All 5 Uses

Hamlet
in
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
(Edited)

The English teacher had helped him to create a sermon winging through Hamlet's soliloquy.
p. 182.7

Hamlet = Shakespeare's often quoted tragedy in which a sensitive man (Hamlet) seeks to avenge his father's murder (c. 1601)
I had chosen drama simply because I liked Hamlet's soliloquy beginning, "To be, or not to be."
p. 217.3 *

Hamlet = tormented character in famous Shakespearean play by that name
The secretary and I were like Hamlet and Laertes in the final scene, where, because of harm done by one ancestor to another, we were bound to duel to the death.
p. 267.5

Uses with a meaning too rare to warrant foucs:

What sets one Southern town apart from another, or from a Northern town or hamlet, or city high-rise?
p. 20.1 *

hamlet = small village
World War II was well along before there was a noticeable change in the economy of that near-forgotten hamlet.
p. 52.1

Definitions:

(1) (Hamlet as in: Shakespeare's play)
Shakespeare often quoted tragedy in which a sensitive man (Hamlet) seeks to avenge his father's murder (c. 1601)

Famous quotations from Hamlet include:

This above all,—to thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?—To die,—to sleep,—
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,—'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die,—to sleep;—
To sleep: perchance to dream:

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world!
(2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)
Less commonly, hamlet may refer to a community of people that is smaller than a village.