Introduction
Shakespeare
William
Shakespeare was born in
The
next thing we know is that he married Anne Hathaway in 1582, and they had three
children: Suzanna (born in 1583), and a
boy and a girl (Hamlet and Judith born at the same time in 1585.
After
that, we know nothing until 1592, when he was already writing successful plays
in
Shakespeare
died at
Hamlet By Shakespeare
Hamlet’s
sorrow
Gertrude was the Queen of Denmark. Two months after the
death of the King of Denmark, she married Claudius,
his brother.
She did not know that
Claudius was evil. People believed that he had killed his brother so that he
himself might become king – instead of Hamlet. Hamlet was the son of Gertrude
and the king who had just died.
Hamlet loved his dead father and was very sad at his
death. His mother's marriage made Hamlet even more unhappy. He became tired of
the world; he had no more pleasure in the things he used to do. He stopped
wanting to read, to play, and to do all the things that young men love to do.
"Why has my mother so soon forgotten my father?" he thought. "He
was such a good husband to her, and so good a father to me.
Claudius said to Hamlet: "Now, Hamlet, you are like
a son to me. Why are you so unhappy?"
"Try not to think so much about your dead
father," said Hamlet's mother. "You know that everything that lives
must die some time. Why do you still seem to be sad"
"I am not just pretending to be sad," said
Hamlet I wear my black clothes because I really am sad at my father's
death."
Neither Hamlet's mother nor Claudius could do anything
to make Hamlet happier. He would not take off his black clothes and he would
not laugh. He felt angry that his mother should marry a man as evil as his
uncle.
Horatio
speaks
Horatio, Hamlet's friend, came to him and told him a
strange story. Horatio said, "The spirit of your father was seen
on the walls of the castle in the middle of the night.
It has visited the castle on two or three nights and the guards have been very
frightened. I saw it: it was dressed like the old king before a battle. I tried
to speak to it, but it didn't answer."
"Did you see its face?" said Hamlet.
"Yes, we did," Horatio answered. "It
seemed sad rather than angry."
"I shall watch tonight," said Hamlet.
"Perhaps it will come again. I'll speak to it. I'll come to you on the walls
between eleven and twelve. Say nothing about this."
Horatio went away
“My father's ghost” Hamlet thought. "Something is
wrong. Evil can't be hidden. When night comes, I shall know."
The ghost
When night came, Hamlet joined the soldiers who were guarding
the walls. Suddenly Horatio cried out. The ghost
had appeared again!
When he saw his father's ghost, Hamlet soon forgot his
fear and spoke bravely to it.
"Whether you are something good or something bad,
I'll speak to you. You appear to be so much like my father that
I shall call you by your name - Hamlet, King, Father!
Tell me why you have come and what we should do to help you."
The ghost held up its hand and pointed away from the
soldiers.
"It
wants to speak to you alone," cried Horatio. "Don't go with it; it
may lead you into the sea or take you to the top of
a high
cliff."
Hamlet was not afraid. He followed the ghost.
As soon as Hamlet and the ghost were alone, the ghost
spoke. "I am the ghost of your father. I must walk in the night until the wrongs
done while I was alive are set right. Listen! Claudius murdered me, your
father. When I was sleeping he poured poisonous liquid into my ears and caused
my death. He murdered me, his brother, and then he took my crown and my queen.
And this man, Claudius, is now King of Denmark! Evil must be paid for! He must
die.
Deal with him. But do not hurt your mother."
"I promise. I'll forget everything I have learned
from books," said Hamlet. "I shall remember only my promise to
you!"
When Hamlet's friends ran up to him, they asked him to
tell them what the ghost had said. But Hamlet did not tell even his best friend
what had happened.
"Promise me that you will never tell anyone what
you have seen tonight," he said.
"And, if I seem to act strangely, don't tell anyone the cause
Hamlet did not want Claudius to think that anything was wrong. So he pretended
to be mad. He even pretended to Ophelia, the beautiful lady whom he loved, that
he was mad.
The actors
Claudius, who trusted no one, sent for two young men who
had been Hamlet's friends when they were all children.
Claudius wanted them to try to find out the Hamlet's
strange ways.
When Hamlet saw them, he wondered why they had come to
visit him.
"Why did you come here?" he asked. "Were you ordered to come, or did you
come freely?"
"We were sent for."
