HAMLET by William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright who is considered one of the greatest writers to ever use
the English language. He is also the most famous playwright in the world, with his plays being translated in over 50
languages and performed across the globe for audiences of all ages. Known colloquially as "The Bard" or "The Bard
of Avon," Shakespeare was also an actor and the creator of the Globe Theatre, a historical theatre, and company
that is visited by hundreds of thousands of tourists every year.

His works span tragedy, comedy, and historical works, both in poetry and prose. And although the man is the most-
recognized playwright in the world, very little of his life is actually known. No known autobiographical letters or
diaries have survived to modern day, and with no surviving descendants, Shakespeare is a figure both of magnificent
genius and mystery.

This has led to many interpretations of his life and works, creating a legend out of the commoner from Stratford-
upon-Avon who rose to prominence and in the process wrote many of the seminal works that provide the
foundation for the current English language.

Life Before the Stage

The exact date of Shakespeare's birth is unknown, but it is accepted that he was born in April of 1564 in Stratford-
upon-Avon in Warwickshire, England, and baptized in the same month. He was the son of John Shakespeare, an
alderman, and Mary Arden, the daughter of the family's landlord and a well-respected farmer. He was one of eight
children and lived to be the eldest surviving son of the family.

Shakespeare was educated at the King's New School, a free chartered grammar school that was located in Stratford.
There he studied the basic Latin text and grammar, much of which was standardized across the country by Royal
decree. He was also known to partake in the theatre while at the school as was the custom at the time. As a
commoner, Shakespeare's education was thought to finish at the grammar school level as there is no record of him
attending university, which was a luxury reserved for upper-class families.

In 1582, an 18-year-old Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, who, on the occasion of her wedding, was 26 years
old and already with child. Hathaway gave birth to the couple's first child six months later, a daughter named
Susanna, with twins, named Hamnet and Judith, following two years later in 1585. Hamnet died at the age of 11
from unknown reasons.

A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool." - Quote by Shakespeare

After the birth of his twins in 1585, Shakespeare disappeared from public record until 1592, when his works began
appearing on the London stage. These seven years are known as "Shakespeare's Lost Years," and have been the
source of various stories that remain unverified, including a salacious story involving Shakespeare escaping Stratford
prosecution for deer poaching. This story, among others, are solely entertainment and are not considered as part
of the canon that makes up the playwright's personal life.

Career and Creation of the Globe

William Shakespeare first made his appearance on the London stage, where his plays would be written and
performed, around 1592, although the exact date is unknown. He was, however, well known enough to be attacked
by critics in newspapers, and thus was considered to be already an established playwright.

After the year 1594, Shakespeare's plays were solely performed by a company owned by a group of actors known
as the Lord Chamberlain's Men, which became London's leading company. After Queen Elizabeth's death in 1603,
the company was given a royal patent that renamed it the King's Men, named so after King James I.

Shakespeare, along with a group of players that acted in his play, created his own theatre on the River Thames in
1599 and named it the Globe Theatre. After that, a record of property purchases and investments made by
Shakespeare showed the playwright had become a very wealthy man, so much so that he bought properties in
London and Stratford for himself and his family, as he spent most of his time in London.
It was in 1594 that the first known quartos of Shakespeare's plays were published, solidifying his reputation by 1598
when his name became the selling point in new productions. This led to his success as both an actor on stage and a
playwright, and his name was published on the title page of his plays.

Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none." - Quote by Shakespeare

Shakespeare continued to work with his company of men at the Globe Theatre until around 1610, the year that he
retired from working on the stage. He, however, continued to support the Globe Theatre, including buying
apartments for playwrights and actors to live in, all of which were near to the theatre.

Retirement and Death

Shakespeare retired from public life in 1610, right after the bubonic plague began to subside its attack on London.
This act was unusual for the time, but he was by no means less active. In fact, the playwright continued to make
frequent trips to London to collaborate with other playwrights, such as John Fletcher, and to spend time with his
son-in-law John Hall, who married his elder daughter Susanna in 1607.

The playwright was an active dramatist and writer up until 1613 when the last of his great works was finished. From
then on, Shakespeare spent most of his time in Stratford-upon-Avon, where he had purchased the second-largest
home in town for his family.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them." - Quote by Shakespeare

William Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616, and was buried at the Holy Trinity Church in Stratford two days later,
with a curse written on his tombstone to ward off those who would disturb his bones. He was 52 years old at the
time of his death and was survived by his wife, Anna, and their two daughters. There are no direct descendants
from Shakespeare's line, as both daughters had children who did not make it to adulthood.

The Shakespeare Canon

Shakespeare was noted both for poetry and plays, with both mediums serving different needs; the plays were
related to the theatrical fashion that was on trend while his poetry served to provide storytelling in erotic or
romantic ways, culminating in a canon of work that is as diverse in language as the issues of human nature that the
works portray.

