Guide to Hamlet

Who Wrote Hamlet, When, and How Long Is the Play?

Shakespeare's longest play, three early texts and a son named Hamnet

By Tori BooksUpdated November 20265 min read

William Shakespeare

When the Globe opened on the south bank of the Thames, Shakespeare was in his mid-thirties, the most successful playwright in London. Within a couple of years he gave his company the role that every great actor since has wanted to play.

Even the basic facts about that role, when it was written and how long it runs, turn out to be less simple than they look.

Hamlet: the key facts

When was Hamlet written and first performed?

Scholars date the play to the years around 1600, after Shakespeare's company moved into the Globe in 1599 and before it was entered for printing in 1602. The title role was almost certainly written for Richard Burbage, the company's star tragic actor. Shakespeare himself is traditionally said to have played the Ghost, though that story cannot be proved.

Why are there three different Hamlets?

Three early printed texts survive. The First Quarto of 1603 is about half the usual length, with jumbled lines and some different names, and may have been pieced together from actors' memories or a shortened touring version. The Second Quarto of 1604 to 1605 is the longest and probably close to Shakespeare's own draft. The First Folio of 1623 lacks about 230 lines found in the Second Quarto but adds some of its own, and may reflect the play as it was acted.

Most modern editions combine the Second Quarto and the Folio, which is why the play feels longer on the page than any version Shakespeare's audiences saw.

How long is Hamlet?

A complete combined text has about 4,000 lines and roughly 30,000 words, making it the longest of Shakespeare's plays. Hamlet himself speaks well over a third of them, more lines than any other role Shakespeare wrote. Kenneth Branagh's 1996 film, which uses every word, runs a little over four hours. Reading it takes most people five or six hours, longer with notes.

Where did Shakespeare get the story?

The tale of a Danish prince who fakes madness to avenge his father is old. It appears in a twelfth-century Latin history of Denmark by Saxo Grammaticus, about a prince called Amleth, and in a French retelling by François de Belleforest. An earlier English play on the subject, now lost and known as the Ur-Hamlet, was being acted in London in the 1590s. Shakespeare turned this blood-and-thunder revenge story into a play about thought, grief and doubt.

Was Hamlet named after Shakespeare's son?

Shakespeare had a son called Hamnet, who died in 1596 at the age of eleven, a few years before Hamlet was written. In the records of the time the names Hamnet and Hamlet were used almost interchangeably. Many readers feel the play's long grief for a dead father echoes the playwright's own loss, though there is no direct evidence, and Maggie O'Farrell's novel Hamnet imagines that link.

More about Hamlet

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Written by Tori Books for readers and students.