The Ur-Hamlet (the German prefix Ur- means "original") is a play by an unknown author, thought to be either Thomas Kyd or William Shakespeare.
The play was staged in London, more specifically at The Theatre in Shoreditch as recalled by Elizabethan author Thomas Lodge.
This view is held in some form or another by Harold Bloom,[3] Peter Alexander,[4] and Andrew Cairncross, who stated, "It may be assumed, until a new case can be shown to the contrary, that Shakespeare's Hamlet and no other is the play mentioned by Nashe in 1589 and Henslowe in 1594".
[14] Elsewhere Bourus, after referring to Goethe's UrFaust or original version of Faust, argues that, "Like Faust…Hamlet was repeatedly revised by its author.
"[15] In 2019, Jennifer E. Nicholson, in her University of Sydney PhD thesis, reinforced this view, offering independent evidence from each of the three printed Hamlets, that Shakespeare was responding creatively to subtle hints in Belleforest's French text, and deriving some of his more famous lines, including perhaps the famous "arras" in the stage directions of Act 3 Scene 4,[16] from them.