Prince of Denmark, the archetype of the "melancholy prince"
The hero of Shakespeare’s tragedy of the same name, Prince of Denmark. His father poisoned by his uncle, his mother married to the murderer, and commanded by his father’s ghost to avenge him — he sinks instead into endless hesitation and self-interrogation, missing chance after chance to act, until it ends in a stage strewn with the dead. Hamlet’s "thinks too much, cannot act" temperament became a proper archetype in literature and psychology: the person who knows what must be done, yet is trapped by his own thought.
The scene of Hamlet holding the skull of the jester Yorick and sighing "I knew him" is one of the most famous images in Western drama. A prince questioning a skull about life, death, and nothingness — through it Shakespeare set the heaviest of all matters, death itself, before every viewer’s eyes.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.