William Shakespeare

Hamlet : A tragedy by William Shakespeare

THE TRAGEDY OF HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK, OFTEN SHORTENED TO HAMLET, IS A TRAGEDY WRITTEN BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. Set in Denmark, the play dramatises the revenge Prince Hamlet is called to wreak upon his uncle, Claudius, by the ghost of Hamlet's father, King Hamlet. Claudius had murdered his own brother and seized the throne, also marrying his deceased brother's widow. It has inspired many other writers-from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Charles Dickens to James Joyce and Iris Murdoch-and has been described as "the world's most filmed story after Cinderella". The story of Shakespeare's Hamlet was derived from the legend of Amleth, preserved by 13th-century chronicler Saxo Grammaticus in his Gesta Danorum, as subsequently retold by the 16th-century scholar François de Belleforest.