Introducing Hamlet
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is the western world&#8217;s most famous, illustrious, and inscrutable play; it falls into a tradition of revenge dramas which were increasingly popular in the Elizabethan era (1558-1603): it is a genre which, while achieving its apoetheosis in Hamlet, Shakespeare thoroughly subverts.
As scholar James Shapiro illustrates, in 1599, William Shakespeare enjoyed an annus mirabilis—the Bard of Avon had recently composed and brought to the stage the magesterial history play, Henry V, the capstone of the series of plays now often referred to as &#8220;The Henriad&#8221; (Henry IV, pts. 1 &amp; 2, Henry V); in that same year, Shakespeare penned the historical tragedy Julius Caesar, which in many respects reopened the Early Modern imagination to the issues and characters of ancient Rome; finally, he wrote one of his most sublime and linguistically delicious plays, the pastoral comedy, As You Like It. 1599 had been a miraculous year, to be sure. It was then, probably late in the year, as Shakespeare was approaching the end of his 35th year of life, that he began to compose Hamlet. 
Happy reading!
-Allen Guy Wilcox