The depressed Dane pipped King Lear at the post in the Royal Shakespeare Company survey of 200 of its leading actors, including Sir Ian McKellen and Corin Redgrave.
But one of the most popular Shakespeare plays with the public, Romeo and Juliet, failed to make the top 10.
The RSC’s players judged Hamlet to be the Shakespeare play most relevant to the world today and the one having a unique understanding of the human condition.
They also said it had the most memorable quotation — “If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all.”
However, not all the acting greats agreed Hamlet’s 4,042 lines should have beaten King Lear, Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet. Corin Redgrave said he believed King Lear was a more universal work and added: “It’s about good government and bad government: it’s about the responsibilities of the people who govern us. It asks the large questions.”
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Michael Boyd, RSC artistic director, said King Lear was his favourite play but Hamlet was the greatest one he ever worked on.
Paul Scofield’s Lear in Peter Brook’s 1962 production was voted the best stage performance and the greatest film version was Akira Kurosawa’s 1957 adaptation of Macbeth, Throne of Blood.
The greatest scene was Act III Scene iii of Othello when Iago — voted the most unappealing character — convinces Othello that his wife Desdemona is unfaithful.
The top 10 plays by popularity were Hamlet, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, Henry IV Part 2, Twelfth Night, Macbeth, Othello, Titus Andronicus, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest.
Last night McKellen said he had some regrets about the banality of the poll saying: “You might as well ask me what my favourite colour is.”