of Burbage's original; it was active, vigorous and manly. Even at 70 Betterton as Hamlet impressed audiences as 'a young man of great expectation, vivacity and enterprize' (Tatler). His performance was noteworthy for his terror on encountering the Ghost, turning 'as pale as his neck-cloth'.


Unlike many of Shakespeare's other plays, Hamlet did not suffer from radical adaptation after the Restoration. It was, however, heavily cut, loosing over 800 lines: no speech longer than thirty lines survived intact, except 'To be or not to be' - the soliloquy was already too famous to cut. In 1664, Pepys spent 'all the afternoon ... getting a speech out of Hamlett, 'To bee or not to bee' without book' [sic]; he also owned a manuscript of the soliloquy set to music. The play remained popular through out the Restoration period, despite John Evelyn's rather sour response to it: 'These old plays begin to disgust this refined age.'


On Betterton's death, a series of mediocre players vied for the role without notable success. During the early 18th century Hamlet was staged very plainly, without the scenic displays other plays were beginning to attract. However, in 1736 the unlicensed theatre at Goodman's Fields staged a production which introduced 'the ceremony of Hamlet's lying in state after the manner of his Grace the Duke of Buckingham. With new music proper to the occasion.'

The same theatre was later to give a young David Garrick his first role in Hamlet, as the Ghost.


Garrick's chance to play Hamlet himself came in Dublin in 1742, with Peg Woffington as his Ophelia. He was to become one of history's most famous Hamlets and continued in the role until 1776, choosing the play for his retirement performance. Garrick simplified the costuming traditionally used, but added to the spectacle by means of special effects. These famously included a trick chair for the closet scene, which fell over when Hamlet started up on seeing the Ghost and a wig which enabled his hair to stand on end in terror. The high point of Garrick's performance was, like Betterton's, his encounter with the Ghost, which a contemporary, Lichtenberg, described as 'one of the greatest and most dreadful [scenes] of which, perhaps, the stage is capable.'


Garrick started the tradition of the mad Ophelia carrying a 'neatly arranged' handful of straw ("she spurns enviously at straws") which continued into the 19th century. His most admired Ophelia was Mrs Cibber who 'preserved favour and prettiness through all her grief and terror' (Dover Wilson). Garrick reinstated some of the material traditionally cuts, most notably the advice to the players. However, in 1772, he produced his own adaptation, radically changing the play's ending. He left out Hamlet's departure for England, Laertes' plot with Claudius, the gravediggers and Ophelia's funeral. Instead, Hamlet and Laertes quarrelled before the King; when Claudius intervened Hamlet killed him. Gertrude went mad and died offstage. This version was played intermittently for the next ten years.


Kemble played Hamlet until 1783-1817. His portrayal marked a major change from active vigorous Hamlets to a melancholy romantic reading, and was characterised by a 'fixed and sullen gloom' (Hazlitt). He was also the first to introduce Elizabethan costuming (until then the play had always been performed in contemporary dress) and to use specially designed and co-ordinated sets.


John Philip Kemble's sister, Sarah Siddons, was the first female Hamlet. The role was regarded in the late 18th and 19th centuries as embodying many feminine characteristics and was frequently played by women, culminating in Sarah Bernhardt in 1899-1901. This trend continues to the present day, including 20th century performances by Eva La Gallienne, Diane Verona, Frances de la Tour, and most recently the German actress Angela Winkler in a much admired German production at the Edinburgh Royal Lyceum in 2000. In 1805 the thirteen-year-old Master Betty was, like Sarah Siddons, a novelty Hamlet. His performance was so popular that Pitt adjourned the House of Commons to enable members to catch it.




The 19th century saw a proliferation of striking Hamlets, including visiting productions from America, France, Italy and Germany. The traditional reading of the role which appears to have persisted for 175 years had now been broken, and both play and character developed individualistically from production to production.


Kean performed the role from 1814 to 1833 and appeared deliberately to play against previous readings; he was criticised for a portrayal of alternately electrifying and exaggerated moments, without the psychological consistency of previous Hamlets. Kean was the first to react to his father's Ghost with affection and eagerness rather than terror and the first to treat Ophelia with love rather than brutality; his son, Charles Kean, was in 1840 the first to use a medieval Danish setting and costumes.


