Hamlet

The new King of Denmark, Claudius, is holding court. He is the brother of the dead king and has married the king’s widow, Gertrude. He sends messengers to Fortinbras’s uncle, hoping to prevent Fortinbras from enacting his plans. He also grants the request of the young courtier Laertes, son of his councilor Polonius, to return to France, where he has been living.

Hamlet arrives, deeply unhappy and dressed in black to show that he is in mourning. Claudius and Gertrude chide him for clinging to his grief for his father. Claudius argues that everyone must come to terms with the deaths of their fathers, as such deaths are part of the natural order of things. Hamlet is unmoved. He emphasizes that, while many grieve falsely, his grief is true, and his mourning garb matches his inner self. Claudius tells Hamlet that he does not wish him to return to his university studies in Wittenberg, but to stay in Denmark. Hamlet assents but not happily. 

Claudius and Gertrude leave, and Hamlet gives a despairing speech, mourning his father and expressing his disgust at his mother’s speedy remarriage to Claudius. He is interrupted when Horatio and the sentinels arrive and tell him about the ghost. He eagerly agrees to try to speak to the ghost that night.

Laertes and Ophelia, the son and daughter of the royal councilor Polonius, are saying an affectionate goodbye before Laertes departs for France. Laertes warns his sister not to put too much stock in Hamlet’s affection for her. Hamlet’s youthful love, he says, is like a spring violet—beautiful but fleeting. Further, as a prince, Hamlet may not freely choose whom he marries. 

Ophelia, Laertes implies, has a lot to lose: If she sleeps with Hamlet, she’ll forfeit her honor and her position in society, and she may not get what she hopes for in return. Ophelia doesn’t take her brother too seriously, and teases him, telling him he’d better not be a hypocrite about sexual morality while he’s away.

Polonius arrives to give his son some parting words. Purporting to hurry him away, he holds him back with a comical flood of advice, most of it about moderation: Hold on to your true friends, but don’t waste time and money on false ones; dress elegantly, but not ostentatiously; don’t get into fights, but if you do, fight well. He ends with one deceptively simple piece of advice: “This above all, to thine own self be true, / And it must follow as the night the day / Thou canst not then be false to any man” (1.3.75-79).

Laertes at last escapes from the conversation, and Polonius starts to question Ophelia. He echoes Laertes’s doubts about Hamlet’s affection. Ophelia, more serious now, protests. She says that Hamlet has made real professions of love to her. Polonius warns her not to be taken in by mere vows: Words are cheap. He instructs her to spend less time with Hamlet, and Ophelia says she’ll obey.

Hamlet, Horatio, and the sentinels are again on the battlements. The clock has just struck midnight. Beneath them, trumpets and cannons sound; Hamlet explains that this is the noise of Claudius’s customary midnight partying. Hamlet doesn’t approve of his uncle’s carousing, feeling it gives Denmark a reputation for drunkenness that overrides the nation’s strengths. He says that it is often the case that a single inborn weakness in a person’s character can—through no fault of their own—slowly corrupt all of the good in them.

He is interrupted by the appearance of the ghost. Terrified, he asks it questions: Has it come from heaven or hell, and why has it come at all?

The ghost does not reply, but beckons to him. Horatio and the others urge Hamlet not to follow it, fearing that it will lure him to his death, but Hamlet doesn’t listen: “Why, what should be the fear? / I do not set my life at a pin’s fee, / And for my soul, what can it do to that, / Being a thing immortal as itself?” (1.4.64-67). Feeling he has nothing to live for and desperate to hear his dead father speak, Hamlet follows the ghost.

The ghost tells Hamlet that he will soon have to return to the fires of Purgatory—a place, he says, he could tell some fearful stories about, if he had the time. For now, the message he wishes to deliver is simple: Hamlet must avenge his death.

The ghost explains that the story of his demise—that a serpent bit him while he slept in the orchard—is not the truth. In fact, Claudius crept up on him and dripped a gruesome, literally bloodcurdling poison into his ear. The ghost decries Claudius’s treachery and Gertrude’s infidelity to his memory. Worse, because he died without extreme unction (the final Christian rite of forgiveness), he must now suffer in Purgatory until his unforgiven sins are burnt away. 

At last, he departs, with the final words: “Remember me” (1.5.91).

Horrified and vindicated in his hatred for Claudius and anger with Gertrude, Hamlet swears he will indeed remember his father and notes an unpleasant truth: “That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain” (1.5.108). 

Horatio and the sentinels catch up with Hamlet and ask him what the ghost said. Hamlet, full of fresh mistrust, refuses to tell them, and instead swears them to secrecy; the ghost, unseen, echoes his son, repeatedly crying “Swear.” At last, the bewildered men agree to swear on Hamlet’s sword that they will never repeat what they’ve seen.

