Hamlet, Prince of De...

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Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
CHARACTERS
Claudius, King of Denmark
Hamlet, son of the last king, and nephew of the present one
Horatio, friend of Hamlet
Polonius, Minister of State
Laertes, son of Polonius
Marcellus, a guard
Ghost of Hamlet's father
A group of Actors
Gertrude, Queen of Denmark and mother of Hamlet
Ophelia, daughter of Polonius
Less than two months after the sudden death of King Hamlet,
Gertrude, Queen of Denmark, married his brother Claudius.This
was judged by everyone at that time to be a strangely unwise or
unfeeling act, or even worse.
Claudius was in no way like her first husband in the qualities
of his person or his mind. He was as worthless in appearance as
he was evil in character. Some people even suspected that he had
killed his brother, the last king, so that he could marry Gertrude
and become King of Denmark himself. In this way he was able to
prevent young Hamlet, the son of the buried king and his lawful
heir, from becoming king.
This unwise action of the queen had a very great effect on the
young prince, who loved and honoured the memory of his dead
father. Being of a most honourable character himself, he was
gready troubled by the shame of his mother's marriage; shame,
and grief at his father's death, made him fall into a state of deep
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sadness. He no longer found any pleasure in his books or his
sports. He became tired of the world, which seemed to him like
an uncared-for garden, in which all the best flowers have died for
lack of space.
Although the loss of the crown was a bitter wound to this
young prince, it was not this that troubled him and took away all
his cheerful spirits - it was the fact that his mother had shown
herself to be so forgetful of his father's memory. He had been so
loving and so gende a husband to her, and she had always
appeared to be a loving wife to him. But in less than two months
she had married his brother, young Hamlet's uncle. This in itself
was a very improper and unlawful marriage, as they were such
close relations, but it was made much worse by the speed with
which it was done and by the unkingly character of the man
whom she had chosen. It was this, much more than the loss of
ten kingdoms, which made the young prince so unhappy.
Everything that his mother Gertrude or the king could do to
try to raise his spirits was useless. He still appeared in court in
black clothes, in memory of his father. He had not even taken it
off on the day his mother was married, and he could not be
persuaded to join in any of the celebrations on what seemed to
him a shameful day.
He was most troubled by an uncertainty about the manner of
his father's death. Claudius had made it known that a snake had
bitten him. But young Hamlet had strong suspicions that
Claudius himself was the snake, and that the snake that had bitten
his father now wore his crown.
How right was this guess? What ought he to think of his
mother? Had she known of this murder, and perhaps even agreed
to it? These were the doubts which continued to worry him and
were driving him mad.
• A story had reached the ear of young Hamlet that a ghost,
exactly like the dead king, had been seen by the soldiers on guard
in front of the palace at midnight. The figure was always dressed
in the battledress which the dead king was known to have worn.
Those who saw it (and Hamlet's close friend Horatio was one)
agreed about the time and manner of its appearance. It came just
as the clock struck midnight. It looked pale, with a face more of
sorrow than of anger. Its beard was a dark silvery colour. It made
no answer when they spoke to it. Once they thought it lifted up
its head, and was about to speak; but at that moment morning
broke, and it went quickly away and disappeared from their sight.
Shocked at their story, the young prince believed that it was his
father's ghost which they had seen. He decided to join the
soldiers on guard that night so that he could have a chance of
seeing it. He argued with himself that ghosts did not appear for
no reason, but that this ghost must have something to tell.
Although it had been silent until now,it would speak to him; and
he waited with impatience for the coming of night.
When night came, he took his place with Horatio and
Marcellus, one of the guards, in front of the palace where this
spirit had been seen to walk. Their conversation was suddenly
interrupted by Horatio, who said that the ghost was coming.
At the sight of his father's spirit, Hamlet was shocked and
frightened. He called on heaven to protect them, since he did not
know whether it was a good or bad spirit, whether it came for
good or evil purposes. Gradually he became braver. His father (it
seemed to him) looked at him so sadly, and appeared so exactly
the same as when he was alive, that Hamlet could not help
speaking to him. He called him by his name, 'Hamlet, King,
Father!' and begged him to explain the reason why he had left his
grave, where they had seen him quietly buried, to visit the earth
and the moonlight again. Was there anything which they could
do to give peace to his spirit?