In 1837 Macready continued the tender affectionate reading, combining it with Kemble's melancholy, but adding an impression of intellect and eloquence seldom before emphasised.


The second half of the century saw Hamlets from Barry Sullivan (often overlooked but regarded by George Bernard Shaw as 'the most successful Hamlet of my day ... an actor of superb physical vigour, who excelled in the impersonation of proud, noble and violent characters'), a continental troupe under Charles Fechter (a low-key, naturalistic production, with a medieval Danish setting), the American Edwin Booth (described by the New York Herald as a Hamlet 'of a reflective, sensitive, gentle, generous nature, tormented, borne down and made miserable by an occasion ... to which it is not equal' and by Mary Isabella Stone as 'every inch the noble prince and true-born gentleman; strong, pure, and refined, in soul and senses'), the Italian Tommaso Salvini (with a return to the Garrick tradition of terror and energy), Herbert Beerbohm Tree (with a quintessential romantic, sentimental version, ending the play on Hamlet's death), and the French Sarah Bernhardt (with an energetic almost comic Hamlet).


However, 1864-1885 was dominated by Henry Irving, whose Hamlet combined poetry, eloquence, sensitivity and passion with a 'hysterical power'; he was described by Yeats as a 'lean image of hungry speculation' and by Laurence Irving as 'a man of imagination called upon to be a man of action', though the Daily News criticised him as 'bourgeois'.

Irving moved Hamlet towards genuine lunacy, reflecting the interest in madness typical of the period. This interest also gave greater prominence to the role of Ophelia, also encouraged by growing emphasis on the love story. Ellen Terry as Irving's Ophelia was notable for her research into this aspect of her role and made Ophelia disturbingly rather than prettily mad; this interpretation would be developed throughout the next century. The same period saw the introduction of a more sexual, voluptuous interpretation of Gertrude, begun by Fanny Morant in 1870 and continued by Margaret Leighton in 1884. This opened the way for the Oedipal interpretations to follow.


The century ended with the establishment of an annual Shakespeare Festival in Stratford. Frank Benson's touring company became regular visitors to Stratford, where they would play Hamlet regularly from 1886 to 1916.




The early 20th century saw a renewed interest in returning to Elizabethan originals. Johnston Forbes-Robertson in 1897 first restored large sections of traditionally cut text, including the final appearance of Fortinbras. Unlike Irving, he was an 'eminently sane' and 'princely' Hamlet (Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News). He also returned to a more active reading of the role. In 1918 Shaw commented, 'All the sentimental Hamlets have been bores. Forbes-Robertson's gallant, alert Hamlet, thoughtful but not in the least sentimental, is the Hamlet of today.' Forbes-Robertson was also famous for his vocal delivery, 'with a voice that was likened rapturously to the trumpets of the morning and the flutes of the evening' (Trewin).


Frank Benson next produced the full uncut conflated text, the 'eternity' version, never before produced, staging it in two parts over an afternoon and evening. Benson was also to follow Betterton's example in performing Hamlet at over 70, in a performance described by J.C.Trewin as an 'idealised abstracted performance, its patrician quality a slow-moving majesty of gesture [with a] voice, and its long vowels, that could rise in a distant semi-liturgical chant'.


Meanwhile, William Poel was presenting a series of experimental productions, exploring Elizabethan staging practices and minimal settings. In his production of Hamlet in 1914, the characters were costumed to resemble historical Elizabethan figures. Poel also staged a performance of the First Quarto, the short 1603 text believed to be a corrupt memorial reconstruction of the play, in which Polonius is called Corambis and the most famous soliloquy opens 'To be or not to be, ay, there's the point'.


In 1925 the Birmingham Rep production directed by H.K. Ayliff and designed by Paul Shelving made headlines as the 'plus-fours Hamlet'. The production was significant for its controversial use of modern dress, contrary to the current accepted norms of Shakespeare production, but it was also a clearly ensemble production, rather than the normal star vehicle, and Colin Keith-Johnston seems to have been the first anti-hero Hamlet, described by Ivor Brown as a 'snarling prince ... the first heart-break Hamlet I've seen.'


