Written between 1598 and the summer of 1602, this masterpiece of Elizabethan theater first appeared in print in 1603 in a version known as First Quarto, a pirated version with no authority. The authorised Second Quarto followed shortly after the first, while a slightly altered and reduced version was published in the First Folio of Shakespeare's complete works. See Folios and Quartos (Shakespeare).
The play concerns the moral and psychological dilemma of Hamlet, whose father has been murdered by his uncle, Claudius. Claudius took the throne of Denmark following the King's death and in the younger Hamlet's absence, as well as married and bedded Hamlet's mother, Gertrude.
In theatre, Hamlet is perhaps the most often produced work, in almost every western country, and it is considered a crucial test for mature actors; notably Hamlet's soliloquy (Act Three, Scene One), the most popular passage of this play, is so well known that it allows the public to immediately evaluate the actor's capabilities. The To be or not to be, that is the question verses will expose to general evidence virtues and faults of the interpreter.
The core of the plot in Hamlet: the disinherited Prince's plan of revenging his fathers's murder by feigning madness, is found in the Gesta Danorum by the Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus. Shakespeare's immediate source, however, is the Histoires Tragiques de François de Belleforest (Paris, 1570), who was dependent on Saxo. Of the names of the characters, only Hamlet and Gertrude derive from Saxo; the remainder seem to be Shakespeare's own invention.
Thomas Kyd is believed to have written a lost Hamlet, which Shakespeare knew.
According to the Internet Movie Database (http://us.imdb.com/Tsearch?title=hamlet&restrict=Movies+and+TV) there have been 22 movies with the simple title Hamlet plus another 16 with that title that were made for TV. Another 50 productions have included this name as part of the title or have used a foreign language variation of the name.
The first such movie, Le Duel d'Hamlet, was produced and directed by Clément Maurice[?] in France in 1900, and starred Sarah Bernhardt (reprising her stage role) as Hamlet. Pierre Magnier[?] played Laertes.
A hamlet is also a small inhabited place. While it is generally an unofficial term, in New York State and the Northwest Territories there are officially-designated municipalities, generally smaller than villages, classified as hamlets.