Hamlet thanks them, and tells Horatio a part of his plan: He will “put an antic disposition on” (1.5.175), which is to say, he will pretend to be insane. He gives no reasons, and Horatio does not ask why.

Polonius instructs his servant, Reynaldo, to go seek news of his son Laertes. Polonius has some curious ideas about the best way to go about this: He instructs his servant to pretend he vaguely knows Laertes and has heard he’s a bit of a ruffian—but not too much of a ruffian. Polonius hopes that, if his servant drops these hints, the strangers he speaks to will tell him the truth about any mischief Laertes has been up to. Reynaldo is, understandably, confused by this plan, not least because Polonius often loses the thread of his thought. In the end, he agrees to carry it out and departs.

Ophelia enters, frightened and upset. She tells her father that Hamlet has just appeared in her room, disheveled, distracted, and acting of unsound mind: 

He took me by the wrist and held me hard […] He falls to such perusal of my face / As he would draw it […] At last, a little shaking of mine arm / And thrice his head thus waving up and down / He rais’d a sign so piteous and profound / As it did seem to shatter all his bulk / And end his being” (2.1.86-95).

Polonius reads this strange behavior as evidence of a broken heart, and he regrets that he told Ophelia to be chilly with Hamlet. Old people, he reflects, often read too much into a situation, just as young people often leap before they look. Together, Polonius and Ophelia go to Claudius to tell him of Hamlet’s behavior.

Informed of Hamlet’s instability, Claudius and Gertrude have summoned two of his childhood friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to see if they can figure out what might have happened. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern agree to help, and they leave to find Hamlet.

Polonius enters, bringing news of the ambassadors who went to Norway in hopes of stopping Fortinbras’s attack—and an explanation for Hamlet’s mania. The ambassador reports that Fortinbras’s uncle has successfully dissuaded Fortinbras from attacking Denmark. Fortinbras instead intends to attack the Poles and sends a letter asking Claudius for safe passage through Denmark. Claudius agrees to this.

This good news conveyed, Polonius steps forward to explain his theory of Hamlet’s behavior. Beginning with a lengthy prologue about the virtues of brevity, he tells Claudius and Gertrude what they already know: Hamlet is mad. After a bit more circumlocution, he shows them a passionate love letter from Hamlet to Ophelia and explains that he discouraged Ophelia from accepting Hamlet’s attentions, as Hamlet was so much above her in social station. Wishing to investigate this theory further, Claudius and Polonius hatch a plan to hide behind a tapestry at a time and place where they know Hamlet and Ophelia will meet, so they can watch what happens.

Hamlet enters, reading a book, and Polonius hurries Claudius and Gertrude away so that he can speak with Hamlet. They have a strange, language-bending conversation. Hamlet, feigning madness, makes rather sharp points (for instance, saying that Polonius is a “fishmonger,” which can also mean “pimp”). Polonius observes, in an aside, “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t” (2.2.204).

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern enter, and Polonius departs. Hamlet greets them warmly with bawdy puns, but he quickly smells some trickery and tells them that he knows Gertrude and Claudius sent for them. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern admit to having been summoned. Hamlet tells them of his melancholy; he has “lost all his mirth” (2.2.266), and the world seems flat and empty to him. He half-confesses that he isn’t mad, at least not in the way that he’s pretending. 

Trying to cheer him up, Rosencrantz tells Hamlet that he and Guildenstern have invited a company of actors to perform at the palace. Polonius reappears and confirms this report; Hamlet dials up his performance of madness again in response, baiting Polonius with teasing references to daughters.

The actors arrive, and Hamlet greets them by asking them to perform a speech: the story of the death of King Priam at the fall of Troy, and the grief of his widow Hecuba. Polonius notes that the actor giving the speech is in tears by the end. Hamlet then asks the actors to perform a play called “The Murder of Gonzago,” and to insert a few lines that he himself will write. The actors agree, and everyone but Hamlet leaves.

Alone, Hamlet speaks of his disgust at his own inaction. It seems to him monstrous that, while an actor can bring himself to tears speaking of a fictional person, he cannot express his own true grief—or move himself to take revenge on Claudius. “Am I a coward?” he asks. (2.2.510).

From these musings, he hatches a plan: He will use theater’s emotional power to prove Claudius’s treachery. The actors will perform a play that resembles the story the ghost told him of the murder. If Claudius seems to react, Hamlet will have proof that the ghost’s story is true. 

Hamlet says that he needs this proof because he fears that the ghost might have been not his father’s spirit but some devil sent to trick him. He concludes: “The play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king” (2.2.543-544).