Plays

William Shakespeare wrote at least 37 plays that scholars know of, with most of them labeled is comedies, histories,
or tragedies. The earliest play that is directly attributed to Shakespeare is the trilogy of "King Henry VI," with Richard
III also being written around the same time, between 1589 and 1591. The last play was a collaboration, assumed to
be with John Fletcher, known as "The Two Noble Kinsmen."

Shakespeare often wrote play in a genre that was in vogue at the time, with his plays beginning with the histories,
including the above-mentioned works as well as "Pericles," "King John," the dual volumes of both "Henry IV" and
Henry V, which were written at later dates.

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound." - Quote by Shakespeare

From histories written in the late 1580s to the early 1590s, Shakespeare moved into comedies, which were described
as such for their comic sequences and pairs of plots that intertwined with each other. Among the most well known
are A Midsummer's Night Dream, Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night.
Interestingly, two tragedies bookend Shakespeare's comedic era - Romeo and Juliet were written at the beginning
of the 1590s, and Julius Caesar was written at the end of the era.

For the last portion of his writing career, Shakespeare focused his work on tragedies and "problem" plays. In this
era, which is acknowledged as the playwright's best era, he wrote the works called Hamlet, Othello, King Lear,
Coriolanus, and Macbeth, among others. These are the works that are most in production today, both on stage and
in film.
When looking at a chronology of Shakespeare's plays, it is clear that Shakespeare changed the subjects of his plays
as he grew in prominence and then returned to a more serene life. Moving from historical subjects to a more playful
side and then, finally, into plays where plots would result in a sense of forgiveness and serenity, Shakespeare's
evolution as both a man and a writer is evident. In fact, the playwright's devotion to the English language and his
rebellion against it has led to fascinating studies done by leading literature scholars.

Poems and Sonnets

There are two volumes of poetry and over 150 sonnets that are attributed to Shakespeare. It is thought that
although Shakespeare was a poet throughout his lifetime, he turned to poetry most notably during 1593 and 1594
when a plague forced theatres in London to shut down.

The volumes of narrative poems that Shakespeare released during those years were called Venus and Adonis and
The Rape of Lucrece. Both volumes focused on the problems surrounding uncontrollable lust and the guilt
associated with it afterwards and were very well received during his lifetime, partially for their erotic tone. In this
vein, Shakespeare also wrote A Lover's Complaint, which was included in the first edition of Shakespeare's sonnets,
which were released in 1609.

Hell is empty and all the devils are here." - Quote by Shakespeare

Shakespeare's sonnets were a collection of over 150 works that were published late in his life and without any
indication of when each of the pieces was composed. It is widely thought that the sonnets were a part of a private
diary that was never meant to be read publicly but nevertheless were published.

The sonnets have a contrasting set of subjects - one set chronicles the poet's lust for a married woman with a dark
complexion, known as The Dark Lady, while the other describes a conflicted or confused love for a young man,
known as the "fair youth." While it is not known or confirmed, many in literature circles believe that the sonnets
accurately portray the heart of the poet, leading the public to speculate on Shakespeare's views on religion, sex,
marriage, and life.

Critics have praised the sonnets as being profoundly intimate and meditating on the values of love, lust, procreation,
and death. Now a day, Shakespeare is ranked as all-time most popular English poets on history, along with Emily
Dickinson, Robert Frost, and Walt Whitman.

The Shakespeare Influence

Shakespeare's influence on art, literature, language and the vast array of the creative arts has long been known and
documented. He is the most-read playwright in the Western Hemisphere, and the English language is littered with
quotes and phrases the originated from his works. He is also the inventor of the iambic pentameter, a form of poetry
that is still widely used today.

He is also one of the most influential figures in English literature, having had a profound impact on everyone from
Herman Melville and Charles Dickens to Agatha Christie and Anthony Burgess. But his influence did not stop at just
the arts - the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud used Hamlet as the foundation for many of his theories on human
nature, and his influence can be felt in painting and opera as well, particularly from the operas of Giuseppe Verdi
and the whole community of Romantic and Pre-Raphaelite painters.

Brevity is the soul of wit." - Quote by Shakespeare

But Shakespeare was, and still is, the most prominent influential figure in language. Phrases such as "breaking the
ice" or "heart of gold" are colloquial now, but are also known to have originated in Shakespeare's plays and sonnets.
There are over seven dozen examples that can be taken from common life and be directly attributed to Shakespeare,
meaning that much of how people speak to each other now has a history that dates back to the 17th century.

Aside from phrases, it is also common knowledge that the dramatist introduced upwards of 1,700 original words to
the English language, which, during the 16th and 17th centuries, was not standardized. In fact, words such as lonely,
frugal, dwindle, and more originate from Shakespeare, who transformed English into the populist language that it
is today.

William Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564, in Stratford-upon-Avon. The son of John Shakespeare and Mary
Arden, he was probably educated at the King Edward VI Grammar School in Stratford, where he learned Latin and a
little Greek and read the Roman dramatists. At eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway, a woman seven or eight years
his senior. Together, they raised two daughters: Susanna, who was born in 1583, and Judith (whose twin brother
died in boyhood), born in 1585.

Little is known about Shakespeare’s activities between 1585 and 1592. Robert Greene’s A Groatsworth of Wit alludes
to him as an actor and playwright. Shakespeare may have taught at school during this period, but it seems more
probable that shortly after 1585 he went to London to begin his apprenticeship as an actor. Due to the plague, the
London theaters were often closed between June 1592 and April 1594. During that period, Shakespeare probably
had some income from his patron, Henry Wriothesley, earl of Southampton, to whom he dedicated his first two
poems, Venus and Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece (1594). The former was a long narrative poem depicting
the rejection of Venus by Adonis, his death, and the consequent disappearance of beauty from the world. Despite
conservative objections to the poem’s glorification of sensuality, it was immensely popular and was reprinted six
times during the nine years following its publication.

In 1594, Shakespeare joined the Lord Chamberlain’s company of actors, the most popular of the companies acting
at Court. In 1599, Shakespeare joined a group of Chamberlain’s Men that would form a syndicate to build and
operate a new playhouse: the Globe, which became the most famous theater of its time. With his share of the
income from the Globe, Shakespeare was able to purchase New Place, his home in Stratford.

While Shakespeare was regarded as the foremost dramatist of his time, evidence indicates that both he and his
contemporaries looked to poetry, not playwriting, for enduring fame. Shakespeare’s sonnets were composed
between 1593 and 1601, though not published until 1609. That edition, The Sonnets of Shakespeare, consists of
154 sonnets, all written in the form of three quatrains and a couplet that is now recognized as Shakespearean. The
sonnets fall into two groups: sonnets 1–126, addressed to a beloved friend, a handsome and noble young man, and
sonnets 127–152, to a malignant but fascinating “Dark Lady,” who the poet loves in spite of himself. Nearly all of
Shakespeare’s sonnets examine the inevitable decay of time, and the immortalization of beauty and love in poetry.

In his poems and plays, Shakespeare invented thousands of words, often combining or contorting Latin, French, and
native roots. His impressive expansion of the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, includes
such words as: arch-villain, birthplace, bloodsucking, courtship, dewdrop, downstairs, fanged, heartsore,
hunchbacked, leapfrog, misquote, pageantry, radiance, schoolboy, stillborn, watchdog, and zany.

Shakespeare wrote more than thirty plays. These are usually divided into four categories: histories, comedies,
tragedies, and romances. His earliest plays were primarily comedies and histories such as Henry VI and The Comedy
of Errors, but in 1596, Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet, his second tragedy, and over the next dozen years he
would return to the form, writing the plays for which he is now best known: Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, King
Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra. In his final years, Shakespeare turned to the romantic with Cymbeline, A
Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest.

Only eighteen of Shakespeare’s plays were published separately in quarto editions during his lifetime; a complete
collection of his works did not appear until the publication of the First Folio in 1623, several years after his death.
Nonetheless, his contemporaries recognized Shakespeare's achievements. Francis Meres cited “honey-tongued”
Shakespeare for his plays and poems in 1598, and the Chamberlain’s Men rose to become the leading dramatic
company in London, installed as members of the royal household in 1603.

Sometime after 1612, Shakespeare retired from the stage and returned to his home in Stratford. He drew up his will
in January of 1616, which included his famous bequest to his wife of his “second best bed.” He died on April 23,
1616, and was buried two days later at Stratford Church.

Characters
1. Ghost – the ghost of Hamlet's father
2. Hamlet – son of the late king Hamlet and Queen Gertrude, and nephew of the present king, Claudius
3. Claudius – King of Denmark, Hamlet's uncle and brother to the former king
4. Gertrude – Queen of Denmark and Hamlet's mother

5. Polonius – father of Ophelia and Laertes, chief counsellor to the king Claudius
6. Ophelia – Polonius's daughter
 7. Laertes – Polonius's son
8. Reynaldo – Polonius's servant
Horatio, Hamlet’s friend, and confidant
9. Horatio – friend of Hamlet
10. Voltemand and Cornelius – courtiers
11. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern – courtiers, friends of Hamlet
12. Osric – a courtier at the Danish court
13. Gentlemen – a courtier at the Danish court
14. A Lord – a courtier at the Danish court
Danish soldiers
15. Marcellus – an officer
16. Bernardo – an officer (spelled Barnardo or Barnard in quarto versions)
17. Francisco – a soldier
18. Fortinbras – prince of Norway, A Captain in Fortinbras’s army
19. Ambassadors to Denmark from England
20. Gravediggers and Gravedigger’s companion – a pair of sextons
21. Two Messengers
22. Sailors
23. Doctor of Divinity
24. Attendants, Lords, Guards, Musicians, Laertes’s Followers, Soldiers, Officers
25. Players who take the roles of Prologue, Player King, Player Queen, and Lucianus in The Murder of Gonzago,
etc. – players

