User:DionysosProteus/Hamlet

Synopsis

On a dark winter night, the ghost of the recently deceased king of Denmark, Old Hamlet, appears to Bernardo and Marcellus, watchmen of Elsinore Castle in Denmark, and to Horatio, a scholar.

Old Hamlet's brother Claudius has inherited the throne and taken the former king’s wife Gertrude, as his own. Prince Hamlet, son of the old king, is greatly grieved by Claudius' usurpation of the throne (young Hamlet himself being the most likely heir) and by his mother's hasty remarriage to her departed husband’s brother. Claudius and Gertrude plead with Hamlet to cease his formal mourning for his father, which he refuses, and to remain in Denmark rather that returning to university in Wittenburg, to which he reluctantly agrees.

Horatio and the watchmen tell the prince what they have seen, informing him that the ghost seemed to have an important message to deliver, but had vanished with the cock-crow, before telling it. Hamlet resolves to join the watchmen that night. The apparition appears and speaks to Hamlet, revealing that Old Hamlet was poisoned by Claudius, and commanding Hamlet to avenge his father’s death. Hamlet swears his companions to secrecy, and resolves to feign madness.

Hamlet and Ophelia by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

On the orders of Claudius and Gertrude, a pair of Hamlet’s schoolfriends named Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are appointed to monitor him and discover the cause of his apparent insanity. Polonius, the councillor to the king, suspects that the origin of Hamlet’s madness lies with his love for Polonius’ daughter, Ophelia. However, in a secretly overseen meeting between the two suspected lovers, there is no evidence that Hamlet loves Ophelia; to the contrary, he orders her away to a nunnery.

Hamlet contrives a plan to uncover Claudius’s guilt by staging a play reenacting the murder. Claudius interrupts the play midway through and leaves the room. Horatio confirms the king’s reaction and Hamlet goes to avenge his father. He is poised to kill when he finds Claudius in prayer but concludes that killing him now would result in his soul’s passage to heaven – an inappropriate fate for one so evil. However, when he leaves, Claudius reveals that he had not been praying in a very pious manner.

Hamlet goes to confront and reprimand his mother. He hears a noise behind the curtain and believes it is Claudius, eavesdropping. He blindly stabs the body behind the curtain, not realizing it is in fact Polonius. Hamlet then runs around the castle, away from the guards and poor Ophelia. Fearing for his own safety, Claudius deports Hamlet to England along with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who, unbeknownst to Hamlet, carry a request for the arrangement of his death.

Ophelia, afflicted by grief, goes mad and drowns in a river (perhaps by her own doing). Laertes, her brother and Polonius’s son, returns from his visit to France enraged. Claudius convinces Laertes that Hamlet is to blame for the death of Polonius. Hamlet sends word that he has returned to Denmark after his ship was attacked by pirates on the way to England. Claudius, realizing in Laertes an opportunity to get rid of Hamlet, wagers that Hamlet can best Laertes in a fencing match. The fight is a setup; Laertes’ blade is poisoned, as is the wine in a goblet from which Hamlet is to drink.

During the bout, Gertrude drinks from the poisoned goblet and dies. Laertes succeeds in cutting Hamlet, then is cut by his own blade. With his dying breath, he reveals the king’s plot to kill Hamlet. Hamlet manages to kill Claudius before he too succumbs to the fatal poison. Fortinbras, a Norwegian prince with ambitions of conquest, leads his army to Denmark and comes upon the scene. Horatio recounts the tale and Fortinbras orders Hamlet’s body to be carried away honorably.