50 Fun Facts About Hamlet

What is the play's full title?

The neighbouring Norwegians, led by Fortinbras, are the threat hovering over the whole play, and one of them ends up with the crown.

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?

She dies drinking the poisoned wine Claudius meant for her son, after he tries and fails to stop her.

Which of Hamlet's friends witnesses the ghost first and survives to tell the story at the end?

By the final scene he is the only main figure left alive; Hamlet dies in his arms.

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?

Before he leaves he warns her off Hamlet, and their father then orders her to reject the prince outright.

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

He wields a poison-tipped foil, but the two swap weapons in the scuffle and both are fatally wounded.

Two of Hamlet's old friends are sent to spy on him and later escort him to England. Who are they?

Hamlet rewrites the sealed letter so that they, not he, are executed on arrival; Tom Stoppard built a whole play around them.

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

Hamlet mockingly calls it 'The Mousetrap' when Claudius asks; the king rises and rushes out mid-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?

The Norwegian prince arrives with his army just in time to inherit a court full of corpses.

Whose skull does Hamlet hold in the graveyard scene?

The court jester has been in the earth 'three-and-twenty years'; the image became a symbol for theatre itself.

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

It was eventually used on stage by David Tennant in the RSC's 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 has barely half the text of the Second Quarto and may have been reconstructed from memory by the actor who played Marcellus.

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.

Which minor character says 'Something is rotten in the state of Denmark'?

It's often misattributed to Hamlet himself; the guard says it as the ghost leads the prince away.

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

The Second Quarto alone contains 28,628 words, and Branagh's uncut film runs more than four hours.

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

The First Quarto (1603), Second Quarto (1604) and First Folio (1623); barely 200 lines are identical between Q2 and F1.

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?

His Latin prince also feigns madness, kills a hidden spy in his mother's room and swaps the execution order for two retainers.

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?

It would have existed by 1589 and included a ghost, but no copy survives to compare with anyone's style.

Shakespeare's only son, who died in 1596 aged eleven, had what near-identical name?

Most scholars call it coincidence, but Stephen Greenblatt argues the father's grief may lie at the heart of the tragedy.

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

It's where Martin Luther nailed up his Ninety-five Theses in 1517, a resonance an Elizabethan audience wouldn't have missed.

Which real Danish castle is the Elsinore of the play?

It stands in Helsingør at the narrowest point of the Øresund and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000.

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?

Her five-minute 1900 film is one of the earliest pieces of Hamlet on screen; Asta Nielsen played a secretly female Hamlet in 1921.

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

It was the first British film to win Best Picture and remains the only Shakespeare film to have won it.

In Olivier's film, the actress playing Hamlet's mother was how old compared with the 41-year-old Olivier?

Eileen Herlie's casting stressed the Oedipal reading Olivier took from Ernest Jones and Freud.

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

It runs over four hours, was shot on 70mm, and cast 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?

The setting was moved to the 19th century, with the interiors built at Shepperton Studios.

Who played Ophelia in Branagh's 1996 Hamlet?

Julie Christie was Gertrude, and comedian Ken Dodd appeared in flashback as Yorick.

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?

Claudius is CEO of the Denmark Corporation, Elsinore is a hotel, and the ghost first appears on closed-circuit TV.

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

He doubled as the ghost, and had also played Claudius in the BBC Shakespeare version starring Derek Jacobi decades earlier.

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

Jude Law had done the London–Elsinore–New York circuit in 2009, and Andrew Scott followed at the Almeida in 2017.

Which actor holds the record for the longest Broadway run of Hamlet, 137 performances in 1964?

John Gielgud directed him and voiced the ghost; the production was filmed with 'Electronovision' and shown in cinemas.

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

Simba is the grieving prince, Scar the murderous uncle, and Mufasa the ghostly father in the clouds.

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

It premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe and is constantly compared to Waiting for Godot; its title is a line from the last scene of Hamlet.

Which 2014 Bollywood film relocates Hamlet to modern Kashmir?

It completed Vishal Bhardwaj's Shakespeare trilogy after Maqbool (Macbeth) and Omkara (Othello).

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

His follower Ernest Jones expanded the reading, and it directly shaped Olivier's 1937 stage Hamlet and later film.

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

Innokenty Smoktunovsky's prince is often ranked among the great screen Hamlets despite being in Russian.

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?

One theory says the change was made to avoid offending Oxford scholars, since Robert Pullen founded the university and John Rainolds ran Corpus Christi.

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?

Claudius plans to offer Hamlet a poisoned cup — the wine Gertrude ends up drinking.

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

Sir William Davenant's Duke's Company got Hamlet, the only Shakespearean favourite it secured, and staged it with painted movable flats.