Claudius and Gertrude, unsatisfied with Polonius’s assessment, summon two of Hamlet's old school friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to try to find out what's wrong with him.

The king’s obsequious old councilor, Polonius, begins to believe that Hamlet's behavior is tied to his affections for Ophelia, Polonius’s daughter. He tells himself that his madness is a front which will allow him to investigate his uncle without the king realizing Hamlet is onto him, but as Hamlet investigates his own existential and moral center, his thoughts begin to tend toward serious distress, if not full-blown madness. He delays his revenge and begins to act half-mad, contemplates suicide, and becomes furious at all women. Hamlet, newly enraged, quickly accepts the ghost's command to seek revenge.Īs the days go by, however, Hamlet is uncertain if what the ghost said is true, and struggles to decide whether he should actually kill his uncle. The ghost reveals that he did not die of natural causes, but rather was poisoned by Claudius.

Hamlet agrees to meet the ghost, and as he speaks with it, it claims to be the spirit of his father. Hamlet, however, cannot accept his uncle’s rule, furious as he is about Gertrude's marriage to Claudius, and resentful of both his mother and his uncle for besmirching his father’s memory with their union. Claudius seems to be an able king, easily handling the threat of the Norwegian prince Fortinbras, who is seeking to take back the lands his own father lost in battle with Hamlet’s father. Hamlet is also the nephew of the present king, Claudius, who not only assumed his dead brother's crown but also married the king’s widow, Gertrude. When Horatio sees the ghost, he decides they should tell prince Hamlet-his closest friend and the dead king's son. The terrified sentinels Marcellus, Francisco, and Barnardo convince a skeptical nobleman, Horatio, to watch along with them one night. A ghost resembling the recently-deceased King of Denmark stalks the ramparts of Elsinore, Denmark’s royal castle, over the course of several nights, setting all the castle’s guardsmen on edge.

Hamlet by William Shakespeare