No. of acts and scenes:

Act I – Scene I, II, III, IV & V
Act II – Scene I & II
Act III – Scene I, II, III & IV
Act IV – Scene I, II, III, IV, V, VI & VII
Act V – Scene I & II

Synopsis:
Events before the start of Hamlet set the stage for tragedy. When the king of Denmark, Prince Hamlet’s father,
suddenly dies, Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, marries his uncle Claudius, who becomes the new king.

A spirit who claims to be the ghost of Hamlet’s father describes his murder at the hands of Claudius and demands
that Hamlet avenge the killing. When the councilor Polonius learns from his daughter, Ophelia, that Hamlet has
visited her in an apparently distracted state, Polonius attributes the prince’s condition to lovesickness, and he sets
a trap for Hamlet using Ophelia as bait.

To confirm Claudius’s guilt, Hamlet arranges for a play that mimics the murder; Claudius’s reaction is that of a guilty
man. Hamlet, now free to act, mistakenly kills Polonius, thinking he is Claudius. Claudius sends Hamlet away as part
of a deadly plot.

After Polonius’s death, Ophelia goes mad and later drowns. Hamlet, who has returned safely to confront the king,
agrees to a fencing match with Ophelia’s brother, Laertes, who secretly poisons his own rapier. At the match,
Claudius prepares poisoned wine for Hamlet, which Gertrude unknowingly drinks; as she dies, she accuses Claudius,
whom Hamlet kills. Then first Laertes and then Hamlet die, both victims of Laertes’ rapier.

Act I Scene I Synopsis:

On the guards’ platform at Elsinore, Horatio waits with Barnardo and Marcellus to question a ghost that has twice
before appeared. The Ghost, in the form of the late King Hamlet of Denmark, appears but will not speak. Horatio
decides to tell his fellow student, Prince Hamlet, about the Ghost’s appearance.

Act 1, scene 2 Synopsis:

In an audience chamber in Elsinore, Claudius, the new king of Denmark, holds court. After thanking his courtiers for
their recent support, he dispatches ambassadors to Norway to halt a threatened attack from Fortinbras. He gives
Laertes permission to return to France but denies Hamlet’s request to return to the university in Wittenberg.
Hamlet, mourning for his father’s death, is left alone to vent his despair at what he regards as his mother’s all too
hasty marriage to his uncle, Claudius. The audience learns that the marriage took place “within a month” of the
former king’s death.
Horatio, Barnardo, and Marcellus arrive and tell Hamlet about the Ghost. Hamlet makes plans to join them that
night.

Act 1, scene 3 Synopsis:

In Polonius’s chambers, Laertes says good-bye to his sister, Ophelia, and tells her not to trust Hamlet’s promises of
love. Polonius joins them, sends Laertes off, then echoes Laertes’s warnings to Ophelia, finally ordering her not to
see Hamlet again.

Act 1, scene 4 Synopsis:

While Claudius drinks away the night, Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus are visited by the Ghost. It signals to Hamlet.
Hamlet’s friends try to stop his following the Ghost, but Hamlet will not be held back.

Act 1, scene 5 Synopsis:

The Ghost tells Hamlet a tale of horror. Saying that he is the spirit of Hamlet’s father, he demands that Hamlet
avenge King Hamlet’s murder at the hands of Claudius. Hamlet, horrified, vows to “remember” and swears his
friends to secrecy about what they have seen.

Act 2, scene 1 Synopsis:

Polonius sends his servant Reynaldo to Paris to question Laertes’s acquaintances. Ophelia enters, deeply disturbed
about a visit she has just had from an apparently mad Hamlet. Polonius decides that Hamlet has been made insane
by Ophelia’s refusing to see him. Polonius rushes off to tell the king.

Act 2, scene 2 Synopsis:

Claudius and Gertrude set Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two boyhood friends of Hamlet, to spy on him.

When Hamlet himself enters, he is confronted first by Polonius and then by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, whom
he quickly identifies as Claudius’s spies. As they talk, a company of touring actors enters. Hamlet persuades one of
them to deliver a speech, and recognizes, to his shame, that he has shown less intensity in avenging his father’s
murder than the actor has done in performance. Hamlet hopes that when the players stage The Murder of Gonzago
for the court, he can determine whether Claudius is guilty of King Hamlet’s death.

