Reading Order
HamletShakespeare Tragedies Reading Order
William Shakespeare's Hamlet (c. 1600–1601) is the most performed, studied, and debated play in the English language — a tragedy of indecision, betrayal, and revenge about Prince Hamlet of Denmark, who is charged by his father's ghost to avenge his murder by his uncle Claudius (now king and married to Hamlet's mother Gertrude). The play's exploration of grief, mortality, moral uncertainty, and the relationship between thought and action has made it a touchstone for four centuries of literature and philosophy.
Where to start
Hamlet
Complete Hamlet Book List
- 1Buy
Hamlet
William Shakespeare·1603·The standard text — usually the Second Quarto (1604/5) or First Folio (1623) versions, or a conflated text of both. The First Quarto (1603) is shorter and differs significantly and is sometimes called the 'bad quarto.' - 2Buy
Macbeth
William Shakespeare·1606·Shakespeare's tragedy of ambition and conscience — a Scottish general who murders the king to take the throne, then descends into paranoia and tyranny. The most intense of Shakespeare's tragedies and the closest in theme to Hamlet's exploration of morality and action. - 3Buy
King Lear
William Shakespeare·1606·Shakespeare's tragedy of old age, madness, and familial betrayal — often ranked alongside Hamlet as one of the two greatest English tragedies. An old king divides his kingdom among his daughters with catastrophic consequences. - 4Buy
Othello
William Shakespeare·1603·Shakespeare's tragedy of jealousy and racism — the Moorish general Othello, manipulated by Iago into believing his wife Desdemona has been unfaithful. A tragedy that shares Hamlet's interest in the difference between appearance and reality. - 5Buy
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Tom Stoppard·1966·Stoppard's absurdist play that retells Hamlet from the perspective of two minor characters who are confused by events they do not understand — a philosophical comedy about fate, identity, and the impossibility of understanding one's situation. - 6Buy
Something Rotten!
Karey Kirkpatrick and John O'Farrell·2015·A Broadway musical comedy set in Elizabethan England in which Shakespeare's theatrical rivals try to write the world's first musical, with comic anachronisms and Hamlet references throughout. Light, if you want something fun after the tragedy. - 7Buy
The Tragedy of Arthur
Arthur Phillips·2011·A novel about a man who discovers what appears to be a Shakespeare play, 'The Tragedy of Arthur,' and publishes it with an introduction that becomes a memoir about his father — a meditation on authorship, legacy, and forgery that engages thoughtfully with Shakespeare's cultural weight.
Hamlet — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Hamlet's famous 'To be or not to be' soliloquy about?
'To be or not to be, that is the question' is the opening of Hamlet's third act, first scene soliloquy — a meditation on whether it is better to endure the sufferings of life or to end one's life through suicide. Hamlet considers whether death might be a peaceful sleep, but then worries that the sleep of death might also bring dreams — the 'undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns' — and that fear of the unknown might be worse than the known suffering of life. The soliloquy is also read as a meditation on whether to act at all: Hamlet frames suicide as an act, but the broader context of the play suggests that his real paralysis is about whether to act on his father's command to commit murder. The soliloquy's fame comes partly from its philosophical generality — it addresses a question anyone can understand — and partly from its extraordinary compression of thought.
Why does Hamlet delay killing Claudius?
This is the central critical question of Hamlet and has generated more analysis than any other question in English literary criticism. Possible answers include: Hamlet is genuinely uncertain whether the ghost is real or a devil deceiving him; Hamlet has a philosophical, contemplative nature that makes action naturally difficult (the Coleridgean reading); Hamlet unconsciously identifies with Claudius because both desire the death of Hamlet's father (the Freudian reading); Hamlet delays because Shakespeare needed to fill five acts (the cynical answer); Hamlet is paralyzed by the moral contradictions of his situation — revenge requires him to commit a murder, which he finds repugnant even when just. The play does not resolve this question, and the irresolvability is its point.
Is Hamlet actually mad or pretending?
The play makes this deliberately ambiguous. Hamlet tells his friends that he will 'put an antic disposition on' — pretend to be mad — as a strategy for investigating Claudius. But his behavior throughout the play (his treatment of Ophelia, his erratic speech, his four major soliloquies examining his own paralysis) suggests that the line between performance and genuine psychological disturbance is not clear even to Hamlet himself. Ophelia's madness, which follows his rejection of her, is presented as genuinely uncontrolled — a contrast to Hamlet's more strategic behavior. Most modern productions and critics read Hamlet as neither simply feigning nor simply insane, but as a character in genuine psychological crisis who is simultaneously performing and experiencing his disturbance.
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