Lord Chamberlain's Men

The Lord Chamberlain’s Men were the acting company identified in the Stationers’ Register as having recently performed Hamlet. Their appearance in the entry anchors the play in theatrical performance by 1602, while the record’s wording distinguishes the company’s role as performers from the question of when Shakespeare wrote or revised the tragedy.

The Stationers’ Register and Hamlet

Hamlet was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 26 July 1602. The record described it as having been lately acted by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, evidence that the play had reached the stage by that date and that the company was associated with its performance. The entry offers a precise documentary point in the play’s early history, but it does not itself establish when the text was composed.

Performance and the play’s chronology

The Oxford editors cited in the book believe Shakespeare wrote Hamlet around 1600 and revised it later. Set beside that estimate, the 1602 registration records a play already performed by the company, not necessarily a final or unchanged version. The book also reports that Georg Brandes’s conjecture about the play looks unlikely in light of the surrounding chronology; the company’s recorded performance contributes to the documentary context rather than resolving that conjecture on its own.