Act 3, scene 1 Synopsis:

After Rosencrantz and Guildenstern report their failure to find the cause of Hamlet’s madness, Polonius places
Ophelia where he and Claudius may secretly observe a meeting between her and Hamlet. Hamlet is at first
courteous to Ophelia, but suddenly he turns on her: he denies having loved her, asks where her father is, attacks
womankind, and tells her she should enter a nunnery. After Hamlet exits, Claudius decides that Hamlet’s erratic
behavior is not caused by love and announces a plan to send Hamlet on an embassy to England. Polonius persuades
Claudius to take no action until Gertrude talks with Hamlet after the play, which is scheduled for that evening.

Act 3, scene 2 Synopsis:

Hamlet gives direction to the actors and asks Horatio to help him observe Claudius’s reaction to the play. When the
court arrive, Hamlet makes bawdy and bitter comments to Ophelia. The traveling actors perform, in dumb show
and then with dialogue, a story that includes many elements of Claudius’s alleged seduction of Gertrude and murder
of King Hamlet. At the moment that the Player King is murdered in his garden by his nephew, Claudius stops the
play and rushes out. Hamlet is exuberant that the Ghost’s word has been proved true. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
return to tell Hamlet that Claudius is furious and that Gertrude wishes to see Hamlet at once in her sitting room.
Hamlet promises himself that he will not harm her, though he will “speak daggers.”

Act 3, scene 3 Synopsis:

Claudius orders Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to take Hamlet to England. Polonius tells Claudius of his plans to spy
on Hamlet’s conversation with Gertrude. Left alone, Claudius reveals his remorse for killing his brother, and he tries
to pray. Hamlet comes upon him kneeling and draws his sword, but then stops to think that if he kills Claudius at
prayer, Claudius will go to heaven. Hamlet decides to kill Claudius when the king is committing a sin so that Claudius
will instead go to hell. After Hamlet leaves, Claudius rises, saying that he has been unable to pray.

Act 3, scene 4 Synopsis:

In Gertrude’s room, Polonius hides behind a tapestry. Hamlet’s entrance so alarms Gertrude that she cries out for
help. Polonius echoes her cry, and Hamlet, thinking Polonius to be Claudius, stabs him to death. Hamlet then verbally
attacks his mother for marrying Claudius. In the middle of Hamlet’s attack, the Ghost returns to remind Hamlet that
his real purpose is to avenge his father’s death. Gertrude cannot see the Ghost and pities Hamlet’s apparent
madness. After the Ghost exits, Hamlet urges Gertrude to abandon Claudius’s bed. He then tells her about Claudius’s
plan to send him to England and reveals his suspicions that the journey is a plot against him, which he resolves to
counter violently. He exits dragging out Polonius’s body.

Act 4, scene 1 Synopsis:

Gertrude reports Polonius’s death to Claudius, who sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to find Hamlet and recover
the body.

Act 4, scene 2 Synopsis:

Hamlet refuses to tell Rosencrantz and Guildenstern where he has put Polonius’s body.

Act 4, scene 3 Synopsis:

Hamlet is brought to Claudius, who tells him that he is to leave immediately for England. Alone, Claudius reveals
that he is sending Hamlet to his death.

Act 4, scene 4 Synopsis:

Fortinbras and his army cross Hamlet’s path on their way to Poland. Hamlet finds in Fortinbras’s vigorous activity a
model for himself in avenging his father’s murder; Hamlet resolves upon bloody action.

Act 4, scene 5 Synopsis:

Reports reach Gertrude that Ophelia is mad. Ophelia enters singing about death and betrayal. After Ophelia has
gone, Claudius agonizes over her madness and over the stir created by the return of an angry Laertes. When Laertes
breaks in on Claudius and Gertrude, Claudius asserts his innocence with regard to Polonius’s death. The
reappearance of the mad Ophelia is devastating to Laertes.

Act 4, scene 6 Synopsis:

Horatio is given a letter from Hamlet telling of the prince’s boarding of a pirate ship and his subsequent return to
Denmark.

Act 4, scene 7 Synopsis:

Claudius gets a letter from Hamlet announcing the prince’s return. Claudius enlists Laertes’s willing help in devising
another plot against Hamlet’s life. Laertes agrees to kill Hamlet with a poisoned rapier in a fencing match. If he fails,
Claudius will give Hamlet a poisoned cup of wine. Gertrude interrupts their plotting to announce that Ophelia has
drowned.