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The ghost made a sign to Hamlet, that he should go with him
to some place further away where they could be alone. Horatio
and Marcellus tried to stop the young prince from following the
ghost, for they were afraid that it might be some evil spirit which
would try to harm him. But their warnings and advice could not
change Hamlet's mind. He cared too little about life to fear losing
it; and as for his soul, he said, what could the spirit do to
something that could never die?
When they were alone together, the spirit broke his silence,
and told him that he was the ghost of Hamlet, his father, who had
been cruelly murdered. He said that it had been done by his own
brother Claudius, as Hamlet had already suspected, in the hope of
winning his wife and his crown. As he was sleeping in his garden,
which was always his custom in the afternoon, his faithless
brother had stood over him, and poured into his ears a poisonous
liquid that quickly killed him. So he was cut off by a brother's
hand from his crown, his queen and his life. He begged Hamlet, if
he had ever loved his dear father, to take revenge for this evil
murder.
The ghost spoke sadly to his son about his mother's fall from
goodness. She had proved so false to the memory of her first
husband that she had married his murderer. But he told Hamlet
that however he acted against his evil uncle, he must take care not
to hurt his mother; he should leave her to heaven. Hamlet
promised to obey the ghost's orders in all things, and the ghost
disappeared.
When Hamlet was left alone, he promised himself that he
would forget everything that he had ever learned. Nothing
would live in his brain except the memory of what the ghost had
told him and ordered him to do. He told the details of the
conversation to no one except his dear friend Horatio, and he
commanded both him and Marcellus to keep secret what they
had seen that night.
•
The terror which Hamlet had experienced at the sight of the
ghost almost drove him mad. He feared that it would continue to
have this effect, and that this might make his uncle suspicious, if
the king suspected that Hamlet knew more of his father's death
than he appeared to do. So from that time he decided to act as if
he were really and truly mad. His dress, speech and behaviour
became wild and strange, and he pretended to be a madman so
excellently that the king and queen were both deceived. Not
thinking that his grief for his father's death could produce such
illness in his mind, they believed that it was caused by love.
Before Hamlet fell into this sad condition, he had dearly loved
a beautiful girl called Ophelia, the daughter of Polonius, the
king's chief minister. He had sent her letters and rings, and made
many offers of love to her, and she had believed all his promises.
But his unhappy state of mind made him forget her, and from the
time when he pretended to be mad, he treated her with great
unkindness.
She, good lady, did not want to blame him for being false to
her, so she persuaded herself that it was only the illness in his
mind which made him take less notice of her than before. She
compared the qualities of his noble mind, now weakened by the
deep sadness that troubled him, to sweet bells, which are able to
give most beautiful music but which, when played out of tune,
produce only a rough and unpleasant sound.
Although the business which Hamlet had in his mind — the
punishment of his father's murderer — did not allow him to think
of love, there were times when kind thoughts of Ophelia came
to him. In one of these moments, when it seemed to him that his
treatment of this gentle lady had been too cruel, he wrote her a
letter full of wild words, which seemed to express his madness
but were at the same time mixed with signs that he still cared.
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These showed this honoured lady that a deep love for her still lay
at the bottom of his heart. He told her to doubt that the stars
were fire and to doubt that the sun moved, but never to doubt
that he loved her.
Ophelia showed this letter to her father, and he felt it to be his
duty to show it to the king and queen. From that moment they
were sure that the true cause of Hamlet's madness was love. The
queen certainly hoped that the beauty of Ophelia was the cause
of his strangeness, and that her goodness would bring him back
to his former way of life.
But Hamlet's illness lay deeper than she thought and it could
not be cured by love. His father's ghost still filled his imagination,
and the command to take revenge for his murder gave him no
rest. Every hour of delay seemed to him to be wrong. But it was
not easy to cause the death of the king, as he was always
surrounded by his guards. Or if they were not there, Hamlet's
mother was usually with her husband, and this stopped him from
doing what he wanted to do. Also, the act of putting another
creature to death was hateful and terrible to someone whose
character was so naturally gentle as Hamlet's, and his sadness
made him weak and anxious. Finally, he could not help having
some doubts about whether the spirit he had seen was really his
father, or whether it might have been the devil who had taken
his father's shape in order to drive him to the act of murder. He
decided that he would try to get more certain proof of the
ghost's story, which might be false.
