Hamlet

Before it was hailed as the greatest play in the English language, before its incandescent poetry was smothered by the cumulative weight of four centuries of critical response, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (1601) was first a story of shattering loss. A son reels from the death of his murdered father. Racked by rage, despair, and guilt, he recoils from his newly remarried mother, mistrusts his oldest friends, and rejects his beloved, abandoning–and feeling abandoned by–everyone who has shaped his life. Hamlet is not a story of epic deeds or philosophical conceits, but a poignant, painful rendering of the loyalties–to both the living and the dead–that bind, divide, and destroy a family.