Hamlet (AmazonClassics Edition)

When Prince Hamlet returns home to Elsinore Castle for his father’s funeral, he discovers that his uncle Claudius has already crowned himself king. Hamlet begins to suspect something is indeed rotten in the state of Denmark, and a visit from his father’s ghost confirms it. Hamlet vows to avenge his father’s murder, but his consuming obsession yields only crushing grief, overwhelming rage, and a descent into madness.

Resonating with every generation over the centuries, Shakespeare’s profoundly chilling family drama is among the most quoted works from the Shakespearean canon.

AmazonClassics brings you timeless works from the masters of storytelling. Ideal for anyone who wants to read a great work for the first time or rediscover an old favorite, these new editions open the door to literature’s most unforgettable characters and beloved worlds.

Revised edition: Previously published as Hamlet, this edition of Hamlet (AmazonClassics Edition) includes editorial revisions.

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, to a middle-class glover and a landowner’s daughter. He married Anne Hathaway in 1582 and moved to London to work with a theatrical troupe ten years later. Since little has been learned of his early life, nearly all of what historians know today about Shakespeare begins―on the London stage―in 1592. In the wake of his critical and public success, Shakespeare helped build the Globe Theater on the River Thames.

Regarded as the world’s preeminent dramatist, his extant works include thirty-eight plays, one hundred and fifty-four sonnets, and two narrative poems, all of which have been widely translated. To this day, his plays have been performed more often than those of any other playwright. They have been adapted for film and television, updated, deconstructed, and transfigured into ballets, operas, rock musicals, and Bollywood melodramas. Though his formal education extended no further than grammar school, William Shakespeare became the most transcendent and influential writer in world literature.