John Barrymore's production (New York 1922, London 1925) was the first to explore a Freudian, psycho-analytical approach to the play, introducing a strong sexual undercurrent between Hamlet and Gertrude and also between Ophelia and Laertes. Barrymore himself described Hamlet as a 'mother-loving pervert'. Margaret Webster commented, 'a glittering, lithe demonic quality shone through like flashing steel', while Laurence Oliver was forcefully impressed by both interpretation and performance: '[Past Hamlets] were all very beautiful and poetic but castrated. Barrymore put the balls back .... [he had] a way of choosing a word and then exploding it in a moment of passion.'


Olivier followed and developed Barrymore's Oedipal reading both in his stage production (1937) and more notably in his film (1948), subtitled 'the tragedy of a man who couldn't make up his mind'. Olivier himself gave a 'dominant impression of the 'flash and outbreak of a fiery mind' and of a steely body too' (Ivor Brown). The Oedipal reading has had a long-term influence on the perception and staging of 'the closet scene', since generally known as 'the bedroom scene' and frequently featuring a double bed. Olivier's production was also the first of many to tour to Elsinore and play in the castle itself.


In 1930, John Gielgud at 26 had been an unconventionally youthful choice to play Hamlet. He was to play the role five times in different productions over the next 14 years, and was unquestionably the defining Hamlet of the 30s. He was essentially a romantic, 'sweet prince', though disillusioned and frustrated. Tynan commented, 'The voice is thrilling and bears witness to a great suffering; an East wind has blown through it.' However, Gielgud rethought his interpretation for each production. The 1939 production included bawdy references which had remained cut for decades due to Victorian sensibilities, and Gielgud himself was 'not only a prince with a vein of poetry; he was a cynic, railer, coarse jester' (Ivor Brown).


Alec Guinness in 1938 was a Hamlet in Gielgud's youthful, romantic mould, 'the Renaissance prince par excellence, a man familiar with the ways of mankind, who could always see two sides of the coin, tortured by conscience and burdened by duty, a man of sharp with but exquisite manners' (Trewin).


The majority of immediate post-war Hamlets were unremarkable, though in 1948 an 'anguished, insightful' Paul Scofield alternated at Stratford with the actor-dancer Robert Helpmann, who was performing in ballet in London on his nights off. This 'frock-coat Hamlet', set in the Victorian era, was one of very few Hamlets transferred to a specific historical setting outside the Elizabethan or medieval Danish worlds. (Others have included the 1966 Bristol Old Vic Regency production with Richard Pasco, and Adrian Noble's Edwardian production (1992) with Kenneth Branagh.)


In 1963 Hamlet was chosen to launch the National Theatre, temporarily housed at the Old Vic. Olivier directed, but Peter O'Toole was a disappointing Hamlet. Most praise seems to have gone to Sean Kenny's versatile set, which he described as 'a single piece of thrusting stone curving up to a sharp vertical rock tower. The tower breaks the force of the rising stone and holds it firm. The tower is the throne and the bedhead and the church and alters its position to the ramp to become these things.'


The mid-'60s and '70s saw an explosion of controversial Hamlets, breaking new ground and reflecting the political excitement and upheaval of the period; beautiful verse-speaking gave way to modern, naturalistic speech-rhythms and 'mumbled' elocution, and period costumes to modern dress.


In his RST production (1965), Peter Hall aimed to portray 'the modern intellectual tortured by the needs of political commitment … I don't find Hamlet a tragedy in the sense that at the end of it I am left purged, ennobled and regenerated,' he said. 'I think this play belongs with Troilus and Cressida and Measure for Measure as a clinical dissection of life.' The 24-year-old David Warner as Hamlet appeared as the quintessential modern student, disaffected and apathetic, with rimless gold spectacles and a long woollen scarf, a 'way-out anti-hero' (Gloucester Echo), 'an existential prince' (The Times). The Birmingham Mail criticised him for 'lack of conventional princeliness and less formal poetry than we're used to'. It was 'a Hamlet for this bewildered post-war generation, frustrated, unhappy, sure of nothing' (The Stage). Critics were divided but audiences, especially the young, were overwhelmingly in favour. It became an event, and hundreds queued all night for standing tickets.

