What’s in it for me? Shakespeare’s great tragedy in bite-sized form.
Hamlet is Shakespeare’s longest play.
It’s also his most popular – in his time as in ours.
That’s hardly surprising.
The plot is gripping.
The characters are memorable.
It’s often moving, but it can also be funny and exciting.
It has its philosophical side, too.
As far as the great American critic Harold Bloom was concerned, only the world’s scriptures can compete with Hamlet as a meditation on human fragility in our confrontation with death.
Then there’s Hamlet’s influence on culture and the English language.
Being cruel to be kind and hair standing on end when we’re frightened – those are just two of the images and ideas we take for granted which can be traced back to this genre-defying play.
In this Blink, you’ll hear a short version of this long play.
All the best bits and parts are there, though, from the noble-minded prince of Denmark to the cunning villain Claudius and the meddling courtier Polonius.
So, too, is the overarching and timeless story of treachery, poisonous politics, and the quest for justice which Shakespeare set out to tell.
Part 1: “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”
Hamlet opens on a cold winter night on the ramparts of Elsinore Castle.
A nervous soldier keeps watch.
He hears movement.
“Who’s there?
” he shouts.
“Nay, answer me,” comes the reply: “Stand and unfold yourself.
” Reassured by the familiar voice, he lowers his weapon.
It’s a fellow guard, come to relieve him.
As he leaves, he thanks his comrade-in-arms.
“’Tis bitter cold,” he says, “and I am sick at heart.
” These greetings, and the parting soldier’s comment, suggest that all is not well in Denmark.
Elsinore – the seat of this kingdom – is in a state of anxious anticipation.
Listening to the soldiers’ conversations, we learn about a revolt in Norway – a Danish colony during the time of the late king Hamlet.
Years earlier, King Hamlet killed Fortinbras, Norway’s king, and annexed his lands.
Now the younger Fortinbras, the slain king’s son, seeks vengeance, and Denmark is busily readying itself for the coming war.
A cloud hangs over those preparations.
For two nights, King Hamlet’s ghost has appeared on Elsinore’s ramparts.
Dressed in armor, this dreaded sight has terrified the castle’s guards.
Unable to explain its purpose, they confide in Horatio, a faithful friend to the late king’s son – Prince Hamlet.
Has the king come to combat “ambitious Norway” once more, if only in spirit?
Horatio can’t shake the suspicion that the ghost’s fearsome grimace reveals a deeper purpose.
The strange atmosphere in Elsinore heightens that suspicion.
As a soldier who’s seen the ghost says, something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
King Hamlet’s death wasn’t mourned long.
Within two months, his brother, Claudius, had taken his crown and married his widow, Gertrude.
As the soldiers talk of war and apparitions, the royal court is celebrating the couple’s union with wine, music, and fireworks.
It was the wedding which brought Horatio back to Denmark.
In Elsinore, he finds his grief-stricken old university friend, Prince Hamlet.
When we first hear Hamlet speak, we encounter a man consumed by profound sadness – and righteous anger.
How swiftly his mother ceased to mourn his father!
How cynically the costs of funeral and marriage were kept down by combining the two!
It was, he tells Horatio, as if the food prepared for mourners one day had been thriftily repurposed for a merry banquet the next.
For Hamlet, the world has grown weary and stale; all his joy and interest in it are gone.
Denmark is nothing but an unweeded garden full of things “rank and gross in nature.
” His mother’s overhasty marriage is unnatural – incestuous, even.
Claudius, for his part, is nothing but a lustful drunk compared to “so excellent a king” as his father was.
What, though, can Hamlet do?
Claudius may be an unworthy successor, but he’s the king and Hamlet is his adopted son and heir.
To publicly condemn the king and queen would be to sow division in Denmark and undermine the state whose wellbeing also rests on his actions.
No, he must play the part of the dutiful prince and hold his tongue, even if it breaks his heart.
