Hamlet (Play)

Prince of Denmark is a play written by English playwright William Shakespeare in 1596. It tells the story of Hamlet, the eponymous Prince of Denmark, who becomes depressed following the sudden death of his father, also named Hamlet, and the remarriage of his mother, Gertrude, to his father's brother Claudius, who assumed the throne upon Old Hamlet's death.

In the play's first act, Prince Hamlet (played by Richard Burbage when the play was performed by Lord Westmoreland's Men) is visited by his father's ghost (played by Shakespeare), who tells the younger Hamlet that he was murdered by Claudius, who conspired with Gertrude to marry her and assume the throne. The elder Hamlet's ghost demands that his son avenge his murder.

In plotting his revenge against Claudius, Hamlet kills a number of other characters, including the king's counselor, Polonius, and two former friends from Wittenberg University who were turned by Claudius to spy on Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Claudius ultimately determines that Hamlet must die, and engineers an assassination attempt that results in the deaths of Hamlet, Claudius, and nearly all of the play's major characters. The final scene of the play shows the casualties' bodies piled hign on the floor of Claudius's palace.

The play was wildly popular among English audiences, and was widely considered Shakespeare's greatest work. The question of whether Hamlet was driven to madness by his encounter with his father's ghost was the subject of some lively debate in English literary circles, and Shakespeare himself refused to divulge a definitive answer to anyone who asked him.