Glenda Jackson's fierce Ophelia also broke with tradition, 'frigidly spinsterish' (Birmingham Mail'), she was 'full of rancour ... the only Ophelia I have ever seen that has in it [sic] the real shrivelled shrewish roots of madness' (Observer).


Directors were also experimenting with staging and new cuts. Nicol Williamson was a charismatic and powerful Hamlet at the Roundhouse in 1969, a culmination of the '60s antihero approach, in a production by Tony Richardson that played in the round and aimed to challenge audience preconceptions about theatre conventions; in 1970 at the Cambridge Arts Jonathan Miller controversially cut the first scene, while his Claudius read out his opening speech.


At The Other Place [RSC] in 1975, Buzz Goodbody became the first (and so far the last) woman to direct a major British production. Ben Kingsley played the prince. Goodbody's modern-dress studio production intended to break down barriers between audience and actors, exploiting the intimacy of the space with entrances and exits made through the audience and soliloquies delivered directly to them. There was a chilling moment at the end of the final bloodbath when the studio doors were slammed shut, trapping the audience in the shared space. 'There are still many people who need convincing that studio theatre does not result in lesser art. They should see this' (Financial Times). Presented primarily as a revenge tragedy, the production was 'bold, trendy and imaginative' (Northampton Chronicle and Echo), and universally summarised as 'exciting'.


The decade ended with Jonathan Pryce playing an electrifying Hamlet at the Royal Court, apparently physically possessed by his father's ghost as he regurgitated some of the Ghost's lines - "apparently retching up from his guts the voice of his father urging him on to sweet revenge" (The Guardian). A reviewer in The Times called Pryce 'the first Hamlet to challenge the memory of Hall's David Warner'. William Dudley's brilliantly imaginative set, part-Holbein, part-Kafka, contained trompe l'oeil shutters painted with eyes, a skull, an hour-glass, a cloaked figure standing in a doorway. Michael Billington wrote "A busy soundtrack between scenes consists of hammering, riveting, banging and the sound of a court in warlike preparation… This is a production that bristles with intelligence and good ideas; and it gave me the feeling that it is possible to do a fine classical production outside the twin national companies."


Meanwhile in America, in 1964, John Gielgud directed Richard Burton in a production deliberately staged to look like a rehearsal, while in 1967 Joseph Papp directed Michael Sheen for the New York Shakespeare Festival in a 90-minute production designed to appeal to counter-culture-conscious youth, with modern costumes, rock music, and a minimalist metallic set.


In 1977 Derek Jacobi, directed by Toby Robertson, played Hamlet for an almost unparalleled 379 performances, in Britain and on tour abroad. The performance was a return to the 'sweet prince' formula, with Elizabethan costuming and minimal sets. Perhaps surprisingly, the critics were unanimously enthusiastic about the interpretation: 'something noble had been restored to the play' (Mary Maher). Jacobi later went on to play the part for the BBC television version directed by Rodney Bennett in 1980.



Over the last 25 years, both directors and actors have been able to draw on a wide and varied tradition. The period has seen regular productions of the uncut text and equally frequent radically cut versions as well as occasional revivals of the First Quarto. The sexuality of the '30s and the politics of the '60s and '70s have become commonplaces. Hamlets have included madmen, anti-heroes and 'sweet princes', though the latter have been in the minority. Staging has continued to be generally minimal, and modern-dress has remained popular. Ophelia's madness continues to be realistic and disturbing.


In 1989, Daniel Day-Lewis was 'everybody's picture book idea of Hamlet' (Guardian). Despite an Oedipal kiss with Gertrude (Judi Dench) the setting of the play appeared insufficiently disturbing. The Times commented '[there is] no telling ... whether Hamlet's madness is actual or assumed'; Day-Lewis had to withdraw from the production after becoming convinced he was encountering his own father's ghost, not Hamlet's.