"I'll tell you why you were sent for," said
Hamlet. "I have lately lost all my joy in the beauty of the earth and sky.
Man is a wonderful thing - so wise, so beautiful;
but man does not please me now, nor woman.
"Perhaps these players may please you. They are coming to act a play in the
castle."
Soon the actors arrived, and Hamlet was very pleased to
see them. He asked one of the actors to say a few lines
to him, telling about the death of an old king. The actor
told how the old king was killed and his city was burned.
Then he spoke about the sad queen, who ran about the
castle with a cloth on her head instead of a crown.
The actor told the story so well that he even had tears
in his eyes.
When Hamlet saw the actor weeping, he felt very angry
with himself.
"This actor can weep for a queen he never
knew," thought Hamlet. "But I have done nothing at all about my
father's death."
Suddenly he thought of a plan. "I'll ask the actors
to act a story which is like the death of my father. I'll ask Claudius
to see the play and see what he himself did. This may
prove to me that Claudius killed my father.
Then I shall be completely certain that the ghost spoke
the truth."
The play
That evening Hamlet met Horatio. He said to his old
friend, "Watch Claudius carefully during the play Watch his face."
When the actors were ready to begin the play, Hamlet sat
next to Ophelia. Claudius, who knew
nothing of Hamlet's plan, was there with the queen and all their friends.
The play began. The queen in the play told the king how
much she loved him. She promised never to marry
a second husband if the king died before her.
"Only women who kill their husbands marry
again," she said.
The king in the play fell asleep in his garden and was
killed by his brother's son.
Claudius stood up. He could bear no more of the play. It
was so much like the way in which he had killed
his own brother.
"What is it, my lord?" asked the queen.
"What is the matter?"
Polonius cried, "Stop the play!"
"light! Light!" shouted the king. "Away!
All go away!"
Hamlet was sure now that the ghost had spoken the truth.
He was now certain that his uncle had killed his father.
All that remained for him to do was to carry out the
ghost's command.
Hamlet’s
mother
The queen sent a servant to Hamlet asking him to go to
her room. While he was on his way to his mother's room, he saw Claudius
kneeling and praying. It seemed to him that Claudius was telling God about the
evil that he had done.
"I can kill him now," thought Hamlet,
"but if I kill him while he is praying, he'll go to heaven. I must choose
another
time to kill him - when he is angry or asleep."
Ophelia's father, Polonius, was hiding behind a curtain
in the queen's room. He had promised Claudius that he
would hide and listen to everything Hamlet said. The
queen knew that Polonius was there.
Hamlet went into the queen's room.
"What's the matter, mother?" he asked.
"You have made your father very angry."
"My father! Claudius is not my father. You have
done a great wrong to my father."
"Have you forgotten who I am?" said the queen.
"No! You are the queen, wife of your husband's
brother, and you are my mother. I wish you were not!
No, do not move. Sit down, while I tell you all about
yourself."
"What! Do you want to kill me?" she cried.
Then she shouted, "Help! Help!"
The
death of Polonius
When he heard the queen's cry, Polonius shouted from
behind the curtain, "Help! Help!"
"What is it? A rat?" cried Hamlet. He drew his
sword and struck through the curtain. He thought that Claudius
was hiding there, and he hoped that he had killed him.
Then he drew back the curtain and saw that he had killed Polonius.
"Oh! What have you done?" cried the queen.
"What I have done," said Hamlet, "is
almost as bad a thing as killing a king and marrying his brother."
"How dare you speak to me like that?"
"How could you forget about my father so quickly
and be happy with my uncle? What made you marry him?
You can't call it love, because at your age the blood is
cold. What was it that made you blind?"
"Oh, Hamlet, say no more!" the queen cried.
"How can you live with such a man - a man not worth
the twentieth part of your first husband?"
"Say no more! No more!"
The ghost again
As Hamlet became more and more angry, the ghost appeared
before him.
"Oh!" Hamlet cried. "Have you come to
tell me that, in my anger, I have forgotten to do what I have promised?"
"He's mad," the queen said to herself.
"Do not forget your promise," said the ghost.
"But see how afraid your mother is. Speak to her, Hamlet. Help her."
"What's the matter, mother?" said Hamlet.
"What's the matter with you?" cried the queen
"You look at nothing, and speak to it. Oh, my son, what are you looking
at?"
"At him! At him!"
"Who are you speaking to?"
