Talk:Hamlet

issues with "20th century" subsection of "Performance history"

1. In backing up the statement "Olivier's 1937 performance at The Old Vic was popular with audiences but not with critics," the subsection cites just one harsh comment by one critic, despite having used the plural "critics." Theatricalia, it should be added, offers the following generally complimentary excerpt from a review from The Times: "'not intellectually brilliant,'" but combined 'intelligence with grace in an unusual degree.'"

2. "Richard Burton received his third Tony Award nomination when he played his second Hamlet, his first under John Gielgud's direction..." Did Burton perform Hamlet under Gielgud's direction again after this? If not, then wouldn't it be clearer to say, "Richard Burton received his third Tony Award nomination when he played his second Hamlet, this time under John Gielgud's direction..."?

3. "Other New York portrayals of 'Hamlet' of note include that of Ralph Fiennes's in 1995..." Given that this production originated in London, wouldn't it be preferable to identify it as a London production that then transferred to New York?

4. "Stephen Lang's Hamlet for the Roundabout Theatre Company in 1992 received mixed reviews and ran for sixty-one performances." The subsection doesn't provide any evidence that this production was in any way noteworthy. And if Lang wasn't a significant Hamlet or a major Shakespearean in general, then it's also not worth mentioning a sentence earlier that he'd been in the the Sam Waterston production.

5. "William Hurt (at Circle Repertory Company off-Broadway, memorably performing "To be, or not to be" while lying on the floor), Jon Voight at Rutgers,[clarification needed] and Christopher Walken (fiercely) at Stratford..." No evidence is supplied to support the modifiers "memorably" or 'fiercely."

6. Multiple high-profile 20th century productions, including those starring Alec Guinness, Michael Redgrave, Albert Finney and Jonathan Pryce, are not mentioned. Pratchettfan (talk) 20:37, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

WP:URFA/2020

I am reviewing this article as part of WP:URFA/2020, an initiative to review Wikipedia's oldest featured articles. After taking a look at this article, I noticed the following:

• There are many uncited statements, including entire paragraphs. While some are covered by MOS:PLOT, others are not such as in the "Dramatic structure" section.
• There is lots of article bloat, causing many one-sentence paragraphs and an article that is over 11,000 words long, larger than recommended at WP:SS and WP:TOOBIG. I think lots of information in the "Performance history" section can be removed as too much information, and I think a copyedit would find other prose that could be WP:SPINOUT or summarised more effectively.

I am adding this to WP:FARGIVEN as a FAR notice. I am happy to go into more detail on what may need to happen to keep its article status if pinged, to hopefully avoid a posting at FAR and get this ready for a potential WP:TFA re-run. Z1720 (talk) 02:49, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

• Thank you @Z1720:
  • I was one of the proposers of the article at its original featured article candidacy at the end of 2007. I may be wrong, but I don't believe any of the others are currently active Wikipedians.
  • Yes, it would be really useful to have your views on what would be needed to avoid a FAR.
  • Upon reviewing the article myself it seems to me that much of the "good" wording and sourcing that got this page a star in the first place is still here. I'm more concerned at what's been added subsequently, on which some of my views are:
    • I think there's a bit of an issue with WP:RECENTISM, and I'd suggest cutting back or spinning out anything about which we're not capable of saying how it's affected the history of the play.
    • I personally think far too much WP:WEIGHT is given to Freud and Lacan. I'd prefer to see a separate article spun out on Hamlet and Psychology, and a much smaller section at this page.
    • I think too much WP:WEIGHT is given to the 20th and 21st Centuries (acknowledging that I probably wrote a lot of the former myself!).
    • I think "Derivative Works" took a wrong-turn in limiting itself to stage adaptations. I envisage a lot of that, too, can be spun out to Cultural references to Hamlet.
    • I see M J. Kidnie has been commissioned to write the fourth series Arden but that's not got any announced publication date. There is a 2016 revised edition of the third series Arden, the 2006 edition of which is cited a lot in the existing article. So there is some scope for updating.
  • That's my 2p worth for the moment. AndyJones (talk) 12:50, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

• @AndyJones: Thanks for responding. I agree with the points you raised above, and I think these are great starting points on what needs to happen. Hopefully, by the end of this process the article can be ready for a TFA re-run. Would adding citation needed templates help with identifying the uncited passages? I like the idea of spinning out the articles (and perhaps the new articles could achieve FA status on their own?) After the article body prose is fixed up, we should also consider expanding the lead to include all major aspects of the article. Are you interested in working on this? Z1720 (talk) 15:22, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

  @AndyJones and @Z1720: I've been working through a lot of the sourcing issues, which I kind of wish now I'd brought up here halfway through but I wanted to finish first. Anyway, it is what it is. I'll also go through the bullet points.

