Hamlet

Shakespeare's greatest tragedy — and perhaps the most famous play ever written.

The King of Denmark is dead, and his brother Claudius has taken both the throne and the widowed Queen Gertrude. When the dead king's ghost appears on the battlements of Elsinore and names his own murderer, Prince Hamlet is charged with a revenge he cannot bring himself to perform.

What follows is the deepest portrait of a mind in literature: feigned madness and real grief, the play within the play, Ophelia's ruin, the gravedigger's skull, and a duel that leaves the stage strewn with the dead. Nearly every phrase has entered the language — to be or not to be, the play's the thing, the rest is silence.

Ideal for

• School and university syllabus reading
• Anyone returning to Shakespeare after years away
• Theatre-goers preparing for a production