Hamlet tragedy

  Hamlet is Shakespeare's most famous tragedy. It eas presented in 1600 or 1601, and printed in 1603. It is the longest of all Shakespeare's plays, containing about 4,000 lines. Hamlet himself speaks 1,569 lines, which far exceeds the total length of the speeches of any other of Shakespeare's characters. Shakespeare obtained the base of his plot from Saxo's Chronicle of Scandinavia. Hamlet is a young Danish prince, sensitive, refined, cultivated. Grown to manhood with no knowledge of the evil of the world, such knowledge comes to him suddenly and in a way which seems to demand of him decisive action.

The Time is out of joint: O, cursed spite, 
That ever I was born to set it right!

  Hamlet fails to "set it right," and tragedy inevitably results. The action is of slow development. The relief from the strain of tragedy, so often and so successfully supplied in Shakespeare's plays by the introduction of some humorous element, is perhaps less noticeable in Hamlet than in any other tragedy. The effect of the play as a whole is sombre in the ex­treme, yet the genius of Shapespeare has excited so intense an interest in the character of Hamlet that no other play has at all times and to all classes of readers, actors, students, and spectators been so universally attractive. The question as to whether Shakespeare intended to represent his hero as insane or as feigning insanity is one that has occasioned endless discussion, and upon which numerous books have been written.