Act 5, scene 1 Synopsis:

Hamlet, returned from his journey, comes upon a gravedigger singing as he digs. Hamlet tries to find out who the
grave is for and reflects on the skulls that are being dug up. A funeral procession approaches. Hamlet soon realizes
that the corpse is Ophelia’s. When Laertes in his grief leaps into her grave and curses Hamlet as the cause of
Ophelia’s death, Hamlet comes forward. He and Laertes struggle, with Hamlet protesting his own love and grief for
Ophelia.
Act 5, scene 2 Synopsis:
In the hall of the castle, Hamlet tells Horatio how he discovered the king’s plot against him and how he turned the
tables on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Osric enters to ask, on Claudius’s behalf, that Hamlet fence with Laertes.
Hamlet agrees to the contest, despite his misgivings.
Hamlet is winning the match when Gertrude drinks from the poisoned cup that Claudius has prepared for Hamlet.
Laertes then wounds Hamlet with the poisoned rapier. In the scuffle that follows, Hamlet forces an exchange of
rapiers, and Hamlet wounds Laertes. As Gertrude dies, Laertes, himself dying, discloses his and Claudius’s plot
against Hamlet. Hamlet kills Claudius. Before Hamlet dies, he asks Horatio to tell the full story that has led to these
deaths and gives Fortinbras his support for the kingship. After Hamlet’s death, Fortinbras arrives, claims the crown,
and orders a military funeral for Hamlet.

Full Title
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
Type of work
Play
Genre
Tragedy, revenge tragedy
Language
English
Time and place written
London, England, early seventeenth century (probably 1600–1602)
Date of first publication
1603, in a pirated quarto edition titled The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet; 1604 in a superior quarto edition
In-depth Facts:
Protagonist
Hamlet
Major Conflict
Hamlet feels a responsibility to avenge his father’s murder by his uncle Claudius, but Claudius is now the king and
thus well protected. Moreover, Hamlet struggles with his doubts about whether he can trust the ghost and whether
killing Claudius is the appropriate thing to do.
Rising Action
The ghost appears to Hamlet and tells Hamlet to revenge his murder; Hamlet feigns madness to his intentions;
Hamlet stages the mousetrap play; Hamlet passes up the opportunity to kill Claudius while he is praying.
Climax
When Hamlet stabs Polonius through the arras in Act III, scene iv, he commits himself to overtly violent action and
brings himself into unavoidable conflict with the king. Another possible climax comes at the end of Act IV, scene iv,
when Hamlet resolves to commit himself fully to violent revenge.
Falling Action
Hamlet is sent to England to be killed; Hamlet returns to Denmark and confronts Laertes at Ophelia’s funeral; the
fencing match; the deaths of the royal family
Setting (Time)
The late medieval period, though the play’s chronological setting is notoriously imprecise
Settings (Place)
Denmark
Foreshadowing
The ghost, which is taken to foreshadow an ominous future for Denmark
Tone
Dark, ironic, melancholy, passionate, contemplative, desperate, violent
Themes
The impossibility of certainty; the complexity of action; the mystery of death; the nation as a diseased body
Motifs
Incest and incestuous desire; ears and hearing; death and suicide; darkness and the supernatural; misogyny
Symbols
The ghost (the spiritual consequences of death); Yorick’s skull (the physical consequences of death)
Summary: On a dark winter night, a ghost walks the ramparts of Elsinore Castle in Denmark. Discovered first by a
pair of watchmen, then by the scholar Horatio, the ghost resembles the recently deceased King Hamlet, whose
brother Claudius has inherited the throne and married the king’s widow, Queen Gertrude. When Horatio and the
watchmen bring Prince Hamlet, the son of Gertrude and the dead king, to see the ghost, it speaks to him, declaring
ominously that it is indeed his father’s spirit, and that he was murdered by none other than Claudius. Ordering
Hamlet to seek revenge on the man who usurped his throne and married his wife, the ghost disappears with the
dawn.

Prince Hamlet devotes himself to avenging his father’s death, but, because he is contemplative and thoughtful by
nature, he delays, entering into a deep melancholy and even apparent madness. Claudius and Gertrude worry about
the prince’s erratic behavior and attempt to discover its cause. They employ a pair of Hamlet’s friends, Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern, to watch him. When Polonius, the pompous Lord Chamberlain, suggests that Hamlet may be mad
with love for his daughter, Ophelia, Claudius agrees to spy on Hamlet in conversation with the girl. But though
Hamlet certainly seems mad, he does not seem to love Ophelia: he orders her to enter a nunnery and declares that
he wishes to ban marriages.

A group of traveling actors comes to Elsinore, and Hamlet seizes upon an idea to test his uncle’s guilt. He will have
the players perform a scene closely resembling the sequence by which Hamlet imagines his uncle to have murdered
his father, so that if Claudius is guilty, he will surely react. When the moment of the murder arrives in the theater,
Claudius leaps up and leaves the room. Hamlet and Horatio agree that this proves his guilt. Hamlet goes to kill
Claudius but finds him praying. Since he believes that killing Claudius while in prayer would send Claudius’s soul to
heaven, Hamlet considers that it would be an inadequate revenge and decides to wait. Claudius, now frightened of
Hamlet’s madness and fearing for his own safety, orders that Hamlet be sent to England at once.

