Hamlet

Hamlet, a tragedy by Shakespeare, registered as ‘latelie Acted’ in July 1602. A short text probably reconstructed from memory by actors was published 1603 and a good text, almost twice as long, 1604–5. The folio text (1623) adds some passages not in the Second Quarto, and omits others. His chief nondramatic source was Saxo Grammaticus's narrative in his Historiae Danicae, as retold by Belleforest in his Histoires Tragiques.

Old Hamlet, king of Denmark, is recently dead, and his brother Claudius has assumed the throne and married his widow Gertrude. Young Hamlet, returning from university at Wittenberg, learns from the ghost of his father that Claudius murdered him by pouring poison into his ear, and is commanded to avenge the murder without injuring Gertrude. Hamlet warns his friend Horatio and the guard (who have also seen the apparition) that he intends to feign madness, and swears them to secrecy. Immediately after his famous speech of deliberation beginning ‘To be, or not to be’ (iii. i) he repudiates Ophelia, whom he has loved, while spied on by Claudius and by Ophelia's father Polonius. He welcomes a troupe of visiting players, and arranges a performance of a play (‘the Mouse-trap’) about fratricide, which Claudius breaks off, in apparently guilty and fearful fury, when the player Lucianus appears to murder his uncle by pouring poison into his ear. Hamlet refrains from killing Claudius while he is at prayer, but stabs through the arras in his mother's bedroom, killing the old counsellor Polonius, before reprimanding his mother for her affection for Claudius. Claudius sends Hamlet to England with sealed orders that he should be killed on arrival. Hamlet outwits him, however, returning to Denmark, having arranged the deaths of his old friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who were his uncle's agents. During Hamlet's absence Ophelia has gone mad with grief from Hamlet's rejection of her and her father's death, and is found drowned. Her brother Laertes returns from France intent on avenging his sister's death. Hamlet and Laertes meet in the graveyard where Ophelia is to be buried, and fight in her grave. Claudius arranges a fencing match between Hamlet and Laertes, giving the latter a poisoned foil; an exchange of weapons results in the deaths of both combatants, not before Gertrude has drunk a poisoned cup intended for her son, and the dying Hamlet has succeeded in killing Claudius. Fortinbras, prince of Norway, whose resolute military heroism has been alluded to throughout the play, appears fresh from wars with Poland and gives Hamlet a military funeral. (See also objective correlative.)