The next RNT production, directed by John Caird, in 2000, was far more successful, though again there was 'something insufficiently rotten about this state of Denmark' (Independent). In a strongly religious reading, the stage was filled with 'church chandeliers and .. constant religious chant' (The Times). Simon Russell Beale's Hamlet was characterised by 'incisive intelligence, natural dignity, a knack for seeing through other's pretences, wry humour, moral gravity, vulnerability, a thwarted capacity for affection' (The Times), a Hamlet 'driven by a nostalgia for a pre-lapsarian goodness rather than a thwarted desire to extirpate the evil that destroyed it' (Independent).


Other recent London Hamlets included Alan Rickman at the Riverside Studios in 1992, Alan Cummings for ETT at the Donmar in 1993 (and on tour), Stephen Dillane in the West End in 1994, Ralph Fiennes at the Hackney Empire for the Almeida in 1995, Mark Rylance at the Globe in 2000, and Adrian Lester for Peter Brook's Bouffes du Nord company at the Young Vic in 2001. Most recent of all is Trevor Nunn's 2004 company at the Old Vic, notable for the youth of its actors.



A 4½ hour production. This was Branagh's fourth Hamlet, 'a throwback to the definition of nobility ... trying to define and reshape a notion of modern royalty in the face of many obstacles' (Observer), 'a brooding self-possessed prince, courtly and serious, full of old-fashioned impersonal courtesy - a sober young royal who has been well-trained in friendly attentive remoteness, under which you sense the glint of agile alert intelligence' (Sunday Times). Despite the Edwardian setting, many reviewers saw the production as very relevant to the current day and contemporary political and royal issues. This was also a strong ensemble production - 'domesticity is one of the production's great strengths' (Independent on Sunday). It enabled strong performances from both Jane Lapotaire as Gertrude and Joanne Pearce as Ophelia. Lapotaire was 'a regal mother, proud but a little fretful ... she always positions herself, as if by subconsciously, where she can best see her son: a simple but sensible woman who looks at Hamlet with anxious admiration, tinged with incredulity that this charming difficult important adult is her offspring; ... Pearce's Ophelia is one of those anxiety -ridden teenagers on which the young Edvard Munch feasted his eyes' (Sunday Times). Pearce also created a striking impression in her mad scene, when she appeared wearing Polonius's blood-soaked clothing.


This was a very trimmed version: the opening scene was cut, as was the part of Fortinbras and some of the soliloquies. The production opened with Hamlet pouring out his father's ashes, to a backdrop of home movies of happier days and Claudius's opening speech being delivered offstage. The play then moved to the wedding celebrations, in which the Ghost of Old Hamlet appeared among the guests unseen by any but Hamlet himself; the evening ended with footage of Hamlet falling and being caught in his father's arms. The set 'dominated by a statue of old Hamlet seen against a window of arachnoid tracery, also evokes the hypocrisy of Elsinore' (Guardian). Jennings, who carried around a revolver in a brown paper bag, was 'no pale reflective Hamlet but an almost Dostoyevskyan figure who has determined on a course of action and finds himself defeated at every turn' (Guardian), 'a likeable, fumbling unheroic Hamlet [who] mercifully has never heard of Oedipus' (Observer).


A 4-hour version. Pimlott saw the play as brutal realpolitik not an intimate domestic drama. He states, '[Hamlet is] uncompromising and he's a killer. He wants truth at all costs, and the costs, when you think about it, are Ophelia, Claudius, Polonius, Gertrude, etc, etc. We want to restore the public side of the play.' The setting was modern, grey and minimalist. Claudius operated a presidential style government, surrounded by men in grey suits, contrasting with Hamlet in a black hooded sweatshirt. This was 'a world of clinical corporate corruption brilliantly conceived by Alison Chitty and Peter Mumford ... a funky modern Hamlet with handguns, flick knives, garage music for the dumb show scene and men in suits with ID badges ... a nice change from recent quickie Hamlets' (Daily Express).


For more about Quartos and Folios, go to the 'More About Shakespeare' section and see also 'Which Edition?' in the For Teachers section).