The following page contains links to electronic editions of Hamlet and Shakespeare's sources for the play; study guides; information on Shakespeare, John Updike, Hamlet criticism, Hamlet adaptations, Elizabethan history and culture, reading and writing about literature, and analyzing film.  All links will open in a new browser window. 

Electronic Editions of Hamlet and Shakespeare's Sources

• Facsimile Edition of First Folio
  Page images of first folio edition of Hamlet, published in 1623.
• Hamlet Text Editions
  University of Victoria Internet Shakespeare Editions presents text transcriptions of the First Quarto (1603), Second Quarto (1604-05), and First Folio (1623) versions of the play. The page also contains links to book facsimiles of specific printings, information on Hamlet performances and film adaptations, and commentaries on various play events and themes.
• Histoires Tragiques
  Francois de Belleforest's 1576 French translation of Saxo Grammaticus's History of the Danes. In Belleforest's version of the Hamlet story, Gertrude commits adultery before King Hamlet's death, and Prince Hamlet exhibits signs of melancholy.
• Historiae Danicae (History of the Danes)
  Text that tells legendary stories of Denmark's rulers, composed by Saxo Grammaticus from 1180-1208. Saxo's story of Prince Amleth appears in Book 3 and Book 4 of his 16-volume work.
• "Medieval Hamlet Gains a Family"
  Book chapter from Alexander Welsh's Hamlet in His Modern Guises compares Shakespeare's play to Saxo's and Belleforest's version of the Hamlet story.
• Project Gutenberg Hamlet, by William Shakespeare
  Downloadable versions of the text.
• The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
  Complete electronic edition from MIT, with an index linked to the text of each act and scene.

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Study Guides

• Hamlet Course (from Open UW)
  From University of Washington Educational Outreach, a short course that summarizes the play, cites key events and passages in each act, poses study questions, identifies prevalent themes and quizzes learners on the play.
• Hamlet Guide
  Guide to reading key scenes themes, and topics within the context of the Elizabethan era. Discussion of individual scenes contain illustrations, historical, political and social contexts, MP3s of passages recited in correct pronunciation style, questions for analysis, and suggestions for further reading.
• The Hamlet Site
  Virginia Community College Literature Online site features act-by-act notes, questions and hints; study questions about Hamlet's free will, women in the play, and the staging of the closet scene; a guide to watching Zefferelli's version of the film; and commentary on the making of Branagh's William Shakespeare's Hamlet.
  
• A Short Course on Shakespeare's Hamlet
  Site includes a "Course" section with a briefly annotated electronic edition of the play, study questions (with answers), and other resources for studying Hamlet. The discussion forum allows you to interact with other students reading the play.
• Sparknotes Hamlet Guide
  Plot summary as well as analyses of major characters, motifs, themes, symbols, and key passages.

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Shakespeare

• Explore Shakespeare
  Kennedy Center Flash page contains short videos on Shakespeare's life and a timeline that places his work in the context of world events and the work of other artists.
• Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet
  Extremely useful site that attempts to serve as "a complete annotated guide to the scholarly Shakespeare resources available on Internet." Site includes a list of works, a Shakespeare timeline and quiz, Renaissance resources, critical analyses of Shakespeare's writings, and links to other Web sites.
• Treasures in Full: Shakespeare in Quartos
  British Library site provides information on Renaissance theater, Shakespeare's life, and the printing of his plays. The "Texts" section allows viewers to compare selected quartos, and the "Afterlife" page discusses the printing and production of Shakespeare's plays from the 1660s to the current era.

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John Updike

• John Updike
  From the Books and Writers site, a brief biography of Updike, with descriptions of selected works. Includes a selected list of Updike's books and a bibliography of additional resources on Updike.
• Life and Times: John Updike
  New York Times page of Updike resources features reviews of Updike's books and audio interviews with the author (note: you must register for the free web version of the Times to view this page).
• New York Times Gertrude and Claudius Reviews
  In "Run, Gurutha, Run" Michiko Kakutani calls Updike's Gertrude "one of his most sympathetic and persuasive female characters yet." Richard Eder's "Spoiled Rotten in Denmark" terms Gertrude and Claudius "a free-standing, pleasurable and wonderfully dexterous novel about three figures in complex interplay with their public state, their private longings and one another."
• "That Hamlet Is Full of Cliches"
  Guardian Unlimited review of Gertrude and Claudius.

