The Date of Hamlet

Summary

Of all Shakespeare’s plays Hamlet has attracted far more popular and critical attention than any other, and it is natural that we should want to know when it was written. No apology need be offered for the attempt to determine as precisely as possible the date of a work so outstanding in the annals of the theatre.

That the text of the Hamlet we know belongs to the years 1598–1601 is generally agreed, the majority of modern scholars being in favour of 1601. Yet no recent survey of the available evidence has been made and, when we do examine this evidence carefully, it looks as though Shakespeare more probably produced the tragedy either late in 1599 or early in 1600.

Stylistic "internal" evidence does not help us, since the dates of the other plays written roughly at the same time are, on the whole, more uncertain than the date of Hamlet itself. We may, therefore, confine ourselves to the "external" facts. A fairly safe downward date is provided by the absence of Hamlet from the list by Francis Meres published in the autumn of 1598, and an unimpeachable upward date by the entry of the play in the Stationers' Register on 26 July 1602. The other evidence, from which a date between these limits has to be sought, is not so easy to interpret.