Facts

Hamlet facts

The full version is the Bard's longest play, at 4,042 lines (29,551 words)

Hamlet is the longest part in any Shakespeare play, with 1,507 lines

More than 50 women have played Hamlet, including Sarah Siddons (from 1777), Sarah Bernhardt (from 1899), Frances de la Tour (1979) and Angela Winkler (2000)

The American company Synetic Theatre produced a wordless version - Hamlet...the rest is silence - in
Washington last summer

Hamlet was once performed without Hamlet in it on its second night at the Richmond Theatre in 1787, after
its star had an anxiety attack


Samuel Johnson on this soliloquy:
To be, or not to be? — Of this celebrated soliloquy, which bursting from a man distracted with contrariety of desires, and overwhelmed with the magnitude of his own purposes, is connected rather in the speaker's mind, than on his tongue, I shall endeavour to discover the train, and to shew how one sentiment produces another. Hamlet, knowing himself injured in the most enormous and atrocious degree, and seeing no means of redress, but such as must expose him to the extremity of hazard, meditates on his situation in this manner: Before I can form any rational scheme of action under this pressure of distress, it is necessary to decide, whether, after our present state, we are to be or not to be.

That is the question, which, as it shall be answered, will determine, whether 'tis nobler, and more suitable to the dignity of reason, to suffer the outrages of fortune patiently, or to take arms against them, and by opposing end them, though perhaps with the loss of life. If to die, were to sleep, no more, and by a sleep to end the miseries of our nature, such a sleep were devoutly to be wished; but if to sleep in death, be to dream, to retain our powers of sensibility, we must pause to consider, in that sleep of death what dreams may come. This consideration makes calamity so long endured; for who would bear the vexations of life which might be ended by a bare bodkin, but that he is afraid of something in unknown futurity? This fear it is that gives efficacy to conscience, which, by turning the mind upon this regard, chills the ardour of resolution, checks the vigour of enterprise, and makes the current of desire stagnate in inactivity.

We may suppose that he would have applied these general observations to his own case, but that he discovered Ophelia.