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Laurence Olivier in a scene from Hamlet
Hamlet, played by Laurence Olivier, contemplating death while holding Yorrick's skull, in the film adaptation of Hamlet (1948).
Hamlet
fictional character
Hamlet, central character in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The character’s problematic nature has lent itself to innumerable interpretations by actors and critics. Hamlet’s story was centuries old at the time that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, about 1599–1601. Hamlet corresponds to the figure of Amleth, whose story is narrated in the Gesta Danorum, Saxo Grammaticus’s late 12th-century history of Denmark. But the character’s famous hesitation—his reluctance or unreadiness to avenge his father’s murder—is central and peculiar to Shakespeare’s conception of Hamlet. This hesitation has fascinated critics, but none of the explanations offered, such as unconscious Oedipal guilt (suggested by the Freudians) or the ...(100 of 356 words)