Hamlet

This is the play that taught literature how to think on the page: a hero who watches himself, doubts, and delays until delay kills nearly everyone he loves. Read it for the soliloquies that turned grief into language, the ghost story that doubles as a murder mystery, and the ending where revenge arrives only as everyone else stops needing it. Ideal for anyone who wants the source of modern drama.

1. 1

   Act 1

   Midnight on the Battlements

   It is midnight at Elsinore Castle, and the sentinels are jumpy. Barnardo and Francisco change guard; Barnardo, Marcellus, and Horatio discuss the Ghost that has appeared twice before. Then it comes: the dead king himself, in full armor. Horatio tries to speak to it, but it vanishes without answering. The next day, in the council chamber, Claudius handles business with unsettling smoothness. He justifies his hasty marriage to his brother's widow Gertrude, opens with 'Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death / The memory be green,' calls Hamlet 'my cousin Hamlet, and my son,' dispatches ambassadors (Cornelius and Voltemand) to Norway to stop Fortinbras's threatened attack, and grants Laertes permission to return to France. Claudius denies Prince Hamlet's request to return to university in Wittenberg, and Gertrude urges Hamlet to stop his excessive mourning of his father. Hamlet, dressed in black, delivers his first soliloquy: 'O, that this too too solid flesh would melt / Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!' His first line, spoken in an aside about Claudius, is: 'A little more than kin, and less than kind.' Horatio tells Hamlet that he has seen the Ghost of his father; Hamlet resolves to watch on the battlements that night, saying, 'My father's spirit in arms! all is not well; / I doubt some foul play.' In Polonius's house, Laertes, leaving for France, warns his sister Ophelia against Hamlet's attentions, saying Hamlet's choice of wife is bound to the state of Denmark. Polonius gives Laertes a series of precepts before his departure, including 'Neither a borrower nor a lender be' and 'This above all: to thine own self be true.' Polonius then commands Ophelia to avoid Hamlet, which she promises to do. A flourish of trumpets and cannon fire sounds from the castle, where Claudius is carousing; Hamlet criticizes the custom as making Danes seem drunkards to other nations. The Ghost appears and beckons Hamlet to follow it alone, despite the pleas of Horatio and Marcellus, who fear it may lure him to a cliff or drive him mad; Hamlet says 'Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.'

2. 2

   Act 2

   The Ghost's Command

   The Ghost reveals to Hamlet that he is his father's spirit, doomed to walk the night until his sins are purged. He declares he was murdered by his own brother Claudius, who poured a vial of hebenon poison into his ear while he slept in his orchard. He commands Hamlet to revenge his 'foul and most unnatural murder' but to leave his mother Gertrude to heaven and her own conscience ('Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive / Against thy mother aught'). The Ghost's parting words are 'Adieu, adieu, adieu! Remember me.' Hamlet vows to wipe away all else from the 'table' of his memory and makes Horatio and Marcellus swear an oath of secrecy on his sword hilt, resolving to put on an 'antic disposition' (feigned madness). The performance begins immediately. Polonius sends his servant Reynaldo to Paris to spy on Laertes. Ophelia enters, distraught, describing how Hamlet came to her closet with his doublet all unbraced and no hat on his head, pale and trembling, and stared at her without speaking. Polonius concludes Hamlet is mad for her love and goes to tell the King. Claudius and Gertrude welcome Hamlet's school friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to Elsinore and ask them to discover the cause of Hamlet's transformation; they agree, saying 'we both obey, / And give our hearts up to the service.' Polonius, the Lord Chamberlain, announces to Claudius and Gertrude that he believes Hamlet's madness stems from his love for Ophelia, reading aloud a love letter from Hamlet to Ophelia that begins 'Doubt thou the stars are fire; / Doubt that the sun doth move; / Doubt truth to be a liar; / But never doubt I love.' Hamlet enters reading a book and engages Polonius in mocking wordplay, calling him a 'fishmonger.' He greets Rosencrantz and Guildenstern warmly but quickly sees through their mission, telling them that 'I have of late—but wherefore I know not—lost all my mirth' and that Denmark is a prison; he also says 'What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty!' but calls the world 'a sterile promontory.' Hamlet welcomes the players and asks the First Player to recite the story of Pyrrhus's slaughter of Priam, weeping at the performance. Alone, Hamlet delivers the soliloquy 'O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!' berating himself for his inaction and contrasting himself with the player who wept for Hecuba: 'What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, / That he should weep for her?' He arranges for the players to perform 'The Murder of Gonzago' the next night, into which he will insert lines of his own, planning: 'The play's the thing / Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.'