  • Recentism in what sense? I didn't really notice much from the last twenty years or so except for in the Performance history section.
  • My personal opinion is that the psychology article is probably a nice-to-have, so to speak, but not anything that has to be solved for a FAR.
  • I do agree about the performances, especially the 21st century ones. They appear to have been added piecemeal as they happened, which was what had initially resulted in a bunch of one-sentence paragraphs. I've consolidated some of the paragraphs, but the whole thing could do with a prune to determine what's important enough to stay and what isn't.
  • My suggestion for the Derivative works section is to combine it with the Film and TV performances section, pick the few most important ones, and merge the rest into Hamlet on screen and Cultural references to Hamlet.
  • Do you know how different the 2016 revised edition is from the 2006 version? Generally new editions of books are just slightly different from each other, and the Arden Shakespeare article says "Some contained minor revisions in later printings, such as Henry V", although it doesn't say whether Hamlet is one of these.

  While in this case cuts likely would improve the article, I don't think we have to worry much about getting the word count down. 11,000 is is still far away from the harder 15,000 limit at WP:AS, and the softer 9,000 word limit says that "the scope of a topic can sometimes justify the added reading material". If the most significant play in human history doesn't justify the added reading material, what would? Ladtrack (talk) 16:39, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

@Ladtrack: For me, the recentism concern is the piecemeal addition of performances that you mention above, which is probably solved by summarising it more effectively. For the word count, I do not consider the importance of an article when deciding if an article can be of an extended length. Rather, I look at if information can be summarised more effectively or spun out. Some places to trim have already been suggested: after that process is complete editors can take another look at the word count and section lengths. Here are some sections that might be good places to trim or spin out:

• MOS:PLOT says plot summaries for novels and feature films is between 400-700 words, while this article's plot section is over 1,500.
• Since there's a Sources of Hamlet article, some of the information from "Sources" might be able to be spun out into there.
• There's five paragraphs discussing the date the play was first performed: this seems like too much detail about this aspect for a general encyclopedia article and can either be spun out or reduced in importance.
• The "Psychoanalytic" section is quite long, especially the "Sigmund Freud" section, and I think it needs to be spun-out or reduced.
• I agree with the suggestion to merge Derivative works with film and tv, then reduce the prose count.

Those are my thoughts on where to start trimming. Let me know if I can help. Z1720 (talk) 17:03, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

For the word count, I do not consider the importance of an article when deciding if an article can be of an extended length. Why not? The guideline says to. Ladtrack (talk) 18:43, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

• @Ladtrack: Which guideline are you referring to? I can't find in WP:AS or WP:SS where it states that the article's importance is a consideration in deciding length. I do see that the scope of an article is a factor: if an article has lots of aspects that can't be spun out (or have already been spun out) then it can probably justify a larger length. For Hamlet, there are already some suggestions on spinning out and cutting prose that should be investigated before continuing a conversation about the article's overall size. Z1720 (talk) 18:54, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

  @Z1720 Importance and scope is pretty much the same in this context. The article subject is Hamlet, the most-studied, most famous, and probably most significant play that there has ever been. If we were to do an list on Hamlet scholarship akin to List of Holmesian studies, we'd likely have to break that list into multiple parts, and a lot of that coverage has to be reflected in this article for it to be comprehensive. There are, depending on how you count, about eighteen sub-articles and yet the main article is so long because the topic is so big. A lot of times either the content of a sub-article will be significant enough that even a summary-style treatment will be pretty long, like the Sources section here, or there isn't quite enough for a sub-article but there's too much coverage not to discuss it in depth, which is the case for the Date section. Again, thousands and thousands of words have been written on both of these subjects by Hamlet scholars.