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Hamlet Criticism

• Hamlet Conundrums
  Professor Jim Bierman's online interrogation of the ghost, vengeance, Freud's analysis, women's roles, good and evil, and legal issues. The site considers "major revolutions in Western thinking about Hamlet and . . . their foundation in the beliefs of the Elizabethan era in England. Thus, issues regarding spirits and apparitions, the ethics of revenge, the psychology of melancholy, the ownership of property, or the popular view of suicide are presented against the background of Shakespeare's time. They are contrasted with the thinking on the same issues that predominated during the time of the Romantic revolution or the 20th Century."
• Hamlet Haven
  English teacher Harmonie Loburg's annotated bibliography of approaches to the play (feminist, performance, psychoanalytic, etc.) as well as articles and books on characters and subjects like "law," "parenthood," "The Mousetrap," "To Be Soliloquy," and others.
• HyperHamlet
  From Basel University in Switzerland, a hypertext edition of Hamlet with links to information about how Shakespeare's text has been referenced in other texts and what it has meant in other cultural contexts.
• Introductory Lecture on Shakespeare's Hamlet
  Dr. Ian Johnston's introductory lecture on the play reviews critical takes on Hamlet's delayed revenge, examines Hamlet's use of language, discusses the Machiavellian politics of the Elsinore court which result in a tension between appearance and reality, and explores various interpretations of Hamlet's conflict with the world of Elsinore.
• Multiplicity of Meanings in the Last Moments of Hamlet
  John Russell Brown analyzes Hamlet's wordplay to argue "that, through Hamlet, this tragedy affirms the world of the mind over against the world of matter, the unresolved and independent conscience over against the answers that can be provided by others or demanded by society in its political, religious or familial manifestations."
• Oedipus and Hamlet
  From Interpretation of Dreams, Freud's discussion of the Oedipus complex and Hamlet's repressed sexual desire for his mother.
• The Oedipus-Complex as An Explanation of Hamlet's Mystery: A Study in Motive
  Annotated electronic text of Ernest Jones's 1910 expansion of Freud's analysis of Hamlet's repressed desire. Jones repudiates well known readings of Hamlet's inaction before turning to his discussion of repression.
• Shakespeare and His Critics
  Theater reviewer Thomas Larque's collection of Hamlet criticism. Most notable are excerpts from 18th and 19th-century evaluations of the play from such authors as Charles Dickens, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Samuel Johnson, and William Richardson.
• Shakespeare and the Tragic Virtue
  Southern Humanities Review article that negates psuedo-Aristotilian readings of Hamlet's "tragic flaw." Author James Hammersmith argues that Aristotle's work had little influence on Renaissance playwrights' construction of tragic characters. In his words, the tragic flaw "is actually an inversion of the principle upon which tragic character in the Renaissance is built."
• Shakespeare in the Bush
  Anthropologist Laura Bohannon's recounts how the Tiv interpreted Hamlet's plot.
• Sh:in:E
  Click on "Hamlet Pages" for links to information on editions of Hamlet, sources of the play, theater and film productions, musical, dance, and artistic adaptations, academic criticism, teaching materials and Hamlet courses.
• "Who Knows Who Knows Who’s There?"
  From Early Modern Literatary Studies, an article that explores the theme of uncertainty via analysis of the Mousetrap scene.

