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.
Revenge,
ambition, lust and conspiracy return to the heads of those that conjured them
in Hamlet, completely annihilating two families--the innocent with the guilty
