Hamlet
Tragedy by William Shakespeare, first performed in 1601–02. Hamlet, after much hesitation, avenges the murder of his father, the king of Denmark, by the king's brother Claudius, who has married Hamlet's mother. The play ends with the death of all three.
Hamlet is haunted by his father's ghost demanding revenge, is torn between love and loathing for his mother, and becomes responsible for the deaths of his lover Ophelia, her father and brother, and his student companions Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. In the monologue beginning ‘To be, or not to be’ he contemplates suicide.
Hamlet
| Incidental music for Shakespeare's tragedy by Tchaikovsky, Op. 67a, including 16 numbers and an abridged version of the Hamlet fantasy-overture, Op. 67, first performed in St Petersburg, Russia, on 17 November 1888. The play was first performed with Tchaikovsky's music in St Petersburg on 21 February 1891. |
Hamlet
| City in Richmond County, southern North Carolina; population (1990) 6,200. Hamlet is situated 71 km/44 mi west-southwest of Fayetteville and 8 km/5 mi north of the South Carolina border. |
| A former centre of railway engineering and fruit shipping, Hamlet is now home to a National Railroad Museum. Its industries include poultry processing and plastics manufacture. A fire in September 1991 fire that killed 25 poultry workers here focused attention on plant safety. Jazz saxophonist John Coltrane was born here in 1926. |
