3. PLOT
ACT I
• A g h o s t r e s e m b l i n g t h e l a t e K i n g H a m l e t i s s p o tt e d o n a
p l a t fo r m b e fo r e E l s i n o r e C a s t l e i n D e n m a r k . K i n g C l a u d i u s ,
w h o n o w r u l e s D e n m a r k , h a s t a ke n K i n g H a m l e t ' s w i fe ,
Q u e e n G e r t r u d e a s h i s n e w w i fe a n d Q u e e n o f D e n m a r k .
• The ghost speaks to Hamlet declaring ominously that it is
i n d e e d h i s fa t h e r ’s s p i r i t , a n d t h a t h e w a s m u r d e r e d b y
Claudius. Ordering Hamlet to seek revenge on the man
w h o u s u r p e d h i s t h ro n e a n d m a r r i e d h i s w i fe , t h e g h o s t
d i s a p p e a rs w i t h t h e d a w n .
4. ACT II
Polonius has his own theory about Hamlet's transformation; it is caused
by Hamlet's love for his daughter Ophelia.
Polonius decides to tell King Claudius the reason for Hamlet's recently
odd behavior.
ACT III
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 react.
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.
Hamlet goes to confront his mother, in whose bedchamber Polonius has
hidden behind a tapestry. Hamlet believes the king is hiding there and
kills Polonius.
5. ACT IV
King Claudius learns of Polonius' murder which shocks him and decides to sent
Hamlet away to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern immediately.
King Claudius reveals his plans for Hamlet to be killed in England.
Ophelia goes mad from the grief of losing her father and drowns in the river.
Laertes wants to take revenge for his father’s murder and King Claudius
explains to him that Hamlet killed his father.
ACT V
Hamlet explains to Horatio how he avoided the death planned for him in
England and had courtiers' Rosencrantz and Guildenstern put to death instead.
Hamlet fights Laertes. Hamlet wins the first two rounds against Laertes but is
stabbed and poisoned fatally in the third round. Exchanging swords whilst
fighting, Hamlet wounds and poisons Laertes who explains that his sword is
poison tipped.
Now dying, Hamlet stabs King Claudius with this same sword, killing him.
Hamlet, dying, tells Horatio to tell his story.
Hamlet recommends Young Fortinbras as the next King of Denmark. Horatio
promises to tell all the story we have just witnessed, ending the play.
6. T - The Impossibility of Certainty
H - The Mystery of Death
E - The Nation as a Diseased Body
M - Incest and Incestuous Desire
E - Misogyny
S
7. FAMOUS QUOTATION
To be, or not to be: that is the question: The pangs of despis’d love, the law’s delay,
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The insolence of office, and the spurns
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, When he himself might his quietus make
And by opposing end them?—To die,—to With a bare bodkin? who would these
sleep,— fardels bear,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
The heartache, and the thousand natural But that the dread of something after
shocks death,—
That flesh is heir to,—’tis a consummation The undiscover’d country, from whose
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die,—to sleep;— bourn
To sleep: perchance to dream:—ay, there’s No traveller returns,—puzzles the will,
the rub; And makes us rather bear those ills we have
For in that sleep of death what dreams may Than fly to others that we know not of?
come, Thus conscience does make cowards of us
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, all;
Must give us pause: there’s the respect And thus the native hue of resolution
That makes calamity of so long life; Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of And enterprises of great pith and moment,
time, With this regard, their currents turn awry,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s And lose the name of action.
contumely,
