The life of the play Hamlet

Hamlet, one of William Shakespeare's better known plays is extremely significant among the many various plays of Shakespeare. It contains one of Shakespeare's best know quotes, "To be or not to be. That is the question." Shakespeare stretches across centuries and generations leading up to today where high school kids are studying his works. It is believed that Hamlet was first performed between 1600 and 1601, the height of the Elizabethan era. At the time in history, society constantly wanted new plays and forms of entertainment. Thus, it can be believed that Hamlet was performed very soon after completion of the script. Shakespeare did not wish to have his plays printed and published so none of his plays have any sort of date on them. However, the first publication of Hamlet came out in 1603. It was most likely pirated by someone and published. At the time there was no such thing as copyright laws to keep people from pirating and publishing Shakespeare's plays. However, it is good that someone published them because since Shakespeare didn't want them published, no one would have known much about them or been able to study the greatest master of the English language of all time that is Shakespeare. What makes Hamlet so special is not just it's playwright but also its length. Hamlet has the most words of all of the Shakespeare plays. The script is 1569 lines long and the actual play has 3924 lines. There are approximately 32,241 words in Shakespeare's play Hamlet. The setting for Hamlet is Elsinore in eastern Denmark. It is believed that Shakespeare got his setting inspiration from the Kronborg Castle built in the mid to late 1500's. This castle is quite similar to the Elsinore castle that Shakespeare describes. Shakespeare also seems to have an inspiration for the actual play itself. He seems to be motivated by Saxo Grammaticus's Third Book of Gesta Danorum (also known as Historia Danica). Hamlet obviously plays into today's life as well. It inspires different more modern literature such as Robert Frost's poem, "Out, Out..." and T.S. Elliot's poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." On a more personal note, I don't generally know much about Hamlet. I know what I have been told in the past few days but nothing more. I know that Shakespeare is an incredible playwright and poet but I have only ever studied a few of his writings. I have quoted his "To be or not to be" quote in my own every day speech but I never knew exactly where it came from. From what I now understand, Hamlet is well known and studied by many. I look forward to discovering further how great Shakespeare is and how much he gave to the English language.