He is on screen, onstage, on tour, online and in song. Hamlet – William Shakespeare’s masterpiece about a moody Danish prince – seems to be having a moment.

A production by the UK’s National Theatre has landed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York starring Hiran Abeysekera. There is a movie version set in London’s South Asian community starring Riz Ahmed. Anthony Hopkins, at 88, recently delighted fans on TikTok with part of Prince Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be” soliloquy.

The movie Hamnet – a fictionalised story of loss that inspired the creation of Hamlet – earned star Jessie Buckley a best actress Oscar in March. Taylor Swift’s “The Fate of Ophelia” – Hamlet’s ex – went to No 1 on the Billboard singles chart after its release in October. The Hong Kong International Shakespeare Festival in June will feature productions of Hamlet in Tibetan and Romanian.

Four hundred years on, Hamlet – whose seemingly quite modern anti-hero endlessly mulls over what to do after his uncle murders his father and marries his mother – is still giving.

Want even more? There is even a Hamnet play, adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s original novel, which the Royal Shakespeare Company is taking on a UK tour. A Canadian production, Hamlet, Sweet Prince, uses a queer, contemporary lens. The Acting Company in New York will have a “modern-verse” version led by a woman. The Peruvian theatre company Teatro La Plaza recently presented a version off-Broadway starring eight Spanish-speaking actors with Down syndrome.

Jeffrey R. Wilson, a Shakespeare scholar at Harvard University, says Hamlet is perfect for our era in which the crush of bad news triggers constant, existential check-ins.