Hamlet Summary

Hamlet

Author: William Shakespeare

Setting: The royal family’s castle, Elsinore, in Denmark.

Primary Characters: Hamlet, Claudius, Queen Gertrude, Laertes, Ophelia, Polonius

PLOT

• ·      King Hamlet of Denmark has been killed, and his wife (Gertrude) has just married Claudius, the former King’s brother, and now the King of Denmark.
• ·      Two watchmen and Horatio spot a ghost of the recently deceased King Hamlet.
• ·      Horatio tells Prince Hamlet of it, and Hamlet sees the ghost the next night.
• ·      The Ghost tells Hamlet that Claudius murdered the former King and orders that Hamlet seek revenge for his father’s death.
• ·      Hamlet slips into a state of apparent insanity, pondering how he will kill Claudius and avenge his father’s death.
• ·      Claudius and Gertrude invite old friends of Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to visit Elsinore in the hopes that they will figure out what’s wrong with the Prince.
• ·      Polonius and Claudius spy on Hamlet and Ophelia, in an attempt to prove that he’s madly in love with her (and that is the cause of his behavior). The plan fails, and Hamlet shouts at Ophelia to go to a nunnery.
• ·      A band of actors comes to Elsinore, and Hamlet has them play a scene that closely resembles the supposed murder of his father. Claudius leaves the room when he sees the scene, and Hamlet and Horatio agree that this proves his guilt.
• ·      Hamlet attempts to murder Claudius while Claudius is praying in the chapel, but he decides this would be too fortunate for Claudius, who would die sin-free, as opposed to his father who was unable to clear his sins before death.
• ·      Hamlet fights with Gertrude in her bedroom, where Polonius is hiding behind a curtain. Upon hearing Polonius, Hamlet stabs through the curtain with his sword and kills the man.
• ·      For his murdering Polonius, Claudius sends Hamlet to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. He includes a sealed letter to the King of England, ordering that Hamlet be put to death.
• ·      Ophelia drowns herself in a river after finding out about her father’s murder.
• ·      Laertes returns from France and Claudius convinces him that Hamlet is the cause of the death of his sister and father.
• ·      Laertes decides to fight Hamlet in a fencing match, and Claudius poisons the tip of Laertes’ sword in order to kill Hamlet. Should this fail, he also poisoned the drink in a cup that he will offer to Hamlet, should the Prince get the first or second hits.
• ·      Hamlet gets the first hit, but refuses to drink from the cup offered by Claudius.
• ·      Gertrude drinks from the poisoned cup, and promptly dies.
• ·      Laertes hits Hamlet, but the poison doesn’t immediately kill him.
• ·      The poisoned sword cuts Laertes, who reveals that Claudius is responsible for Gertrude’s death before dying.
• ·      Hamlet stabs Claudius with the poisoned sword and forces him to drink the rest of the poison from the cup.
• ·      Fortinbras, a Norwegian prince, enters and announces that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. He then tries to take power of the Danish kingdom.
• ·      Horatio tells Fortinbras Hamlet’s story, and Fortinbras demands Hamlet to be treated as a fallen soldier would.

QUOTES

“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” – Marcellus

            This is an excellent quote from Hamlet, as it’s simple enough to remember and incredibly important in the play. It links the Danish King to the state of Denmark as a whole, implying that problems in the royal family affect the health of the entire nation.

“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?”

–Hamlet

            This quote, while slightly longer than the first, is more monumental and famous in the English language. Hamlet weighs the logical arguments for suicide, which ties into a larger theme for the play involving the moral righteousness of killing oneself.

THEME

            With Hamlet, Shakespeare shows his audience the complexity and inherent difficulty in making decisions, and he implies that human nature is innately impulsive and largely unaided by excessive deliberation.

           

• ·      Hamlet’s excessive deliberation about killing Claudius is the greatest evidence for this message in the play.
• ·      Other characters’ decisions, such as Laertes’ fighting with Hamlet at the end and Hamlet’s stabbing of Polonius, further support Shakespeare’s message.