•
While he was in this state of mind, some actors, who had often
given Hamlet great pleasure in the past, came to the court. He
had especially liked to hear one of them make a sad speech
describing the death of old Priam, King of Troy, and the grief of
Hecuba, his queen.
Hamlet welcomed his old friends and asked the actor if he
would repeat that speech for him. He did so in a manner that
almost made the scene come to life. He described the cruel
murder of the weak old king, with the destruction of his people
and city by fire; and he told of the mad grief of the old queen,
running up and down the palace, with only a simple cloth on her
head where a crown had been, and another to cover her body,
where she had once worn a royal dress. The speech caused tears
from everyone who stood near, and even the actor himself
delivered it in a broken voice and with real tears in his eyes.
This made Hamlet realize that while that actor could put such
great feeling into a story, and cry for Hecuba who had been dead
for hundreds of years, he himself was so emotionless that he had
let his revenge He asleep all this time in dull forgetfulness.
While he was thinking about actors and acting, and the
powerful effect which a good play has on those who see it, he
remembered the case of a murderer who saw a murder on the
stage and was so moved by the force of the scene that he
admitted to the crime which he had done. He decided that these
actors should play something like the murder of his father in
front of his uncle, and he would watch closely to see what effect
it might have on the king; he could then make up his mind with
more certainty if he were the murderer or not. He ordered a play
to be prepared, and invited the king and queen to attend its
performance.
The story of the play was the murder of a duke in Vienna. The
duke's name was Gonzago, and his wife's was Baptista. The play
showed how a certain Lucianus, a near relation of the duke,
poisoned him in his garden to get his property, and how the
murderer soon afterwards won the love of Gonzago's wife.
At the performance of this play, the king, who did not know
the trap which was set for him, was present with his queen and
the whole court. Hamlet sat very near him to watch his
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expressions. The play began with a conversation between
Gonzago and his wife. In this the lady made many promises of
love and said that she would never marry a second husband if she
lived longer than Gonzago. She even wished that God would
strike her down if she ever took a second husband, and added
that no women did so except those who kill their first husbands.
Hamlet saw the king change colour at these words, and knew
that it was hateful both to him and to the queen. But when
Lucianus, according to the story, came to poison Gonzago while
he was asleep in his garden, Claudius was so nervous that he was
unable to sit through the rest of the play. Calling for lights, and
pretending or feeling a sudden sickness, he quickly left the
theatre. After he had gone, the play was stopped.
Now Hamlet had seen enough to be satisfied that the words of
the ghost were true. He swore to Horatio that he would believe
everything it had said. But before he could make up his mind
what form his revenge should take, now that he knew his uncle
to be his father's murderer, his mother asked him to attend a
private meeting in her room.
•
It was the king's wish that the queen should send for Hamlet, so
that she could inform her son how much his recent behaviour
had displeased them both. Wishing to know all that happened at
this meeting, and thinking that Hamlet's mother might not tell
him everything that Hamlet said, the king ordered old Polonius
to hide behind the curtains in the queen's room; there, unseen, he
could hear all their conversation.
As soon as Hamlet came, his mother began to speak angrily
about his bad behaviour. She told him that he had given great
offence to his father — she meant the king, his uncle, to whom she
was now married.
Hamlet was angry that she should give such a dear and
respectful name as father to the murderer of his true father, and
he replied, sharply, 'Mother, you have much offended my father.'
The queen asked him if he had forgotten who he was
speaking to.
'Oh!' replied Hamlet.'I wish I could forget.You are the queen,
your husband's brother's wife; and you are my mother. I wish you
were not what you are.' Taking her by the wrist, made her sit
down. He wanted to try to make her understand everything that
was wrong with the way she was living.
She was frightened by his strange manner and worried that, in
his madness, he might harm her. She cried out, and a voice was
heard from behind the curtains,'Help, help, the queen!'