Hamlet goes to confront his mother, in whose bedchamber Polonius has hidden behind a tapestry. Hearing a noise
from behind the tapestry, Hamlet believes the king is hiding there. He draws his sword and stabs through the fabric,
killing Polonius. For this crime, he is immediately dispatched to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
However, Claudius’s plan for Hamlet includes more than banishment, as he has given Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
sealed orders for the King of England demanding that Hamlet be put to death.

In the aftermath of her father’s death, Ophelia goes mad with grief and drowns in the river. Polonius’s son, Laertes,
who has been staying in France, returns to Denmark in a rage. Claudius convinces him that Hamlet is to blame for
his father’s and sister’s deaths. When Horatio and the king receive letters from Hamlet indicating that the prince
has returned to Denmark after pirates attacked his ship en route to England, Claudius concocts a plan to use Laertes’
desire for revenge to secure Hamlet’s death. Laertes will fence with Hamlet in innocent sport, but Claudius will
poison Laertes’ blade so that if he draws blood, Hamlet will die. As a backup plan, the king decides to poison a
goblet, which he will give Hamlet to drink should Hamlet score the first or second hits of the match. Hamlet returns
to the vicinity of Elsinore just as Ophelia’s funeral is taking place. Stricken with grief, he attacks Laertes and declares
that he had in fact always loved Ophelia. Back at the castle, he tells Horatio that he believes one must be prepared
to die, since death can come at any moment. A foolish courtier named Osric arrives on Claudius’s orders to arrange
the fencing match between Hamlet and Laertes.

The sword-fighting begins. Hamlet scores the first hit, but declines to drink from the king’s proffered goblet. Instead,
Gertrude takes a drink from it and is swiftly killed by the poison. Laertes succeeds in wounding Hamlet, though
Hamlet does not die of the poison immediately. First, Laertes is cut by his own sword’s blade, and, after revealing
to Hamlet that Claudius is responsible for the queen’s death, he dies from the blade’s poison. Hamlet then stabs
Claudius through with the poisoned sword and forces him to drink down the rest of the poisoned wine. Claudius
dies, and Hamlet dies immediately after achieving his revenge.

At this moment, a Norwegian prince named Fortinbras, who has led an army to Denmark and attacked Poland earlier
in the play, enters with ambassadors from England, who report that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.
Fortinbras is stunned by the gruesome sight of the entire royal family lying sprawled on the floor dead. He moves
to take power of the kingdom. Horatio, fulfilling Hamlet’s last request, tells him Hamlet’s tragic story. Fortinbras
orders that Hamlet be carried away in a manner befitting a fallen soldier.
Analysis: In telling the story of a fatally indecisive character’s inability to choose the proper course to avenge his
father’s death, Hamlet explores questions of fate versus free will, whether it is better to act decisively or let nature
take its course, and ultimately if anything we do in our time on earth makes any difference. Once he learns his uncle
has killed his father, Hamlet feels duty-bound to take decisive action, but he has so many doubts about his situation
and even about his own feelings that he cannot decide what action to take. The conflict that drives the plot of
Hamlet is almost entirely internal: Hamlet wrestles with his own doubt and uncertainty in search of something he
believes strongly enough to act on. The play’s events are side-effects of this internal struggle. Hamlet’s attempts to
gather more evidence of Claudius’s guilt alert Claudius to Hamlet’s suspicions, and as Hamlet’s internal struggle
deepens, he begins to act impulsively out of frustration, eventually murdering Polonius by mistake. The conflict of
Hamlet is never resolved: Hamlet cannot finally decide what to believe or what action to take. This lack of resolution
makes the ending of Hamlet especially horrifying: nearly all the characters are dead, but nothing has been solved.

The play’s exposition shows us that Hamlet is in the midst of three crises: his nation is under attack, his family is
falling apart, and he feels deeply unhappy. The Ghost of the old king of Denmark appears on the castle battlements,
and the soldiers who see it believe it must be a bad omen for the kingdom. They discuss the preparations being
made against the threat from the Norwegian prince, Fortinbras. The next scene deepens our sense that Denmark is
in political crisis, as Claudius prepares a diplomatic strategy to divert the threat from Fortinbras. We also learn that
as far as Hamlet is concerned, his family is in crisis: his father is dead and his mother has married someone Hamlet
disapproves of. Hamlet is also experiencing an internal crisis. Gertrude and Claudius are worried about his mood,
and in his first soliloquy we discover that he feels suicidal: “O that this too, too sullied flesh would melt” (I.ii.).

