Player King, Player Queen, Lucianus, etc. – players.Rosencrantz and Guildenstern – courtiers, friends of Hamlet.Polonius – chief counsellor to the king.

Gertrude – Queen of Denmark and Hamlet's mother.

Claudius – King of Denmark, Hamlet's uncle and brother to the former king.

Hamlet – son of the late king and nephew of the present king, Claudius.

Each version includes lines and passages missing from the others. Three different early versions of the play are extant: the First Quarto (Q1, 1603) the Second Quarto (Q2, 1604) and the First Folio (F1, 1623). Belleforest's story was first published in English in 1608, after Hamlet had been written, though it's possible that Shakespeare had encountered it in the French-language version. It has a number of plot elements and major characters in common with Shakespeare's Hamlet, and lacks others that are found in Shakespeare. The Amleth story was subsequently adapted and then published in French in 1570 by the 16th-century scholar François de Belleforest. This would include the story of the ancient Roman, Lucius Junius Brutus, which Shakespeare apparently knew, as well as the story of Amleth, which was preserved in Latin by 13th-century chronicler Saxo Grammaticus in his Gesta Danorum, and printed in Paris in 1514. When Shakespeare wrote, there were many stories about sons avenging the murder of their fathers, and many about clever avenging sons pretending to be foolish in order to outsmart their foes. The editors of the Arden Shakespeare question the idea of 'source hunting', pointing out that it presupposes that authors always require ideas from other works for their own, and suggests that no author can have an original idea or be an originator.

There are many works that have been pointed to as possible sources for Shakespeare's play-from ancient Greek tragedies to Elizabethan plays. Hamlet is considered among the 'most powerful and influential tragedies in the English language', with a story capable of 'seemingly endless retelling and adaptation by others'. Set in Denmark, the play depicts Prince Hamlet and his attempts to exact revenge against his uncle, Claudius, who has murdered Hamlet's father in order to seize his throne and marry Hamlet's mother. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, often shortened to Hamlet ( / ˈ h æ m l ɪ t/), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 15.

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