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Plays › The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark › Hamlet

Hamlet

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark · 359 speeches across 13 scenes

Prince of Denmark, grieving son caught between filial duty and moral paralysis. The play's tortured protagonist drives the action through his philosophical struggles and delayed revenge.

Who they are

Hamlet returns from Wittenberg to find his father dead and his mother married to his uncle Claudius. When the Ghost reveals murder, Hamlet swears revenge but becomes trapped in cycles of doubt, feigned madness, and genuine anguish. His relationships collapse: he destroys Ophelia, confronts Gertrude, kills Polonius, and duels Laertes. He ultimately kills Claudius but only as he himself dies—action forced by circumstance rather than chosen. The arc moves from paralyzed intellectual to fatalistic accepter of destiny.

Playing them

The role demands extraordinary range: barbed wit, savage cruelty, tender grief, philosophical depth, and physical violence. Play the intelligence—a mind always working, even in silence. The antic disposition should feel like a weapon Hamlet wields strategically, though it occasionally cuts him. Vocally, navigate rapid shifts from private soliloquy's intimacy to public bravado. Physically, consider how grief inhabits the body. Avoid playing madness continuously; Hamlet performs madness but suffers something far more complex.

Appearance

Typically dressed in black mourning clothes that contrast with Claudius's court. The visual of solitary darkness amid color and festivity immediately establishes his alienation.

Where they appear

Play Hamlet

Take the part and Yorick reads every other role aloud, following you line by line as you speak.

Rehearse Hamlet on your phone: App Store · Google Play

Shakespeare the way it was meant to be had — out loud

These plays were written to be performed, not silently read. Yorick is a rehearsal app that lets you perform them: you take a part in any of Shakespeare’s 38 plays, and Yorick reads every other role aloud, listens while you speak your lines, keeps your place, and prompts you the moment you dry.

It is built for the person who has to be off book by tech week — school and college productions, community theatre, festivals, drama students and classical auditions — and for anyone who wants to hear a scene rather than skim it. Alongside the performance you get a plain-English translation of every speech, scene context, performance notes, and the ability to ask about any line and get an answer that already knows the play, the scene and who is speaking.

The text is the public-domain Cambridge/Globe edition. Translations and notes are AI-generated rehearsal aids for actors and students, not a scholarly apparatus. Yorick runs in a browser with nothing to install, and on iPhone and Android.