3. 3

   Act 3

   The Mousetrap Springs

   Claudius and Polonius hide to observe Hamlet's encounter with Ophelia. Hamlet delivers the soliloquy: '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?' weighing whether to endure life's suffering or end it, and concluding that 'conscience does make cowards of us all' (the fear of death that prevents action). In the 'nunnery scene,' Hamlet tells Ophelia 'Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?' denies ever loving her, and rails against women's falseness. After he leaves, Ophelia laments 'O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!' Claudius, emerging from hiding, concludes that love is not the cause of Hamlet's madness and that he is dangerous, resolving to send him to England, saying 'Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go.' Before the play, Hamlet advises the players on natural acting, telling them not to mouth words or saw the air with their hands, but to 'hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature' and to 'suit the action to the word, the word to the action.' He praises Horatio as a man not passion's slave ('Give me that man / That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him / In my heart's core') and asks him to watch Claudius during the performance so they can compare notes. During 'The Murder of Gonzago'—which Hamlet calls 'The Mousetrap'—the player Lucianus pours poison into the sleeping Player King's ear. Claudius rises abruptly in agitation, calls for lights ('Give me some light. Away!'), and flees, stopping the play. Hamlet and Horatio take this as confirmation of the Ghost's story. Summoned to his mother's chamber, Hamlet resolves to be cruel, not unnatural: 'I will speak daggers to her, but use none.' In Gertrude's closet, he confronts his mother about her marriage, forcing her to look at pictures of his father and Claudius: 'Look here, upon this picture, and on this,' contrasting the two brothers ('See, what a grace was seated on this brow; / Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself'). Hearing a cry behind the arras, he stabs through the tapestry and kills Polonius, believing him to be the king. The Ghost reappears in Gertrude's closet, visible only to Hamlet, to whet his blunted purpose and to step between him and his mother ('step between her and her fighting soul'). Gertrude, who cannot see the Ghost, believes Hamlet is truly mad, and Hamlet drags off Polonius's corpse, saying 'I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room.' Claudius, alone, attempts to pray, confessing his crime: 'O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven; / It hath the primal eldest curse upon't, / A brother's murder.' He kneels but finds he cannot truly repent while still possessing his crown and queen, saying 'My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.' Hamlet enters behind him with drawn sword but spares him, reasoning that killing Claudius at prayer would send his soul to heaven rather than hell.

