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Shakespeare & Beyond

Up Close: Three scenes from Hamlet

These three 19th-century illustrations of scenes from Hamlet have been mounted together to form one object in the Folger collection. Can you identify what’s happening in each of the scenes?

In the original drawings by British illustrator John Jellicoe, a telltale caption or quote from the scene accompanies each picture, but here we’ve hidden those phrases to make guessing a little harder. (You may notice other writing on the illustrations; someone was apparently very irked about the lines marking the drawing edges.)

Click through the arrows to see captions that zoom in on different parts of the image. Click the eye icon to hide or display the captions. You can also examine the image at your own pace by clicking and dragging to move and by scrolling to zoom in and out.