Hamlet at the Shakespeare Garden
Greg Wyatt. Hamlet. 2003. Gift of the Folger Shakespeare Library to the City of Cedar Rapids Shakespeare Garden, October 2026. Inscribed below the sculpture reads:
Hamlet, Act 3, scene 1
Hamlet
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 wished.
American artist Greg Wyatt’s Hamlet offers visual motifs and symbols from William Shakespeare’s famous tragedy. Wyatt has described his sculpture as “sort of an apparition of a suggestion of features,” representing the ghost of Hamlet’s father in the play. The bronze sculpture incorporates a cracked skull, referencing the iconic skull of Yorick the jester that is dug up in Act 5, and two stainless-steel swords, emphasizing Hamlet’s violent revenge and gesturing toward his duel with Laertes at the end of the play.
This sculpture is a part of a series of eight works, each for a different Shakespeare play, which Wyatt gave to the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, in 2003 and 2004. Four of the eight sculptures can be viewed on the Folger grounds. They are half-size versions of Wyatt's statues on display at Shakespeare’s home in Stratford-upon-Avon, UK. The Folger gifted this Hamlet sculpture to the City of Cedar Rapids Shakespeare Garden in 2026.
