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The Ur-Hamlet (the German prefix Ur-means "original") is a play by an unknown author, thought to be either Thomas Kyd or William Shakespeare. No copy of the play, dated by scholars to the second half of 1587, survives today.
From its premiere at the turn of the 17th century, Hamlet has remained Shakespeare's best-known, most-imitated, and most-analyzed play. The character of Hamlet played a critical role in Sigmund Freud's explanation of the Oedipus complex. [1] Even within the narrower field of literature, the play's influence has been strong.
In 1936 Andrew Cairncross suggested that, until more becomes known, it may be assumed that Shakespeare wrote the Ur-Hamlet. [17] Eric Sams lists reasons for supporting Shakespeare's authorship. [18] Harold Jenkins considers that there are no grounds for thinking that the Ur-Hamlet is an early work by Shakespeare, which he then rewrote. [19]
An English stage version, conventionally known as the Ur-Hamlet, appeared by 1589. The play is lost but is mentioned in a few other sources, the first being Thomas Nashe's 1589 preface to Robert Greene's Menaphon. William Shakespeare wrote his play Hamlet sometime between 1599 and 1602.
The lost play called the Ur-Hamlet is believed by a few scholars to be an early work by Shakespeare himself. The theory was first postulated by the academic Peter Alexander and is supported by Harold Bloom and Peter Ackroyd , although mainstream Shakespearean scholarship believes it to have been by Thomas Kyd .
The Hamlet of the supposed earlier play also uses his perceived madness as a guise to escape suspicion. Eliot believes that in Shakespeare's version, however, Hamlet is driven by a motive greater than revenge, his delay in exacting revenge is left unexplained, and that Hamlet's madness is meant to arouse the king's suspicion rather than avoid it.
Comparison of the "To be, or not to be" speech in the first three editions of Hamlet, showing the varying quality of the text in the Bad Quarto, the Good Quarto, and the First Folio. "To be, or not to be" is a speech given by Prince Hamlet in the so-called "nunnery scene" of William Shakespeare's play Hamlet (Act 3, Scene 1).
Under their referencing system, 3.1.55 means act 3, scene 1, line 55. References to the First Quarto and First Folio are marked Hamlet "Q1" and Hamlet "F1", respectively, and are taken from the Arden Shakespeare "Hamlet: the texts of 1603 and 1623" (Thompson and Taylor, 2006b). Their referencing system for "Q1" has no act breaks, so 7.115 means ...