Hamlet is known to be the most popular play written by Shakespeare.
Member rating: No Rating | Words: | Submitted: Thu Sep 04 2003
On the left is an image preview of every page of this document, and below are the first 150 words with formatting removed:
Hamlet is known to be the most popular play written by Shakespeare. It is also, by a significant margin, the longest of Shakespeare's plays. It has been translated to many languages and has become the subject of excited and critical debate more than any other work of literature. The play was written around 1602 or 1603 at a period of time when Elizabethan London was a melting pot of unique intellectual and artistic ferment. For Shakespeare at the turn of the century, when he addressed himself to the Hamlet story, contradiction and the uncertainty of attitude towards revenge would have been part of the air he breathed. He must also have been familiar with a considerable body of literature in which revenge was a central concern. Hamlet must have been written shortly after Julius Caesar (1599), another revenge play. At two moments in Hamlet the killing of Caesar is...