Part 2: “Foul deeds must rise”
Chance plays a leading part in Shakespeare’s tragedies, and Hamlet is no exception.
Time and again, the unintended consequences of actions motivated by characters’ flaws come back to haunt their authors.
Take Claudius.
The play is still in its first act, but we already know his vice – lust.
And that vice has already set a series of events in motion that will rebound back on him.
Claudius’ desire to officially consummate his marriage means that he brings the wedding forward so that it follows hard on the heels of King Hamlet’s funeral.
The wedding brings Horatio to Elsinore just as the ghost appears.
Horatio is known for his shrewdness, so the soldiers talk to him before informing Claudius.
And because Horatio is a loyal friend as well as shrewd, he swears them to secrecy until he’s spoken with Hamlet.
That changes everything.
When Hamlet hears Horatio’s account of the ghost, one detail jumps out – that it was armed.
All cannot be well, he cries, if his father’s spirit has come prepared for war.
Hamlet’s unfocused sorrow and anger suddenly crystallize into suspicion.
Mortal men may try to cover up their misdeeds, he says, and they may even succeed for a while.
But “foul deeds will rise.
” For Hamlet, justice is divine, and it uncovers all evildoing.
The truth will out.
That night, Hamlet climbs the ramparts and waits for the ghost to reappear.
As Horatio suspected, the apparition, which had so far remained silent, is ready to talk to Hamlet.
But the blood-curdling tale it has to tell is for his ears only.
It will only speak when Hamlet withdraws to an isolated tower where neither Horatio nor the soldiers can hear it.
The ghost says it is his father’s spirit.
It’s been condemned to purgatory because the king died before he could confess or purge his sins.
But he didn’t die of a snake bite as all of Denmark thinks.
He was killed as he lay sleeping in his orchard after a feast – murdered by the treacherous brother who poured poison in his ear so that he could take his crown and his wife.
Denmark’s royal bed, the ghost says, has become a “couch for luxury and damned incest.
” He commands Hamlet to kill the “smiling, damned villain” Claudius, and weed the overgrown garden that is Denmark.
For the rest of the play, everything Hamlet does serves this end.
Part 3: “An antic disposition”
Revenge was a bloody, thoughtless thing in many of the plays of Shakespeare’s day.
Action, not introspection, followed the revelation of foul deeds.
Hamlet, though, is a thinker.
He can’t seem to decide between stoical acceptance and passionate violence.
Is it nobler, he asks, to suffer the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” or to “take up arms” and see that justice is done, no matter the consequences?
The question remains unanswered.
For some critics, Hamlet’s thoughtfulness is his tragic flaw: unable to make up his mind, he fails to act decisively.
But another reading of his character and the play is possible.
The ghost speaks of both ends and means.
It warns Hamlet not to “taint” his mind and become unjust in delivering justice.
He’s to restore moral order in Denmark without becoming a criminal usurper himself.
And he must strike at Claudius without harming his mother.
The thorns of conscience in Gertrude’s heart, the ghost says, will “prick and sting” her enough.
The young prince, then, is confronted with an extremely difficult task: killing the king while preserving the state which he embodies.
Hamlet must be “cruel to be kind.
” Like a surgeon, he must remove the cancer eating Denmark while preserving the healthy tissue beneath.
If thought is the enemy of action, Hamlet’s great dilemma is that he has to act thoughtfully.
But Elsinore is gripped by suspicion.
Hamlet is in danger the moment he accepts the ghost’s account of his father’s murder.
Claudius may be a lustful drunk, but he’s a savvy political operator – his cunning self-advancement proves it.
If he suspects Hamlet, he’ll try to eliminate him.
The court, meanwhile, is stacked with plotters.
Claudius’s right-hand man, the crafty flatterer Polonius, uses a network of informers to keep tabs on everyone, including his own children.
If he’s to act, Hamlet must hide what he knows and plans from the king and his spies.
Hamlet’s solution to this problem is to feign madness.