  A nineteenth sub-article on psychology wouldn't be a bad idea as I said, but conditioning a FAR on it introduces an implicit clock that isn't necessary when there's not inherently a problem with the article's length as is. The article's size has been about stable for six years now, so it's not as though it's ballooning, it's just a topic that editors have felt needs more thorough coverage. If the article would benefit in some ways from being shorter (like cutting some 21st-century performances or eventually a separate psychology article), then great, but unless you feel that the inclusion of these inherently makes this article not featured-quality, there shouldn't be a FAR just because of that. The length alone isn't an issue here, not for this article. Ladtrack (talk) 22:47, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

  As an aside, I believe the sourcing issues have been resolved. Ladtrack (talk) 22:58, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

  @Z1720 I got the citation needed tag. This one's a bit weird; that sentence was one-half meaningful content (which I've cited) and one-half navigational aid pointing to a different section, which obviously cannot be sourced. I've slightly reworded it to ensure the second half doesn't contain any informational content. Is this acceptable? Ladtrack (talk) 03:05, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

  @Ladtrack: Article navigational information doesn't need a citation (though I don't like them in articles, that's a personal preference and outside the scope of this review). I think the next step is to focus on improving the bloated article sections: any particular section that should be focused on first? I suggest improving the lead last as it is supposed to be a summary of article content. Z1720 (talk) 17:38, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

  I think spinning out a psychology article, as previously suggested, would be good. The problem is that I don't think I'd be able to do it myself, as I haven't read Freud (or, for that matter, Lacan) and don't really know the material involved. I also don't really have a good sense as to what performances or adaptations would be considered historically important enough to be worth mentioning here, so I'm not sure I'd be able to make a judgment call as to what to keep and what to remove. The twentieth-century section is well-written, but really long so maybe could be trimmed, and the twenty-first century section is not to the quality standard of the rest of the article. @AndyJones, if you could provide some guidance as to what you think should be removed for being insufficiently significant, and perhaps start the bones of a psychology article, I'd be more than happy to help. Ladtrack (talk) 18:09, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

• I think it's brilliant that we're all saying more-or-less the same things about what needs to be done to bring the page up to scratch. I've been in so many of these conversations where everyone is pulling in different directions and there doesn't seem to be any strategy that would satisfy everyone!! Anyway, my further 2p worth is:
  • @Z1720:
    • Are you interested in working on this? Definitely, although there is another project taking up the bulk of my time for at least another month or so. As we found at The Tempest, once I do get involved I usually find a pile of wikidragoning that needs doing, also I like to do a decent amount of reading-around off Wikipedia. So it'll probably be a bit time consuming, not just a couple of days of tweaks.
    • Would adding citation needed templates help with identifying the uncited passages? Yes, definitely. Please feel free to do that agressively and don't be afraid to use {fails verification} and {better source needed} wherever applicable too. That'll really help in getting the sourcing back up to FA quality and in removing facts that haven't earned their place.
      • This is unless you feel Ladtrack has already resolved this. Do you?
    • Am I right to assume the FAR process is pretty forgiving of all this sort of thing? i.e. that so long as work is visibly being done and progress is being made they don't impose short deadlines or demand that the article stay in a well-polished state free from maintenance tags and templates?
  • @Ladtrack:
    • Recentism in what sense? I was simply thinking of very much the same things Z1720 said to you in his reply: For me, the recentism concern is the piecemeal addition of performances that you mention above, which is probably solved by summarising it more effectively.
    • Like you I'm not too worried about the word count, although I think the changes we're proposing will reduce that anyway.
    • I agree with Z1720's response to you that there's scope for reducing (by a lot) the plot synopsis.
    • The psychology article is probably a nice-to-have, so to speak, but not anything that has to be solved for a FAR also The problem is that I don't think I'd be able to do it myself, as I haven't read Freud. I'm happy to deal with this. Like you, Freud is not in my area of special interest, but to break-out the article we don't have to break-out a featured one or even a particularly good one. It can exist on its own merits: and if we did no more than copy-and-paste what we have here it would already be significantly more than a stub, well written and well sourced. My main concern would be to maintain the integrity of the Hamlet article.
    • Do you know how different the 2016 revised edition is from the 2006 version? Yes, this is interesting. I've read quite a few of these, and they generally add a section at the end of the introduction of (say) 20 pages or so. Sometimes there is something very significant to say (Jonathan Bate for example had argued for Shakespeare's sole authorship of Titus Andronicus in the body of the introduction but conceded that there is strong new evidence for George Peele's involvement, in the revision) but usually they focus on doing the very thing I imagine them being useful for in this exercise, namely updating the performance history: thereby giving us a sense for which 21st century performances (out of the countless professional ones there have been) should earn a mention in a featured article. I uploaded this video today and may take it down again soon. Just a little project I did, which I think illustrates the point about how much of this stuff there is out there, and therefore the need to be discerning about what goes in the main article. AndyJones (talk) 09:59, 23 May 2026 (UTC)
      • PS to this last point, no I haven't read the 2016 Hamlet but I did check it out in a bookshop yesterday evening and the change is indeed that it's got about 25 pages added at the end of the introduction. AndyJones (talk) 10:11, 23 May 2026 (UTC)
        • @AndyJones: Citation needed concerns are resolved; failed verification has not been checked (I usually don't do that, because I hate source checking). Since there has been so much academic literature written on this topic, I think that any sources that are not academic (peer reviewed published by academic institutions) would probably have to be replaced. The sources in "Further reading" should either be used as inline citations in the article or removed: ideally, there should be no further reading section because all relevant sources are used in the article. If editors agree, I can reduce the prose in the Plot section: it would probably be cut by half by the time I'm finished. Z1720 (talk) 14:52, 23 May 2026 (UTC)
          • Works for me. AndyJones (talk) 16:13, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

