Love * Power * Revenge
Three Shakespeare Themes
Hamlet The Story
Act I: Denmark: Elsinore Castle
at midnight. A young nobleman
named Horatio and three others
encounter the GHOST of the
old King Hamlet. Horatio tries
in vain to speak to it and decides
to tell Prince Hamlet, the dead
King’s son, what he has seen.
In the court, KING CLAUDIUSthe brother of the dead King and new
husband of his widow, QUEEN
GERTRUDE-tries to cheer
PRINCE HAMLET, who still
mourns his father. Left alone,
Hamlet pours out his anguish at the
too-hasty marriage of his mother to
his uncle. Horatio breaks in with the
news of the Ghost, and Hamlet
resolves to confront the spirit the
next night.
OPHELIA, daughter of the Lord
Chamberlain, POLONIUS, says
goodbye to her brother,
LAERTRES, who is bound for
school in Paris. Polonius gives
Laertes advice and lectures Ophelia
on his chief worry, the growing
affection between her and Hamlet.
That night, Hamlet encounters the
Ghost: it tells him and two
companions that the King was
murdered by Claudius. Hamlet vows
vengeance and swears his
companions to secrecy.
Act II: Polonius is dispatching a spy
to report on Laertes’ behavior in
Paris when Ophelia informs him that
Hamlet has apparently gone mad.
Polonius attributes Hamlet’s
condition to his unrequited love for
Ophelia.
King Claudius asks two of
Hamlet’s school friends,
ROSENCRANTZ AND
GUILDENSTERN, to find out if
Hamlet has apparently gone mad.
Polonius reads the King a letter from
Hamlet to Ophelia and proposes that
he and Claudius eavesdrop at a
meeting between Ophelia and
Hamlet.
Hamlet, who is only pretending to
be mad, forces Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern to admit that the King
has sent them to watch him. They
also tell him that a troupe of players
has come to the castle. Hamlet
secretly asks the troupe’s leader to
have the actors perform a play with a
plot resembling the murder of his
father. If Claudius reacts guiltily,
Hamlet intends to kill him.
Act III: Getting no information on
Hamlet from Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern. Claudius joins
Polonius to eavesdrop on Hamlet
and Ophelia. They hear Hamlet
dismiss Ophelia brutally.
Hamlet arranges his
scenario with the troupe of
players and confides his
purpose to Horatio, the
only person who knows he
is pretending madness.
The court assembles for
the play, and the actors
present a murder very
much like King Hamlet’s.
Claudius flees the room.
Later, on the way to his
mother’s chambers,
Hamlet finds Claudius in
prayer. He decides not to
kill the King at this
moment because he fears
Claudius’ soul would go to
heaven. Ironically,
however the guilty King
has been unable to pray.
In his mother’s chambers, Hamlet
confronts the Queen with the
magnitude of what he sees as her
crime-her marriage to his uncle so
soon after the death of her first
husband. Polonius, hiding behind a
curtain, makes a sound, and Hamlet,
thinking Polonius is the King, stabs
him through the curtain and kills
him. The ghost appears to Hamlet
once more, although it is invisible to
the Queen. Hamlet, making his
mother vow to cease sharing
Claudius’s bed, drags Polonius’
corpse away.
Act IV: The King sends Hamlet to
England, ostensibly for Hamlet’s
safety; in fact, he has given
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern sealed
letters asking the English King to put
Hamlet to death.
Apparently unbalanced by the
death of her father, Polonius, at
Hamlet’s hand, Ophelia loses her
reason. Her brother, Laertes, arriving
from France, swears to get even with
Hamlet for causing his father’s death
and his sister’s madness. Meanwhile,
two sailors give Horatio a letter
disclosing that Hamlet has returned
to Denmark. Using Laertes’ hatred
of Hamlet as a weapon, Claudius
proposes that he kill Hamlet in a
fencing match. Laertes agrees and
suggests using a secretly poisoned
sword. As they seal their plot, the
Queen brings news that Ophelia has
drowned.
Act V: Hamlet-newly arrived in
Denmark-and Horatio engage a
grave digger in conversation. The
grave digger unearths the skull of
Yorick, once the court jester and a
childhood companion or Prince
Hamlet, and the discovery prompts
Hamlet to reflect on mortality. He
and Horatio hid as a funeral
procession approaches, then watch
as the grief-stricken Laertes leaps
into the grave. Hamlet, realizing that
the funeral is Ophelia’s, jumps in
after him, and Laertes attacks him in
a frenzy.
Later, Hamlet is telling Horatio
how he escaped Claudius’ plot to kill
him when a foppish courtier named
OSRIC interrupts them to invite
Hamlet to participate in a fencing
match with Laertes. Hamlet scores
two points against Laertes before
being wounded by the poisoned
sword. In a scuffle that follows, the
swords are exchanged and Laertes
himself receives a mortal wound.
Queen Gertrude, toasting Hamlet for
his skill, accidentally drinks from a
cup of wine into which Claudius has
dropped poison intended for Hamlet.
As Gertrude and Laertes die,
Hamlet, with his last reserve of
strength kills Claudius. Dying,
Hamlet bids Horatio to tell his story
to the world and names a young
Norwegian general, FORTINBRAS,
as Denmark’s king. Fortinbras orders
that Hamlet be given a soldier’s
funeral.