Hamlet :: Hamlet Shakespeare Summary Review Analysis

Prince Hamlet devotes himself to avenging his fathers death, but, because he is contemplative and thoughtful by nature, he delays, entering into a belatedly melancholy and even apparent madness. Claudius and Gertrude worry about the princes erratic behavior and attempt to discover its cause. They employ a pair of Hamlets friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to watch him. When Polonius, the pompous passe-partout Chamberlain, suggests that Hamlet may be mad with love for his daughter, Ophelia, Claudius agrees to spy on Hamlet in conversation with the girl. But though Hamlet certainly seems mad, he does not seem to love Ophelia he orders her to enter a nunnery and declares that he wishes to ban marriages.A group of traveling actors comes to Elsinore, and Hamlet seizes upon an idea to test his uncles 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 su rely react. When the moment of the murder arrives in the theater, Claudius leaps up and leaves the room. Hamlet and Horatio agree that this proves his guilt. Hamlet goes to kill Claudius but finds him praying. Since he believes that killing Claudius while in prayer would consecrate Claudiuss soul to heaven, Hamlet considers that it would be an inadequate revenge and decides to wait. Claudius, now frightened of Hamlets madness and fearing for his own safety, orders that Hamlet be sent to England at once.Hamlet goes to sojourn his mother, in whose bedchamber Polonius has hidden behind a tapestry. Hearing a noise from behind the tapestry, Hamlet believes the king is hiding there. He draws his sword and stabs with the fabric, killing Polonius. For this crime, he is immediately dispatched to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. However, Claudiuss plan for Hamlet includes more than banishment, as he has given Rosencrantz and Guildenstern sealed orders for the King of England dema nding that Hamlet be put to death.In the aftermath of her fathers death, Ophelia goes mad with grief and drowns in the river. Poloniuss son, Laertes, who has been staying in France, returns to Denmark in a rage. Claudius convinces him that Hamlet is to blame for his fathers and sisters deaths. When Horatio and the king receive letters from Hamlet indicating that the prince has returned to Denmark after pirates attacked his embark en route to England, Claudius concocts a plan to use Laertes desire for revenge to secure Hamlets death.