Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • proper noun The eponymous main character of Shakespeare's play.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • In a well-constructed play there are one or more characters which are central to the action, in whom the spirit and problem of the piece are embodied, as Hamlet in _Hamlet_ and Brand in _Brand_; in every plot there is the catastrophe or turning point, for which every preceding incident is a preparation, and of which every following one is

    The Principles of Aesthetics Dewitt H. Parker

  • In a final section, Collin connects this view of Hamlet which he has developed in his essay on _Hamlet_ and the Sonnets, with the theory of human civilization which his book so suggestively advances.

    An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway Martin Brown Ruud 1913

  • And on this ground, and on account both of resemblances in the characters of Hamlet and Macbeth, and of the use of the supernatural in the two plays, it has been held that _Macbeth_ was the tragedy that came next after _Hamlet_, or, at any rate, next after

    Shakespearean Tragedy Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth 1893

  • But if Shakespeare had made the diction truly dramatic, where would have been the contrast between Hamlet and the play in _Hamlet_?

    Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1803

  • The Queen of Denmark, in reproving her son, Hamlet, on account of his conduct towards his step-father, whom she married shortly after the murder of the king, her husband, says to him, "_Hamlet_, you have your father

    The Canadian Elocutionist Anna Kelsey Howard

  • What's most exciting to me is the idea that a version of the name Hamlet may once have described not just a man 'as mad as the sea' or threatened by a 'sea of troubles'," she said."

    Was the great Dane Irish? That is the question 2011

  • Shakespeare is known to have borrowed the name Hamlet from a contemporary History of the Danes that had been translated into French.

    Was the great Dane Irish? That is the question 2011

  • Mels acting in Hamlet is one of the greatest interpretqation ever made of hamlet oyua re jsut too stupid to can even see it!

    Robert De Niro Joining Mel Gibson in Edge of Darkness « FirstShowing.net 2008

  • Cuomo stayed out, but his prolonged indecision earned him the nickname Hamlet on the Hudson.

    Yahoo! News: Business - Opinion 2011

  • Cuomo stayed out, but his prolonged indecision earned him the nickname Hamlet on the Hudson.

    The Seattle Times 2011

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