* Fanning, David, Notes for Deutsche Grammophon 431388, Shostakovich: Symphony No. 12, " The Year 1917 "; Hamlet ( suite ); The Age of Gold ( suite ); Neeme Järvi conducting the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra.

* Hamlet – Son of the former King, and nephew of the present King.

* Gertrude – Queen of Denmark, and mother to Hamlet.

* Horatio – Friend to Hamlet

* Rosencrantz and Guildenstern – Courtiers, friends to Hamlet.

Katherine Duncan-Jones accepts a 1600 – 1 attribution for the date Hamlet was written, but notes that the Lord Chamberlain's Men, playing Hamlet in the 3000-capacity Globe, were unlikely to be put to any disadvantage by an audience of " barely one hundred " for the Children of the Chapel's equivalent play, Antonio's Revenge ; she believes that Shakespeare, confident in the superiority of his own work, was making a playful and charitable allusion to his friend John Marston's very similar piece.

In 1908, Edward Gordon Craig designed the Moscow Art Theatre production of Hamlet | MAT production of Hamlet ( 1911 – 12 ).

Other New York portrayals of Hamlet of note include that of Ralph Fiennes's in 1995 ( for which he won the Tony Award for Best Actor ) – which ran, from first preview to closing night, a total of one hundred performances.

Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet, with Yorick's skull ( Photographer: James Lafayette, c. 1885 – 1900 )

John Gielgud directed Richard Burton in a Broadway production at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in 1964 – 5, the longest-running Hamlet in the U. S. to date.

In Deadly Thought: " Hamlet " and the Human Soul: 3 – 22.

" Hamlet and Counter-Humanism " Renaissance Quarterly 52. 4: 1046 – 1069.

" Narration and Staging in Hamlet and its afternovels " in Shaughnessy ( 2007, 114 – 133 ).

" A Critical History of Hamlet " In Hamlet: Complete, Authoritative Text with Biographical and Historical Contexts, Critical History, and Essays from Five Contemporary Critical Perspectives: 181 – 207.

* Hamlet Guide – scholarly research site, includes photographs and academic analysis.

* Hamlet – Study guide, themes, quotes, summary, teachers guide

He also appeared in the plays Henry Sweet Henry ( 1967 ), Your Own Thing, Rockabye Hamlet ( 1975 – 76, Laertes ), More Than You Deserve, Sunset, and All Bets Off.

* Hamlet ( 1975 – 76 ) – Fortinbras, Player King

* May 4 – Laurence Olivier's film version of Hamlet makes its world premiere in London.

* September 29 – Laurence Olivier's Hamlet opens in the United States.

* September 3 – In Hamlet, North Carolina, a grease fire breaks out at the Imperial Foods chicken processing plant, killing 25 people.

Spirits in other Shakespeare plays — notably Hamlet and Midsummer Night's Dream — exist in ambiguous forms, occasionally even calling into question their own presence.

It is thought that Shakespeare never read Gesta Danorum, and instead had access to an auxiliary version of the tale describing the downfall of the Prince of Denmark, whose real name-Amleth-was used in anagram by Shakespeare for Hamlet.

Saxo ’ s version, told of in Book 3 and 4, is very similar to that of Shakespeare ’ s Hamlet.

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is a tragedy by William Shakespeare.

Shakespeare based Hamlet on the legend of Amleth, preserved by 13th-century chronicler Saxo Grammaticus in his Gesta Danorum as subsequently retold by 16th-century scholar François de Belleforest.

Consequently, there is no direct evidence that Kyd wrote it, nor any evidence that the play was not an early version of Hamlet by Shakespeare himself.

Most scholars reject the idea that Hamlet is in any way connected with Shakespeare's only son, Hamnet Shakespeare, who died in 1596 at age eleven.

The 2006 publication by Arden Shakespeare of different Hamlet texts in different volumes is perhaps the best evidence of this shifting focus and emphasis.

In Hamlet, Shakespeare reverses this so that it is through the soliloquies, not the action, that the audience learns Hamlet's motives and thoughts.

Pauline Kiernan argues that Shakespeare changed English drama forever in Hamlet because he " showed how a character's language can often be saying several things at once, and contradictory meanings at that, to reflect fragmented thoughts and disturbed feelings.

Shakespeare almost certainly wrote the role of Hamlet for Richard Burbage.

Oxford editor George Hibbard argues that, since the contemporary literature contains many allusions and references to Hamlet ( only Falstaff is mentioned more, from Shakespeare ), the play was surely performed with a frequency that the historical record misses.

Booth played Hamlet for 100 nights in the 1864 / 5 season at The Winter Garden Theatre, inaugurating the era of long-run Shakespeare in America.

In France, Charles Kemble initiated an enthusiasm for Shakespeare ; and leading members of the Romantic movement such as Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas saw his 1827 Paris performance of Hamlet, particularly admiring the madness of Harriet Smithson's Ophelia.

Although " posterity has treated Maurice Evans less kindly ", throughout the 1930s and 1940s he was regarded by many as the leading interpreter of Shakespeare in the United States and in the 1938 / 9 season he presented Broadway's first uncut Hamlet, running four and a half hours.

About the Fiennes Hamlet Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times that it was "... not one for literary sleuths and Shakespeare scholars.

Off Broadway, the Riverside Shakespeare Company mounted an uncut first folio Hamlet in 1978 at Columbia University, with a playing time of under three hours.

In fact, Hamlet is the most produced Shakespeare play in New York theatre history, with sixty-four recorded productions on Broadway, and an untold number Off Broadway.

Laurence Olivier's 1948 moody black-and-white Hamlet won best picture and best actor Oscars, and is still, as of 2011, the only Shakespeare film to have done so.

Notable made-for-television productions of Hamlet include those starring Christopher Plummer ( 1964 ), Richard Chamberlain ( 1970 ; Hallmark Hall of Fame ), Derek Jacobi ( 1980 ; Royal Shakespeare Company, BBC ), Kevin Kline ( 1990 ), Campbell Scott ( 2000 ) and David Tennant ( 2009 ; Royal Shakespeare Company, BBC ).

Several times since 1995, the American Shakespeare Center has mounted repertories that included both Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, with the same actors performing the same roles in each ; in their 2001 and 2009 seasons the two plays were " directed, designed, and rehearsed together to make the most out of the shared scenes and situations ".