As he tells Horatio, he’ll put on an “antic disposition” – in other words, he’ll act “strange and odd.
” He does so to fool Claudius, but the strategy can only work if it fools everyone, including the woman he once loved – Polonius’s daughter, Ophelia.
It’s through her eyes that we see Hamlet’s madness and learn just how effective his ruse has been.
Hamlet, Ophelia says, once harmoniously combined all the virtues: the charm of a courtier, the wisdom of a scholar, and the courage of a soldier.
Now, though, he is like a broken instrument – “out of tune and harsh.
” His clothes disheveled, he walks about with a look on his face so piteous that it is as if he’d been recently released “out of hell.
” Here, too, Shakespeare shows us how the unintended consequences of actions rebound on their authors.
Polonius’s vice isn’t lust, but hubris.
He boasts that there isn’t a thing he doesn’t know in Elsinore – he knows, he says, where all “truth is hid.
” He believes he can read Hamlet because he arrogantly assumes the prince is already entangled in his web.
Early in the play, Ophelia tells her father that Hamlet has been wooing her.
He has behaved honorably, she says, but worldly-wise Polonius insists that young men merely feign honor to entrap virgin maids and forbids Ophelia from seeing him again.
It’s Ophelia’s unrequited love for Hamlet, he tells Claudius, that has caused his madness: the prince is lovesick.
To convince the king that he has found the hidden truth, Polonius arranges a meeting between Hamlet and his daughter while he and Claudius spy on them from behind a curtain.
When Ophelia returns his old love letters, Hamlet suspects she’s acting on another’s behalf.
Having greeted her courteously, his tone changes.
Beauty, he says, can turn honesty into a prostitute more easily than honesty can mold beauty in its own likeness – in other words, Ophelia is using her “fairness” to entrap him.
Where is your father?
he suddenly asks.
Ophelia says he’s at home.
It’s a lie – and proof, for Hamlet, that Elsinore has corrupted even “fair Ophelia.
” The furious verbal attack he launches on her is intended for the spies behind the curtain, but his poisonous words enter Ophelia’s ears.
After this scene, she sinks into a madness that’s anything but feigned, becoming the first victim of the court’s poisonous politics.
Part 4: “The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king”
Evildoers, a sixteenth-century proverb says, are evil dreaders.
No one, in other words, is more suspicious than a man with something on his conscience.
Claudius can’t help but be an evil dreader.
There’s too much method in Hamlet’s madness for him to accept Polonius’s account of his behavior.
Since he can’t get closer to the prince, he enlists men who can – two of Hamlet’s old university friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Trusting them, Claudius calculates, Hamlet will reveal what’s on his mind – and what he knows.
The ruse fails.
Hamlet can’t decide if his friends have betrayed him because they seek political advancement or because they foolishly believe Claudius is sincere.
It doesn’t matter, though – either way, they’re spies.
They are, he says, sponges: they can soak up the king’s flattery and rewards, but Claudius will eventually wring them dry once they’ve served their purpose.
Ironically, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are much more useful to Hamlet than Claudius.
Having been instructed to entertain Hamlet, they hire a troupe of actors to come to Elsinore.
Suddenly, Hamlet has the solution to the problem that’s been troubling him.
Hamlet believes the ghost is telling the truth.
But he’s a scholar who studied philosophy and theology at Wittenberg – the same German university Martin Luther attended.
He understands the difference between belief and knowledge and is aware that the devil often assumes a “pleasing shape” to tempt people into sin.
Before he can act, Hamlet must be sure that the ghost wasn’t an evil spirit.
He needs proof of Claudius’s guilt.
Which is where the hired actors come in.
Hamlet asks them to perform a well-known play about the murder of a king, but he inserts a scene of his own which, as he says, holds “the mirror up to nature.
” The king in this play won’t be stabbed with a dagger – he’ll have poison poured in his ear by a jealous brother.
