Hamlet

Six essays on the play and the playable version of it: whether a first-time reader should start here or with Macbeth, the order the deaths actually happen in and why Denmark ends up with a Norwegian, the case against Claudius and the harder case against Hamlet, which screen version keeps all of Shakespeare’s words, the two ways the most famous speech in English gets misquoted, and why only one of Hamlet’s two mad characters is acting.

Role-play Hamlet All book essays

Delacroix's lithograph of Hamlet straining toward his father's ghost on the castle rampart while Horatio and an armoured guard with a halberd hold him back, a fortress on the crag behind them

The Procrastinator's Tragedy

Hamlet vs. Macbeth: Which Shakespeare Tragedy Should You Read First?

Two tragedies get recommended as the place to start with Shakespeare, and the people recommending them do not agree. Macbeth wins on effort. Hamlet wins on the thing that decides whether you finish a play at all, which is whether you already know what happens.

September 9, 2026 · 8 min read

Delacroix's lithograph of the final scene: Hamlet collapsed on the floor of the hall in Horatio's arms, two figures struggling behind them, a fallen crown and a body on the flagstones

Fortinbras Wins by Default

Hamlet's Ending, Explained: Who Dies, and Why

Hamlet's last scene is famous for being a pile of bodies, and most summaries of it get the order wrong. Four people die in that hall in a sequence the text is very precise about, and the crown goes to a man who spent the entire play marching around somewhere else.

September 9, 2026 · 10 min read

Edwin Austin Abbey's painting of the play scene: Claudius crowned in red on a firelit dais with Gertrude beside him and the court standing behind, while Ophelia sits in pink in the foreground and Hamlet sprawls on the floor watching the king's face

The Play Says So

Is Claudius the Villain in Hamlet — or Is Hamlet?

The question gets asked as though the play were coy about it. It is not. Hamlet names his villain out loud in three separate acts, and the man he names confesses the murder in a soliloquy nobody else hears. What is genuinely open is whether Hamlet is one too.

September 9, 2026 · 8 min read

Henry Fuseli's painting of Hamlet and his father's ghost: a pale armoured figure with an outstretched arm on the left, and Hamlet lunging toward it while Horatio and Marcellus haul him back, all in strained elongated poses against darkness

Four Hours, Uncut

The Best Hamlet Movie Adaptations, Compared

Every ranked list of Hamlet films argues about who played him best, which is unresolvable. There is a second question underneath it that has an answer, and almost nobody asks it: how much of Shakespeare's own text each version actually keeps.

September 9, 2026 · 10 min read

A 19th-century engraving after Thomas Lawrence: John Philip Kemble as Hamlet, full length in black with a plumed hat and fur-edged cloak, standing on a grassy bank holding a skull at his side, a lit tower in the distance

Two Acts Apart

“To Be or Not to Be,” Explained — and the Scene the Internet Keeps Getting Wrong

The most famous speech in English drama gets misquoted in two different ways at once. One puts the wrong object in Hamlet's hand. The other puts a different character's line in his mouth. Both mistakes are further off than they look.

September 9, 2026 · 8 min read

Millais's painting of Ophelia floating on her back in a stream, singing with her hands open above the water, in an embroidered dress, surrounded by willow, nettles, wild roses and flowers scattered across the surface

Only One Is Faking

Is Hamlet Really Mad — or Just Pretending? (And What About Ophelia?)

Hamlet has two mad characters and treats them completely differently. One tells his friends in advance that he is about to act strange, then confirms it in private several acts later. The other gets no such scene, no aside, and no warning to the audience at all.

September 9, 2026 · 10 min read