4. 4

   Act 4

   Poison and Providence

   Gertrude tells Claudius that Hamlet is 'Mad as the sea and wind' and has killed Polonius; Claudius says 'It had been so with us, had we been there' (that had he been behind the arras he would have died), and decides Hamlet must be shipped to England. Claudius, telling the court Hamlet is dangerous, sends him under guard to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern carrying sealed letters ordering his execution. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern demand the location of Polonius's body; Hamlet, hiding the body, answers with riddles, telling them he is 'not in the mood' to answer and calling them 'sponges' who soak up the king's favors, refusing to say where the corpse is. Hamlet says Polonius's body is at supper, 'Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him,' and tells Claudius 'Farewell, dear mother.' After the others leave, Claudius reveals in a soliloquy that his letters demand Hamlet's immediate death in England. On his way to the ship, Hamlet meets a captain of Fortinbras's army marching across Denmark to fight Poland over a worthless patch of ground. In his final soliloquy, 'How all occasions do inform against me,' he contrasts the captain's willingness to risk death for honor with his own delay in avenging a murdered father, resolving: 'O, from this time forth, / My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!' Denmark comes apart. Ophelia, driven mad by her father's death and Hamlet's rejection, enters the castle singing disjointed songs about death and betrayed love ('He is dead and gone, lady, / He is dead and gone') and distributing flowers with symbolic meanings: rosemary for remembrance ('There's rosemary, that's for remembrance'), pansies for thoughts, and (by report) rue, daisies, and violets ('I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died'). Claudius notes her madness springs from her father's death. A messenger reports that young Laertes has raised a mob that storms the palace crying 'Laertes shall be king'; Laertes bursts in, armed, demanding his father's body and vowing revenge on his father's killer, threatening Claudius's crown, and is stunned to find Ophelia mad. Claudius, having received letters from Hamlet (who was attacked by pirates and returned to Denmark), plots with Laertes, telling him 'Revenge should have no bounds': they will stage a fencing match in which Laertes will use an unbated, poisoned rapier, and Claudius will also prepare a poisoned cup of wine as a backup. Gertrude enters with news of Ophelia's death ('Your sister's drown'd, Laertes'): she fell from a willow tree into a brook while hanging flower garlands, and drowned, singing snatches of old songs 'as one incapable of her own distress,' her garments heavy with their drink pulling her to muddy death. In the churchyard, two gravediggers (clowns) dig Ophelia's grave, joking about her burial in Christian ground despite her suspected suicide. Hamlet and Horatio arrive; Hamlet picks up the skull of Yorick, the former court jester he knew as a child, and says: 'Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.' At Ophelia's funeral, Laertes leaps into her grave and, in grief, asks to be buried with her; Hamlet, revealing himself, leaps in after him and declares his love for Ophelia was greater than 'forty thousand brothers' could match: 'I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers / Could not, with all their quantity of love, / Make up my sum.' The two grapple before being separated. In the fencing match before the court, Hamlet scores the first hit; Claudius offers him the poisoned cup, but Hamlet declines, and Gertrude drinks from it instead, dying and crying 'The drink, the drink! I am poison'd.' Laertes wounds Hamlet with the poisoned rapier; in the scuffle they exchange rapiers, and Hamlet wounds Laertes with the same poisoned blade. Dying, Laertes exposes the plot—'The foul practice / Hath turn'd itself on me'—saying 'The king, the king's to blame' and revealing the rapier is poisoned and Claudius is responsible. Hamlet stabs Claudius with the poisoned rapier and forces him to drink the poisoned wine, saying 'Follow my mother'; Claudius dies. Dying, Hamlet asks Horatio to live and 'report me and my cause aright / To the unsatisfied,' saying 'If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, / Absent thee from felicity awhile.' Horatio, attempting to drink the poisoned wine, is stopped by Hamlet. Hamlet's dying words are 'The rest is silence'; Horatio then says 'Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince, / And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!' Fortinbras arrives from Poland with his army, sees the carnage, and takes the throne of Denmark by Hamlet's dying 'voice': 'I do prophesy th' election lights / On Fortinbras: he has my dying voice.' Horatio vows to tell the story of the dead, and Fortinbras orders Hamlet borne 'like a soldier' with military honors: 'Let four captains / Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage,' saying 'For he was likely, had he been put on, / To have proved most royally.'

