A prince comes home to a dead father, a remarried mother, and a ghost demanding revenge — and instead of a revenge play, Shakespeare writes the first great drama of consciousness: a mind examining itself in real time, in prose and verse nobody has matched since.
It contains the most famous speech in the language and survives the fame. Every reading finds a different play: political thriller, family tragedy, philosophical essay, black comedy. Its length is real (uncut, it runs four hours) but so is its pull; more than any other work here, it repays rereading across a lifetime.
Which edition?
The full guide: The Best Editions of Shakespeare’s Hamlet →
1Arden Shakespeare, Third Series
Ed. Ann Thompson & Neil Taylor · Bloomsbury, 2016
The scholarly standard — and the only edition to print all three early texts in full.
2The New Cambridge Shakespeare
Ed. Philip Edwards · Cambridge University Press
Edwards’s introduction remains the single best short essay on the play.
3Oxford World’s Classics
Ed. G. R. Hibbard · Oxford University Press
Hibbard’s bold Folio-based text, with the liveliest editorial voice of the five.
4Folger Shakespeare LibraryFirst read? Start here
Ed. Barbara Mowat & Paul Werstine · Simon & Schuster
Glosses on the facing page, nothing between you and the verse.
5Norton Critical Edition
Ed. Robert S. Miola · W. W. Norton
The play plus two hundred pages of sources and criticism, Bradley to the present.
Hamlet on screen
1Hamlet (1948)
Film · dir. Laurence Olivier
2Hamlet (1964)
Film · dir. Grigori Kozintsev
3Hamlet (1990)
Film · dir. Franco Zeffirelli
4Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990)
Film · dir. Tom Stoppard · inspired by Hamlet
5The Lion King (1994)
Film · dir. Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff · inspired by Hamlet
6Hamlet (1996)
Film · dir. Kenneth Branagh
7Hamlet (2000)
Film · dir. Michael Almereyda
8Hamlet (2009)
TV film · dir. Gregory Doran
9Haider (2014)
Film · dir. Vishal Bhardwaj · inspired by Hamlet
Hamlet transposed to Kashmir
10National Theatre Live: Hamlet (2015)
Stage capture · dir. Lyndsey Turner
Benedict Cumberbatch; broadcast from the Barbican
Reading Hamlet this year?
Mark it in your record when you finish — one seat, kept for decades.