When Hamlet heard this, he thought it was the king himself
who was hidden there. He pulled out his sword and struck at the
place where the voice came from. At last the voice stopped and
he believed the person to be dead. When he pulled out the body,
though, he found that it was not the king - it was Polonius, the
old minister, who had hidden there as a secret listener.
'Oh!' shouted the queen. 'What a foolish and bloody act!'
'A bloody act, mother,' replied Hamlet, 'but not as bad as
yours, when you killed a king and married his brother.'
Hamlet had said too much to stop here. Even though the
faults of parents should be treated gently by their children, in the
case of great crimes a son may speak with some unkindness to his
own mother, as long as that unkindness is meant for her good
and to turn her from her bad ways. This good prince, in moving
words, showed the queen that she was wrong to be so forgetful of
the dead king, his father; he reminded her that in a short space of
time she married his brother, his suspected murderer. After the
promises which she had made to her first husband, such an act
was enough to make people doubt all promises made by women,
to think that all goodness was a pretence, and their religion only
a form of words.
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He showed her two pictures — one of the late king, her first
husband, and the other of the present king, her second husband —
and he told her to notice the difference. What nobility there was
on his father's face! How like a god he looked! And how ugly the
second face was, the face of a man who had destroyed his own
good brother. And the queen was bitterly ashamed that he was
forcing her to look at her own soul, which she now saw was so
black and evil.
Then Hamlet asked her how she could continue to live with
Claudius and be a wife to the man who had murdered her first
husband, and stolen his crown ...
As he was speaking, the ghost of his father entered the room.
In great fear, Hamlet asked what it wanted. The ghost said that it
had come to remind him of the revenge which Hamlet had
promised but seemed to have forgotten. It also told him to speak
to his mother again before her grief and fear killed her. Then it
disappeared, and was seen only by Hamlet. He could not make
his mother see it either by pointing to where it stood or by any
description of it. But she was greatly frightened all this time to
hear him talking to nothing, as it seemed to her; and she believed
it to be the result of the disorder in his mind.
Hamlet begged her not to think that it was his madness, rather
than her own offences, which had brought his father's spirit to
earth again. He told her to feel the beating of his heart - how
regular it was, not like a madman's. And he begged her, with tears
in his eyes, to admit to heaven what was past, and in future to
avoid the company of the king. When she showed herself to be a
mother to him by respecting his father's memory, he would ask
her to forgive him as a son. She promised to do what he asked.
Now Hamlet had time to consider who it was that he had
unfortunately and unwisely killed. When he saw that it was
Polonius, the father of Ophelia, whom he so dearly loved, he
cried bitterly for what he had done.
•
The death of Polonius gave the king an excuse to send Hamlet
out of the kingdom. He would gladly have put him to death, but
he feared the people, who liked Hamlet, and the queen, who, in
spite of all her faults, loved her son dearly. Pretending to provide
for Hamlet's safety, so that he would not be punished for
Polonius's death, Claudius put him on a ship to England in the
care of two men from his court. He sent letters with these men
to the English court (which at that time was ruled by Denmark),
giving orders that Hamlet should be put to death as soon as he
landed on English ground.
Hamlet suspected some dishonesty, and found the letters
secretly at night. He rubbed out his own name and put in its
place the names of the two men who were in charge of him, so
that they would be put to death. Then, closing the letters, he put
them back where he had found them.
Soon after this, the ship was attacked and a fight started.
During this fight, Hamlet showed his courage by jumping, with
his sword in his hand, on to the enemy's ship. His own ship sailed
away in fear, leaving him to his death. The two men from the
king's court went on to England, carrying the letters which
Hamlet had changed.
But the attackers proved to be gentle enemies. Knowing that
their prisoner was the prince, and hoping that he would speak for
them at court, they put Hamlet on shore at the nearest port in
Denmark. From this place, he wrote to the king, telling him of
the strange chance which had brought him back to his own
country, and saying that he would return to the court the next
day. When he arrived home, the first thing that met his eyes was a
very sad sight.
This was the funeral of the young and beautiful Ophelia, once
his dear lady. From the time of her father's death, this young girl
had begun to lose her mind. She suffered so much because he
had been cruelly killed by the prince whom she loved, that in a
short time she became quite mad.
