Hamlet

thumb|right|335 pxthumb|right|335 pxThe Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, often shortened to Hamlet, is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare at an uncertain date between 1599 and 1602. Set in the Kingdom of Denmark, the play dramatises the revenge Prince Hamlet is instructed to enact on his uncle Claudius. Claudius had murdered his own brother, Hamlet's father King Hamlet, and subsequently seized the throne, marrying his deceased brother's widow, Hamlet's motherGertrude.
Hamlet is Shakespeare's longest play and among the most powerful and influential tragedies in English literature, with a story capable of "seemingly endless retelling and adaptation by others." The play seems to have been one of Shakespeare's most popular works during his lifetime and still ranks among his most-performed, topping the performance list of the Royal Shakespeare Company and its predecessors in Stratford-upon-Avon since 1879. It has inspired writers from Goethe and Dickens to Joyce and Murdoch, and has been described as "the world's most filmed story after Cinderella".
== Tossup Questions ==
# One essay claims that, like the Mona Lisa, more people consider this work "a work of art because they have found it interesting, than interesting because it is a work of art." J.M. Robertson and Minnesota professor Elmer Stoll studied it as a "stratification" with a series of authors. An essay on this literary work claims it doesn't contain any "chain[s] of events" or physical things representing "particular emotion[s]." Thomas Kyd may have written a proposed "Ur-" version of this play, which is an "artistic failure" because it lacks an "objective correlative" according to a T.S. Eliot essay on the title character "and His Problems." This plays' backstory includes poison in a king's ear. For 10 points, name this tragedy in which poisoned wine kills Queen Gertrude after a ghost talks to her princely Danish son.
# One character in this play demands that he be covered as well in his father's funeral, and commands, "Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead." Another character in this play mourns how his mother had "followed my poor father's body Like Niobe" before remarking, "frailty, thy name is woman." The central character swaps execution letters before entering England, leading to the deaths of two friends from Wittenberg, (*) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. During his duel with Laertes, the title character kills his uncle Claudius. For ten points, name this Shakespearean tragedy about a Prince of Denmark who asks, "to be or not to be."
# One character in this play has his skill with the rapier praised by Lamond, a great Norman horseman; that character incites the protagonist to predict "The cat will mew, and dog will have his day." John Updike reinterpreted the implied adultery in this work as sympathetic true love in a work drawing from the original (*) Saxo Grammaticus source. T.S. Eliot called this work an "artistic failure" in an essay about its title character's "Problems." The title character of this play muses about shuffling "off this mortal coil" and "to sleep, perchance to dream" in a famous soliloquy. For 10 points, name this inspiration for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, a Shakespeare play also featuring Gertrude and Claudius.
# In this play, a father sends Reynaldo to France to spy on his son, and "The Murder of Gonzago" is staged to verify one character‟s guilt. One character drowns under a willow tree after being rejected, and this play ends when the title character kills both (*) Laertes-- Ophelia's brother--and Claudius, who had earlier killed the protagonist's father. For 10 points, name this Shakespeare play about the title "prince of Denmark."
# Sohrab Modi starred as the title character in a 1935 Indian version of it called Khoon-ka Khoon, which added seventeen songs to the work. A special jury prize at the 1964 Venice Film Festival went to a version of it in which Innokenty Smoktunovsky played the title character. That version was directed by Grigory Kozintsev, and was based on a translation of this work by Boris Pasternak. A Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode featured a re-enactment of a famous scene from this work as a game show in which participants had to identify the femur of Biz Markie; that episode watched a German version of this work that starred Maximilian Schell. Georges Melies played the title character in a 1907 adaptation of this work which reduced it to ten minutes in length. Julie Christie played the title character's mother in a 1996 film of it, and a 2000 adaptation of it by Michael Almereyda is set in New York City and features the title character as a film student played by Ethan Hawke, who investigates goings-on at the Denmark Corporation. For 10 points, name this play which has also seen Kenneth Branagh and Laurence Olivier star in the title role of a melancholy denizen of Elsinore.