Hamlet is presumably the world's most widely read, performed, and analysed drama. Yet nobody knows the authentic text. The play has survived in a corrupt version known as the Bad Quarto, in a much better version known as the Good Quarto, and in yet another, quite good version published in the First Folio. As a result current editions of the play reveal a number of differences (Wells, 1970: 5f.). The Swedish translation used by B is by Britt G. Hallqvist and based on Harold Jenkin's edition (Shakespeare, 1982).

Hamlet is a very long play even by Shakespearean standards. As a result it is always shortened in performance. In B's version a little more than 1/3 of the text was deleted (Steene, 2005: 689). Once more, the deletions were indicated in the theatre program. Of the characters, Volteman and Cornelius, messengers to the King of Norway, were omitted, as was Polonius’ servant Reynaldo, the Second gravedigger, and some other minor figures. A Courtier serving Ophelia was also changed to a Lady in waiting.

At a meeting shortly before the dress rehearsal of A Dream Play in April 1986, B outlined the scenery for his planned Hamlet production: an “empty stage, possibly two chairs, but not necessarily. Stationary lights, no coloured filters, no special atmospherics. A circle, five meters in diameter welded into the floor, close to the audience. Here the action takes place.” In the actual production a circular acting area was outlined on the stage floor. This area was contained within a greater circle, circumscribing almost the whole stage (Marker/Marker, 1992: 261f.).

The performance opened with three curtains, Dramaten's ordinary red one, followed by a replica of it, this again followed by a black curtain, foreshadowing the two dominant colours of the performance and a reminder that theatre is “not just for pleasure,” the device of the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, copied on the trestle stage used later in the playwithin- the play, the mouse trap scene. The red curtains were accompanied by romantic piano music, the famous waltz in Franz Lehár's operetta The Merry Widow.