There was a beautiful tree which grew over a stream, and you
could see its leaves in the water. She came here one day, with
crowns of leaves and grass which she had made. She was climbing
up to hang these in the tree when a branch broke, and she was
thrown into the water. Her clothes held her up for a time, but it
was not long before her clothes, heavy with water, pulled her
down to a muddy and miserable death.
It was this beautiful lady's funeral, attended by her brother
Laertes, the king, the queen and the whole court, which was
being performed when Hamlet arrived. He did not know what
all this ceremony meant at first, and stood on one side. He saw
the flowers scattered on the grave, which the queen herself threw
in; and as she did so, she said, 'I ought to have scattered them on
your marriage bed, sweet girl, not on your grave.You should have
been my Hamlet's wife.'
He saw Laertes jump into the grave, mad with grief, and tell
the gravediggers to pile mountains of earth on him so that he
might be buried with her.
Then Hamlet's love for this beautiful girl came back to him,
and he could not bear that a brother should show such grief,
when he loved Ophelia better than forty thousand brothers. He
came out from where he stood and jumped into the grave where
Laertes was, even madder than he. Laertes thought of Hamlet as
the cause of his father's and his sister's death, and seized him by the
throat as an enemy, until they were separated.
After the funeral, Hamlet begged forgiveness for having
thrown himself into the grave. He said that he could not bear that
anyone should show more grief than himself at the death of the
beautiful Ophelia. And for a time these two noble young men
seemed to be friends again. •
The king, Hamlet's evil uncle, planned to use Laertes's grief and
anger over the death of his father and Ophelia to destroy Hamlet.
He persuaded Laertes to call on Hamlet to see which of them
was more skilful in a friendly sword fight. Hamlet accepted, and a
day was fixed for the match.
The whole court was present at this match, and Laertes, by
order of the king, prepared a poisoned weapon. Hamlet chose a
sword; he did not suspect Laertes of being disloyal, so he did not
examine Laertes's weapon carefully. Instead of a sword without a
point, which the laws demanded, Laertes used one with a point,
and poisoned.
At first Laertes only played with Hamlet, and allowed him to
gain some advantage. The king pretended to be pleased with this,
and praised Hamlet's success. But soon Laertes became angry, cut
Hamlet with his poisoned weapon, and gave him his death
wound. Hamlet still did not know the truth, but he became more
violent too and, in the struggle, exchanged his own weapon for
Laertes's poisoned one. With this he repaid Laertes for the stroke
he had given him, so that Laertes was caught by his own
dishonesty.
At this moment the queen cried out that she had been
poisoned. She had accidentally drunk out of a bowl which the
king had prepared for Hamlet, in case he got warm in the fight
and called for a drink. Into this the evil king had put a deadly
poison, to make sure of Hamlet's death if Laertes failed. He had
forgotten to warn the queen about this bowl, and she died
immediately.
Hamlet now suspected some evil, and ordered the doors to be
shut while he tried to discover it. Feeling his life leaving him as a
result of the wound which Hamlet had given him, Laertes told
Hamlet about the poisoned point, and said that Hamlet had less
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than an hour to live, as no medicine could cure him. With his last
words, he accused the king of being the one who had planned
these evil acts.Then, begging Hamlet's forgiveness, he died.
When Hamlet understood that his end was near, he suddenly
turned on his false uncle and pushed the point of the poisoned
sword into his heart. With this action he completed the promise
which he had made to his father's spirit that he would take
revenge for his murder.
Then, feeling that his breath was failing, Hamlet turned to his
dear friend Horatio, who had watched all these sad events. It
seemed for a moment as i f Horatio would kill himself to go to
his death with the prince, but Hamlet begged him to live so that
he could tell his story to the world. Horatio promised that he
would make a true report, since he knew of everything that had
happened.
Satisfied, the noble heart of Hamlet stopped beating; and
Horatio, with many tears, prayed for the spirit of this sweet
prince. Hamlet was a loving and gentle prince, and greatly
admired for his many noble and princely qualities. If he had
lived, he would no doubt have proved a most royal and excellent
King of Denmark.

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