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Hamlet Adaptations

• Branagh's Hamlet
  Fan site on Branagh's adaptation of the film.
• EnterText: Hamlet on Film
  Critical articles, illustrated with video clips. Writers address several of the adaptations viewed in English 200, including Zeffirelli's, Richardson's, Olivier's, Branagh's, and Almereyda's.
• The Fresh Prince
  Review of Almereyda's Hamlet that discusses how the director met the unique challenges of filming Shakespeare's most-adapted work.
• Hamlet: The Manga
  A Slayers/Hamlet mash of Acts I-III, written and drawn by Zelgadis Greywers, who's "just having a good time and poking a little fun at the traditional canon of Western Literature."
• Hamlet Movie Clips Page
  QuickTime versions of Act I, Scene III as envisioned by Laurence Olivier (1948), Tony Williamson (1969), Franco Zeffirelli (1990), Kenneth Branagh (1996), and Star Trek director Nicholas Meyer (The Undiscovered Country 1992).
• "Hamlet, Prince of Denmark"
  From Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales From Shakespeare, a book of prose adaptations designed to introduce the Bard to children, especially girls, who did not share their brothers' free access to their fathers' libraries.
• Hamlet on the Ramparts: Film
  Links to RealMedia clips of scenes featuring Hamlet's encounter with his father's ghost. Productions featured are Forbes-Robertson's 1913 film, Sven Gade's 1920 Hamlet, starring Asta Nielsen as a female child raised as male, and John Gielgud's 1964 production of the play, starring Richard Burton.
• Hamlet: The Text Adventure
  As Hamlet, revenge your father in this text-based game based on Shakespeare's play.
• Movie Review Query Engine
  Use the MRQE to search for reviews of your selected Hamlet adaptation.
• Olivier's Hamlet
  Critic Terrence Rafferty's essay on the film, from the Criterion Collection site.
• Shakespeare Illustrated
  Images and descriptions of artist interpretations of the play's characters (primarily Ophelia) and events.
• Tales for the L33t: Hamlet
  OMG! A text-speak Flash version of the play.
• Visual Representations of Hamlet, 1709-1900
  Packet author Alan Young's history of book illustrations of the prince. Young examines these images in the context of other well-known Hamlet portraits and the history of image printing and distribution.
• YouTube Hamlet Productions and Parodies
  Type "Hamlet" into the search box and await a changing roster of student performances, viewer revisions of existing films, parodies (including Animaniacs on Hamlet, Cat Head Theatre, "Hamlego," and the Muppets Monsterpiece Theater), and machinima like this Halo visuals meet Almeryda soundtrack version of Act II, Scene II.

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Elizabethan History and Culture

• Elizabethan England
  The Shakespeare Resource Center's brief description of Elizabethan England, with links to other history sites.
• The Elizabethan Theater
  Online version of Dr. Hilda Spear's lecture on indoor and outdoor theaters, performances, acting, and other topics relating to the Elizabethan theater.
• Life in Elizabethan England
  A compendium of knowledge on fashion, language, religion, food, games, money, children, and other aspects of Elizabethan culture.
• Shakespeare's Life and Times
  From University of Victoria Internet Shakespeare Editions, a series of electronic books on Shakespeare's life; the development of theaters and stages; Elizabethan political and social structure; histories and dramatic traditions Shakespeare drew upon for his works; debates on nature and the supernatural; Elizabethan literature and visual arts; and reading the plays in context.
• Virtual Globe
  A virtual 3-D walkthough tour of the original Globe Theater.

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Reading and Writing About Literature

• Guidelines to MLA Citation Style
  From the Purdue OWL, guidelines for correct MLA citation; includes examples.
• Literature (Fiction)
• From the North Carolina University Writing Center, a guide to the process of writing literary analysis.
• Plagiarism Discussed
  A Purdue OWL handout on what can constitute plagiarism, with information on when and when not to cite sources.
• Plot Summary Vs. Interpretive Writing
  From the Writing Center at George Mason University comes a PowerPoint presentation that distinguishes plot summary, a bad strategy for writing about literature, from interpretive writing, the goal of writing about literature.

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Analyzing Film

• Citing Film, Video, and Online Media
  Information on how to correctly document citations of film, video and online media materials.
• Dartmouth's Writing About Film Page
  Detailed web site explains expectations for film papers; defines types of papers written for film classes (formal, historical, ideological, cultural studies, auteurist); describes useful strategies for taking film notes, annotating shot sequences, and questioning the film's contexts; provides writing tips; and includes an extensive glossary of film terms.
• Guidelines for Writing About Film
  Sandhills Community College page reviews five ways film differs from print fiction and offers a list of film analysis "dos" and "don'ts" with links to sample essays.
• Reading a Film Sequence
  A short guide on how to to read the text and context of a film.  The page has excellent questions to guide students in their analysis of narrative, staging, cinematography, editing and sound.

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