As that scene is performed, Hamlet and Horatio will fix their eyes on Claudius and read his reaction.
If he flinches, they’ll have their proof.
“The play’s the thing,” Hamlet says, to “catch the conscience of the king.
” And so it proves.
As the poison enters the sleeping king’s ear, Claudius leaps from his seat and halts the performance: the guilty spectator can’t bear the sight of his own crime.
He’s condemned himself; Hamlet can kill him in good conscience.
Part 5: “I will answer well the death I gave him”
Claudius has revealed his guilt.
He knows that Hamlet knows.
Fearing for his life, he rushes to his chamber and falls to his knees to pray for forgiveness.
Hamlet, meanwhile, heads toward his mother’s rooms – the moment has come to reveal the truth and make her understand her complicity in Claudius’s treachery.
But it’s the king whom he chances upon.
He finds him kneeling in prayer with his back turned to the door.
How easy it would be to kill the lustful usurper with a single blow!
But Hamlet’s sword remains sheathed.
Claudius, after all, murdered his father before he could repent his sins.
Striking Claudius now, while he’s repenting, would send him to heaven.
No, Hamlet decides – better to wait until he’s drunk and enraged or in his incestuous bed with Gertrude.
Leaving the king, Hamlet continues down the hallway toward the queen’s chamber.
Polonius, who’s still meddling and trying to tell Gertrude what to say to Hamlet, is there too.
The prince’s shouts, however, send him running for cover.
With no time to escape the room, he ducks behind a tapestry hanging on the wall.
It’s the last time he’ll interfere in anyone’s affairs.
Hamlet is frenzied – it’s hard, now, to tell if he’s still feigning madness or if he’s really lost his senses.
He says he’s come merely to “speak daggers,” but his wild look convinces Gertrude that her son is there to kill her.
She calls for help and Polonius echoes her.
Swiveling on his heels, Hamlet plunges his sword into the tapestry and kills the prying courtier.
With this thoughtless act, Hamlet falls into the trap he’d carefully avoided until now – the rash and senseless spilling of innocent blood.
Looking at Polonius’s body, Hamlet coldly calls him an “intruding fool,” but he regrets the death nonetheless.
It’s a sin, he says, and he’ll have to answer for it sooner or later.
Hamlet then turns to his mother.
He denounces her frailty, hypocrisy, and complicity.
He comes close to striking her down, too – the only thing that stops him is the reappearance of King Hamlet’s ghost, which commands him to spare Gertrude’s life.
Suddenly, his bloodlust fades.
Returning to reason, Hamlet speaks calmly and civilly, advising his mother to confess her sins and avoid the marriage bed she’s shared with Claudius before wishing her goodnight.
Part 6: “Revenge should have no bounds”
Hamlet’s rash error gives Claudius an opening.
He can’t publicly move against the prince – Hamlet is too popular with the people of Denmark and too dear to Gertrude.
But the king now has a case to send him into exile.
Claudius says it’s for Hamlet’s own safety.
Hamlet slyly suggests he knows the real reason for the king’s decision, but he accepts it nonetheless.
Exile means death, anyway.
Before instructing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to accompany Hamlet to England, he gives them a sealed letter to deliver to the English court.
It’s a threat: if the English authorities don’t execute Hamlet, they’ll find themselves at war with Denmark.
But Luck is on the prince’s side.
Hamlet’s ship is intercepted by pirates – “pirates of mercy,” as he calls them.
By that time, he’s already found and read Claudius’s letter and replaced it with one of his own – a death warrant for the luckless Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Boarding the pirate ship, he promises its crew a handsome reward if they return him to Denmark.
They agree.
Claudius is back to square one.
But Hamlet isn’t the only man heading to Elsinore in search of revenge.
News of Polonius’s death has reached his son, Laertes, who’s returned to Denmark from France.
Laertes really is a man of action.
He wastes little time or thought before raising an army of mercenaries to depose the man whom he blames for Polonius’s death.