• @Ladtrack and AndyJones: I have trimmed the plot to 727 words: this involved cutting much of Ophelia's later storylines and mentions of various soliloquies. I've never read or seen the play, so what is left is what I needed to understand the plot: if something that was cut was to be readded, I would like editors to think about what to cut to add it back in and keep it around 700 words. I can do another round of cuts, and suggestions on what can go would be appreciated. Z1720 (talk) 20:33, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

• Good work. I've had a further go at the Plot, which I think (??) might be a further improvement on what you've done. I do wonder though whether we're taking the right approach. Someone writes a synopis. Other people come along and go "this doesn't mention whatever" so add something, then someone else adds something else, and this process repeats until someone says "this is getting too long" then somebody trims the synopsis back to 800 words or so, then the whole process repeats again forever and ever. This is a discussion we've had before: see for example Talk:Hamlet/Archive 4, Talk:Hamlet/Archive 6 and even User:AndyJones/Hamlet Synopsis. Indeed I'm not altogether persuaded we wouldn't be better off looking for the version of the page that got the featured article star, and copying-and-pasting its synopsis back into the article! AndyJones (talk) 10:04, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

• @AndyJones: I'm fine with editors agreeing upon a synopsis on the talk page and then requesting that changes be suggested on the talk page first. However, editors can't be too strict about upholding the agreed-upon version due to WP:OWN. It would also require editors to monitor the article so that changes can be reviewed. Which version do you think is the best synopsis to use in the article? Z1720 (talk) 13:55, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

I have added some mostly new material to the top of the Psychoanalytic section. My thoughts are that:

• what we now have as far as just before the heading "Sigmund Freud" should become the whole section on this page, then
• that the entire section as it now is should be broken out into a new article.

I won't implement that until tomorrow, in case anyone has any comments in the meantime. Pinging @Ladtrack, Z1720, and Pratchettfan:. AndyJones (talk) 20:31, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

@AndyJones I like the new opening section. I do wonder, would it be better to split the whole psychoanalysis section into a new article, or just the Freud portion? The only reason I ask is because I imagine a Sigmund Freud and Hamlet article might be a little more focused than a Psychoanalysis of Hamlet article that's 90% Freud anyway. Ladtrack (talk) 01:25, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

@Ladtrack: Yes, I sympathise with that idea. However my preference is still to create Hamlet and Psychoanalysis. My logic is that creating a narrow article doesn't give space for the ideas of Bachelard, Showalter and Lacan. It would then be open to future editors of that article whether and how to expand it, and whether to break-out approaches other than Freud's. AndyJones (talk) 18:44, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

@AndyJones Fair enough. Ladtrack (talk) 22:35, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

 Done AndyJones (talk) 10:35, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

July follow-up

@Ladtrack and AndyJones: Thanks for the work that both of you have done with the article. There are still some issues that I would want resolved before considering this for a TFA re-run:

• "Film and TV performances" needs to the cleaned up, with paragraphs merged and less significant entries moved to Hamlet on screen
• "Derivative works" Also needs to be cleaned up, with paragraphs merged and less significant entries deleted.
• I think the lead needs to be expanded to ensure all major aspects of the topic are referenced. The lead should probably include information about themes in the play and performance history, including how often it is adapted.
• This script indicates that many sources listed are not used as inline citations. I think some can be removed while more high-quality ones are incorporated into the article (and maybe replace some lesser quality ones).

Are you or any other talk page watchers interested in fixing these up? Z1720 (talk) 16:55, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

• Thanks. Yes, I was planning to return to this page soon. As well as the points you've raised I want to do some more work on the 20th and 21st century sections. I might not be starting today, though. AndyJones (talk) 06:40, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

Little typo

Type under "Act IV & V":

Gretrude arrives with news that Ophelia has drowned. ~2026-33891-57 (talk) 02:15, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

Fixed, thank you. Johnuniq (talk) 04:12, 8 June 2026 (UTC)