• HHamletPrince of Denmark, a grieving scholar in black who wants proof before revenge and time after he has it. His feigned madness becomes real cruelty, and his delay costs Ophelia, Polonius, Gertrude, and finally himself.
• CClaudiusThe brother who poured poison in a sleeping king's ear, then took crown and queen. He prays, plots, and schemes his way through the play until the poisoned rapier and cup he prepared end in his own mouth.
• GGertrudeThe queen who married her husband's killer within weeks, whether from weakness, desire, or ignorance. She drinks the poisoned cup meant for her son and dies naming the drink.
• OOpheliaPolonius's daughter, ordered to avoid Hamlet, then used as bait, then rejected cruelly. Her father's death and Hamlet's nunnery tirade break her; she drowns among the flowers she scattered.
• PPoloniusThe Lord Chamberlain, a windbag spy who sends Reynaldo after his own son and hides behind arrases. He dies stabbed through the tapestry, mistaken for a king.
• LLaertesPolonius's son, quick to raise a mob and quicker to accept a poisoned rapier. His need for revenge makes him Claudius's weapon, and the plot turns on him as he dies confessing it.
• HHoratioHamlet's school friend, the one man 'not passion's slave,' who sees the Ghost first and survives last. Hamlet's dying request: stay and tell the story right.
• TThe GhostThe armored dead king, doomed to walk the nights until his sins are purged. He brings the murder charge, the revenge command, and a second visit to whet his son's blunted purpose.
• FFortinbrasNorway's prince, marching an army across Denmark to fight Poland over a worthless patch of ground. He arrives too late to fight Hamlet and too early to miss the throne.
• RRosencrantz and GuildensternHamlet's school friends who agree to spy on him for the king. Hamlet rewrites their commission so they carry their own death warrant to England.

The Ghost in Armor

The dead king appears dressed for war, a walking accusation and a warning of what is coming. He is the play's engine—his story starts the revenge—and his second appearance, visible only to Hamlet, marks the moment the son's purpose has gone blunt and the court begins to believe the madness is real.

Yorick's Skull

The jester's skull turns death from abstraction into a face Hamlet kissed. It carries the play's leveling argument: wit, kisses, and paint all end in the same hole in the ground, and even Alexander returns to dust. It appears in the churchyard over Ophelia's grave, where grief and comedy dig the same hole.

The Poisoned Cup

Prepared as a backup murder weapon, the cup becomes the instrument that kills the queen when Hamlet declines it. It stands for plots that cannot be aimed: Claudius's backup plan destroys his wife, and the same poison he poured into a brother's ear comes back to his own lips.

Ophelia's Flowers

Rosemary for remembrance, pansies for thoughts, rue, daisies, and violets that withered when her father died. The flowers are Ophelia's last speech, a distributed accusation no one will take responsibility for receiving, and they foreshadow the garlands she hangs before falling into the brook.

The Play Within the Play

'The Murder of Gonzago' is a mirror aimed at a king: a fictional poisoning staged to make a real poisoner flinch. It proves theater can catch a conscience, and it marks the play's hinge—after Claudius rises and calls for lights, pretense is over and everyone moves toward the bloodbath.

The ending refuses the tidy revenge ending it has been promising. Hamlet gets his revenge, but only after the poisoned plot recoils, and his victory costs every major life on stage, including his own. His last act is not a kill but a delegation: he stops Horatio from drinking, asks him to 'report me and my cause aright,' and gives his 'dying voice' to Fortinbras. Read one way, this is providence—'There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow,' 'The readiness is all'—a man who has stopped forcing outcomes and lets the divinity that 'shapes our ends' finish the sentence. Read another, it is bleakly mechanical: revenge consumed everyone who touched it, and the throne simply changes hands to the one armed man who arrived late. What makes it land is Horatio's survival. The story does not end with the deaths; it ends with a witness ordered to tell it, which is what the play itself has been doing for five acts.

1. 1.Hamlet's delay: is his sparing of the praying Claudius a principled moral objection, a rationalization for cowardice, or the play's way of showing conscience as 'cowards' maker in action?

Anyone who wants the wellspring of modern drama: the soliloquies, the ghost story, the play within the play that later writers keep borrowing. Perfect for readers who like their heroes brilliant and their endings expensive.

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