That hot-headedness makes him easy pickings for Claudius, who redirects his rage toward Hamlet.
Revenge, the king agrees, should have no bounds; Laertes, however, has picked the wrong target.
Just as the actors’ arrival in Elsinore solved Hamlet’s problem, Laertes’s arrival solves Claudius’s problem.
He can’t openly make a move against Hamlet.
But who could blame the king if Laertes killed the prince in a blind rage?
Laertes, who doesn’t realize he’s being instrumentalized to serve another’s end, happily agrees to Claudius’s plan.
When Hamlet returns, the king will invite him to a fencing match.
Hamlet, thinking it’s for sport, will use a blunt sword.
His opponent, Laertes, though, will use a military sword the tip of which has been coated in poison.
Claudius, for his part, will place a cup of poisoned wine close to the prince and urge him to quench his thirst when the match becomes heated.
The stage is set for the play’s dramatic showdown.
Part 7: “The rest is silence”
Hamlet is a changed man when he returns to Elsinore.
When Horatio asks him about his escape, he calmly explains how he sent Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths.
Hamlet’s coldness shocks his old friend.
“They are not near my conscience,” he says offhandedly: they loved to meddle and they died because they meddled.
But how else can he behave?
His father has been murdered, his mother corrupted, and his own life threatened.
Wouldn’t it be worse, he asks, to act without resolve and let the cancer afflicting Denmark fester – worse not just for him, but the entire state?
Underlying Hamlet’s outlook is a new understanding of life and death.
Sitting in a cemetery and watching a gravedigger go about his work, he talks to Horatio about Alexander the Great.
When Alexander died, he says, he was buried and slowly returned to dust.
That dust mingled with the earth and eventually a part of that earth became clay.
The mighty Alexander, then, could have ended up in one of the clay stoppers with which Danes plug beer barrels.
In the end, in other words, we all return to dust, even the greatest of us.
But Hamlet hasn’t become a nihilist – he’s not saying that life and the deeds we fill it with are meaningless.
His point is stoical.
There’s a divinity, he says, which shapes our ends.
We can try to “rough-hew” those ends – that is, we can try to carve out our own destinies.
That is worthy – it’s good and necessary to pursue justice, for example.
But it’s ultimately providence which decides our fates.
There are always unintended consequences leading us, step by step, toward our inevitable deaths.
We must act, but we must also accept that the outcomes of those actions are beyond our control.
Whoever must die will die and whoever may live will live.
Hamlet accepts Claudius’s invitation to the fencing match in that spirit.
He senses a trap, but he’s also accepted his fate.
It’s time, he thinks, to end this drama.
Shakespeare loved poetic justice.
Characters in his tragedies are often “hoist with their own petard” – they are, more simply, blown up by their bombs.
If someone places an ingenious trap, it’s often all but inevitable that they’ll step in it themselves.
Both Claudius and Laertes face such justice.
Claudius places the cup of poisoned wine next to Hamlet and urges him to drink.
Hamlet, though, is enjoying the bout too much and doesn’t want to break his winning streak.
Instead, it’s Gertrude who takes a sip just as Laertes makes his move.
He grazes Hamlet, inflicting a fatal wound.
Hamlet, who hasn’t realized it, thinks his opponent has simply become more enthusiastic and responds in kind.
Their sparring grows more intense and, in the confusion, both men drop their weapons and pick up the other’s.
Gertrude falls to the ground and Hamlet wounds Laertes with his own sword.
Knowing he’s about to die, he reveals all to Hamlet, saying he’s been justly killed by his own treachery.
Hamlet, too, now knows that he has little time left.
He stabs Claudius and forces the mortally wounded king to drink from his own cup.
With his dying breath, Laertes forgives Hamlet for Polonius’s death.
With his, Hamlet tells Horatio to tell the world his story before naming young Fortinbras, the Prince of Norway, to rule Denmark.
“The rest,” he concludes, “is silence.