Hamlet is probably the greatest single work of art in the world. The tragedy was written by Shakespeare in or around the year 1600. It concerns the Prince of Denmark, the eponymous Hamlet who is mourning his father, who has recently, died as well as marking the rapid remarriage of his mother Gertrude to his uncle Claudius. Hamlet appears to be depressed – or at least deeply alienated from the new regime. This situation is exacerbated when Hamlet encounters the ghost of his father on the battlements of Elsinore Castle, where most of the action is set. The ghost (whose presence suggests a Catholic rather than a Protestant understanding of the world) informs Hamlet that he was murdered by a conspiracy involving the two newly-weds. Hamlet is called upon to take revenge for this murder – in its simplest sense, Hamlet is a revenge tragedy and ultimately follows many of the conventions of that genre. On the other hand, the play transcends any particular genre through the strength of its characterization, language and thematic structure. This is the play of which it was said that it was compromised by being so full of quotations – indeed, almost everyone will know at least a few lines from the play, from ‘To be or not to be’ to ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be’ to ‘What a piece of work is a man.’

Subsequently, Hamlet agonizes over his role. What would it be better for him to do, kill Claudius like a vengeful hero of the past and plunge the kingdom into further crisis or do nothing, keep the peace but suffer the condemnation of his rather fierce father? The ghost itself appears to have come from a place of suffering and it is not clear to what extent its motivations should be trusted. Meanwhile, Hamlet is compared with other examples of manliness and proper behaviour in the forms of Laertes and Fortinbras. He rejects his lover Ophelia and brings about her death, as well as killing the vaguely buffoonish advisor Polonius (after finally stirring himself into action and thereby bringing about the vendetta with Laertes which ends with multiple corpses on the stage).

To try to gain evidence of the guilt of Claudius independent of the urges of the ghost, Hamlet stages with the cooperation of a band of wandering players a play-within-a-play, in which an act of poisoning is conducted in the way that Claudius is accused of acting. Once the violence begins, the action takes on a helter-skelter feel as characters are trapped in the seemingly inevitable consequences of their actions.

Hamlet is an incredibly complex character or, at least, a character whose language and actions have been analysed from a bewildering assembly of perspectives. Is he an everyman figure? A soul whose destiny is fought over by powers of good and ill? A symbol of kingliness? Part of a psycho-dramatic conflict, locked between an Oedipal desire for his mother and wish to kill his (surrogate) father? Many other interpretations have been put forward over the years. It is certainly true to say that close examination and consideration of the text (or watching several different productions of the play) will repay the effort many times over.