how old is Hamlet in Shakespeare's play?

Question

how old is Hamlet? and which line at which act, scene shows this?

Answer 1

Great question - to which there is a very mixed answer.

The First Quarto puts Hamlet at 30 (Act V Scene 1 Line 69) when the sexton says he started work when Hamlet was born and that he's been sexton, man and boy, for thirty years.

However, many scholars are of the opinion that this age does not fit with many other elements of the play (not least of which is that Hamlet is supposed to be a student) and point to the First Folio version which omits the above reference, but does not pin down a specific age for Hamlet.

The answer could therefore be somewhere between 17 and 30, which is not much of an answer really, is it?

For an in-depth discussion on this topic, check out Stephen Roth's essay on the attached link

Answer 2

Hamlet is generally thought to be around 17-20. When shakespeare was writing life expectancy wasn't that great with people checking out around about 50 years old. although royalt, upper classes did live a bit longer, if they didn't get bumped off. I've seen Hamlet many times and have seen him played by school kids right up to people in their 50's, all proffessional productions too.

Answer 3

hamlet in q2 and f1 is clearly 30. the discrepancy in q1 is accounted for by it being an earlier version of the play, written when "shakespeare" was younger. it is in fact the ur-hamlet, incorrectly attributed to kyd and others.
hamlet may have been edited and added to for years, but it was certainly over-hauled circa. 1600. this is in part why it s so long and so dense.
i further suggest the ur-hamlet was written circa 1583, 23 years after will somers died, king viii s court jester, who is meant by yorick.

Answer 4

http://www.rsc.org.uk/hamlet/learning/old.html