The three crises of the play’s opening—in the kingdom, in Hamlet’s family, and in Hamlet’s mind—lay the
groundwork for the play’s inciting incident: the Ghost’s demand that Hamlet avenge his father’s death. Hamlet
accepts at once that it is his duty to take revenge, and the audience can also see that Hamlet’s revenge would go
some way to resolving the play’s three crises. By killing Claudius, Hamlet could in one stroke remove a weak and
immoral king, extract his mother from what he sees as a bad marriage, and make himself king of Denmark.
Throughout the inciting incident, however, there are hints that Hamlet’s revenge will be derailed by an internal
struggle. The Ghost warns him: “Taint not thy mind nor let thy soul contrive/Against thy mother aught” (I.v.). When
Horatio and Marcellus catch up to Hamlet after the Ghost’s departure, Hamlet is already talking in such a deranged
way that Horatio describes it as “wild and whirling” (I.v.), and Hamlet tells them that he may fake an “antic
disposition” (I.v.). The audience understands that the coming conflict will not be between Hamlet and Claudius but
between Hamlet and his own mind.

For the whole of the second act—the play’s rising action—Hamlet delays his revenge by pretending to be mad. We
learn from Ophelia that Hamlet is behaving as if he is mad with love for her. We see him make fun of Polonius by
talking nonsense which contains half-hidden jokes at Polonius’s expense. Hamlet tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
that he has “lost all [his] mirth” (II.ii.). Only at the end of Act 2 do we learn the reason for Hamlet’s delaying tactics:
he cannot work out his true feelings about his duty to take revenge. First, he tells us, he doesn’t feel as angry and
vengeful as he thinks he should: “I[…]Peak like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause” (II.ii.). Second, he’s worried
that the Ghost wasn’t really a ghost but a devil trying to trick him. He decides he needs more evidence of Claudius’s
crime: “I’ll have grounds/More relative than this” (II.ii.).

As the rising action builds toward a climax, Hamlet’s internal struggle deepens until he starts to show signs of really
going mad. At the same time Claudius becomes suspicious of Hamlet, which creates an external pressure on Hamlet
to act. Hamlet begins Act Three debating whether or not to kill himself: “To be or not to be—that is the question”
(III.i.), and moments later he hurls misogynistic abuse at Ophelia. He is particularly upset about women’s role in
marriage and childbirth—“Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?” (III.i.)—which reminds the audience of
Hamlet’s earlier disgust with his own mother and her second marriage. The troubling development of Hamlet’s
misogynistic feelings makes us wonder how much Hamlet’s desire to kill Claudius is fuelled by the need to avenge
his father’s death, and how much his desire fuelled by Hamlet’s resentment of Claudius for taking his mother away
from him. Claudius, who is eavesdropping on Hamlet’s tirade, becomes suspicious that Hamlet’s madness presents
“some danger” (III.i.) and decides to have Hamlet sent away: Hamlet is running out of time to take his revenge.
The play’s climax arrives when Hamlet stages a play to “catch the conscience of the king” (II.ii.) and get conclusive
evidence of Claudius’s guilt. By now, however, Hamlet seems to have truly gone mad. His own behavior at the play
is so provocative that when Claudius does respond badly to the play it’s unclear whether he feels guilty about his
crime or angry with Hamlet. As Claudius tries to pray, Hamlet has yet another chance to take his revenge, and we
learn that Hamlet’s apparent madness has not ended his internal struggle over what to do: he decides not to kill
Claudius for now, this time because of the risk that Claudius will go to heaven if he dies while praying. Hamlet
accuses Gertrude of being involved in his father’s death, but he’s acting so erratically that Gertrude thinks her son
is simply “mad […] as the sea and wind/When they each contend which is the mightier” (III.iv). Again, the audience
cannot know whether Gertrude says these lines as a cover for her own guilt, or because she genuinely has no idea
what Hamlet is talking about, and thinks her son is losing his mind. Acting impulsively or madly, Hamlet mistakes
Polonius for Claudius and kills him.

The play’s falling action deals with the consequences of Polonius’s death. Hamlet is sent away, Ophelia goes mad
and Laertes returns from France to avenge his father’s death. When Hamlet comes back to Elsinore, he no longer
seems to be concerned with revenge, which he hardly mentions after this point in the play. His internal struggle is
not over, however. Now Hamlet contemplates death, but he is unable to come to any conclusion about the meaning
or purpose of death, or to resign himself to his own death. He is, however, less squeamish about killing innocent
people, and reports to Horatio how he signed the death warrants of Rosencranz and Guildenstern to save his own
life. Claudius and Laertes plot to kill Hamlet, but the plot goes awry. Gertrude is poisoned by mistake, Laertes and
Hamlet are both poisoned, and as he dies Hamlet finally murders Claudius. Taking his revenge does not end Hamlet’s
internal struggle. He still has lots to say: “If I had time […] O I could tell you— / But let it be” (V.ii.) and he asks
Horatio to tell his story when he is dead. In the final moments of the play the new king, Fortinbras, agrees with this
request: “Let us haste to hear it” (V.ii.). Hamlet’s life is over, but the struggle to decide the truth about Hamlet and
his life is not.