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Hamlet is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, probably written between 1599 and 1601. Set in Denmark, the play tells how Prince Hamlet exacts revenge on his uncle for murdering the previous king, Hamlet's father. Hamlet's uncle has since stolen the throne and taken Hamlet's mother, the dead king's widow, as his wife. The play vividly charts the course of real and feigned madness—from overwhelming grief to seething rage—and explores themes of treachery, incest, and moral corruption. Despite much literary detective work, the exact year of writing remains in dispute. Three different early versions of the play survived, which are known as the First Quarto, the Second Quarto, and the First Folio. Each has lines, and even scenes, that are missing from the others. Shakespeare probably based Hamlet on an Indo-European legend—preserved by a 13th-century chronicler, and retold by a 16th-century scholar—and a lost Elizabethan play known today as the Ur-Hamlet. The play's dramatic structure and Shakespeare's depth of characterisation mean that Hamlet can be analysed and interpreted—and argued about—from many perspectives. Hamlet is by far Shakespeare's longest play, and among the most powerful and influential tragedies in the English language. The title role was almost certainly created for Richard Burbage, the leading tragedian of Shakespeare's time; in the four hundred years since, it has been played by the greatest actors, and sometimes actresses, of each successive age.

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• January 1748 – Premiere of Yoshitsune Senbon Zakura, one of the three most famous kabuki plays
• 2 January 1923 – Formation of the School of American Ballet, with George Balanchine as choreographer
• 13 January 1782 – Premiere of Friedrich Schiller's The Robbers, an overnight sensation and an important work in the Sturm and Drang movement
• 17 January 1863 – Birth of Constantin Stanislavski (pictured), a Russian actor and director who developed an acting system
• 28 January 1728 – Premiere of The Beggar's Opera by John Gay, one of the watershed plays of Augustan drama

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet, dramatist, mystic and public figure. Yeats was one of the driving forces behind the Irish Literary Revival and was co-founder of the Abbey Theatre. His early work tended towards a romantic lushness and dreamlike quality best described by the title of his 1893 collection The Celtic Twilight, but in his forties, inspired by his relationships with modernist poets such as Ezra Pound and his active involvement in Irish nationalism, he moved towards a harder, more modern style. As well as his role as member of the board of the Abbey, Yeats served as an Irish Senator. He took his role as a public figure seriously and was a reasonably hard-working member of the Seanad. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923 for what the Nobel Committee described as "his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation".

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• ... that although the Liberty Theatre was built in 1904 to host the Rogers Brothers' musicals, the brothers made their last appearance there three years later?
• ... that at the Guild Theatre, the higher an actor ascended, the farther they were from stardom?
• ... that New York City's Valencia Theatre was sold to a church in 1977 for $1?
• ... that after Syracuse's Bastable Theatre burnt down in 1923, the city's tallest building was built in its place?
• ... that the Palace Theater light bulb has been running since 1908?
• ... that Isabelle Cals, who turned to singing after a degree in Chinese, appeared as Wagner's Kundry in a production of Parsifal at the Stadttheater Minden?

Often as he sneered at Plato, Aristotle never called him a playwright. — Max Beerbohm

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