What were the props and costumes used in Hamlet?

Answer 1

Which performance are you talking about? Every performance has different props and costumes, which is part of the fun of putting on a play, especially if you are the director.

To do Hamlet, you are going to need some weapons of the knife or sword variety, a skull, a cup, a book, some letters, and some flowers. The letters can be both Ophelia's remembrances and the letters the sailors deliver; the book can be both Hamlet's book and Ophelia's. You can add more, but these are the essentials.

Costumes can vary widely. The only thing which is certain is that Hamlet starts the play wearing black. Check out the 1964 Broadway production starring Richard Burton in which all the players wore street clothes.

Answer 2

None. You can play the portion of the Act 3 Scene 1 which consists of the famous speech without any props at all. If you are going to do the whole scene, (usually called the Nunnery Scene, because of Hamlet's repeated line "Get thee to a nunnery!") some kind of prop is needed at Ophelia's line, "Their perfume lost, take these again, for to the noble mind rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. There, my lord." Ophelia has to give Hamlet something at this point.

That is not to say that a prop might not be helpful. Sir Derek Jacobi, when playing Hamlet, looked at the picture of his father in his locket when saying the line "death, the undiscovered country from which no traveller returns" which makes one consider that line and indeed the whole speech in a different light. But such a prop is not necessary.