"Can't you see anything there? Can't you hear
anything?" cried Hamlet.
"Nothing at all."
"Look there! See how he moves away. It's my
father."
"There is no ghost. You see it because you are
mad," his mother replied.
"I am not mad.
My father's ghost has come here because of what you have done. Pray to
God to forgive you.
Don't go back to the king and don't behave as his wife
any more.
"You are mad!"
"I'm not mad; but you may let Claudius think I'm
mad, and don't tell him what I have said to you. Promise me that. Good
night."
To
Claudius knew that something was wrong when he saw
Hamlet's mother.
"How is Hamlet?" he asked.
"He's as mad as the sea and the wind when they
fight each other," cried the queen. "When he heard something
move behind the curtain in my room, he cried in his mad
anger, 'A rat! A rat!' and killed Polonius."
Claudius said, "The mad young prince is dangerous.
We must send him away to
He sent for Hamlet and said, "I am sending you to
may try to kill you when they hear how Polonius died.
Get ready quickly; the ship is waiting."
Claudius did not tell Hamlet that he had written a
letter to the King of England. He sent this letter with Hamlet's
two "friends", and they knew that in it he
asked the king to kill Hamlet as soon as he reached
Hamlet's escape
When he was at sea, Hamlet began to feel certain that
Claudius had planned some evil. He did not trust his two "friends".
One night he got up and looked for the letter that his friends were carrying.
He opened the letter and read that Claudius had asked the King of England to
kill him. He changed the names in the letter so that it asked the King
of
The next day, Hamlet's ship met some pirates, who
attacked the ship to take its goods. During the battle Hamlet jumped on the
pirates' ship to fight. While he was there, his own ship sailed away.
The pirates were kind to Hamlet when they found out that
he was a prince. They made him promise to do something for them later in return
for his freedom. They put him safely on
shore in
Ophelia's grave
When Hamlet returned home the next day, he saw two old
men digging a grave.
"Whose grave is this?" he asked.
But the old men did not say that it was Ophelia's grave.
Ophelia had begun to grow mad when Hamlet killed
Polonius, her father. She could hardly believe that the man she loved had done
such a thing. She began to gather flowers and give them to the people at the court.
One day she wanted to get some flowers from the branch of a tree over a stream.
While she was climbing on the branch, it suddenly broke, and Ophelia fell. Her
dress, heavy with water, pulled her down to the bottom, and she died.
While Hamlet was at the grave, the king and queen and
their servants came, carrying the body of Ophelia.
Laertes, her brother, was with them.
Hamlet saw Laertes standing near the grave and talking
about Ophelia.
Then he saw the queen throw some flowers on the grave.
"Sweet flowers to a sweet lady," said the
queen. "I hoped that you would be my Hamlet's wife. I wanted to throw
flowers on your marriage-bed, not on your grave."
Suddenly Laertes cried, "Don't throw any more earth
into the grave. Let me hold her once more in my arms!" Then
he jumped wildly into Ophelia's grave.
Hamlet ran forward and jumped into the grave beside
Laertes.
"I loved Ophelia more than forty thousand brothers
could love her," he shouted.
At once Laertes began to fight Hamlet. The servants who were
standing near the grave stopped the two angry men. They pulled them out of the
grave. Hamlet could not understand why Laertes was so angry with him. He did
not know that Claudius wanted Laertes to kill Hamlet, and so he had told
Laertes lies about the way Polonius, his father, was killed.
Hamlet's death is planned
After Hamlet had left Ophelia's
grave, Claudius spoke again to Laertes about their plan to kill Hamlet.
They planned to arrange a duel with swords between
Laertes and Hamlet. The swords that were used in such duels were not dangerous:
they had something on the end which covered their points. Claudius told Laertes
to use a sword without anything on the end. This sword would be very dangerous
and could kill a man.
Laertes wanted to make certain that he would kill
Hamlet, so they also planned to put some poison on the point of his sword.
Claudius promised to give Hamlet some poison to drink if Laertes did not wound
him.
The duel
Laertes entered the big hall of the castle with the king
and queen and their servants.
Hamlet tried to act like a friend. "Come," he
said, "let us have a friendly fight."
At first Hamlet seemed to be winning. Claudius offered
him the cup of poison, but Hamlet did not drink it "'I'll drink it
later," he said. But the queen wanted to show Hamlet how happy she was to
see him winning. So she picked up the cup of poison and drank it.
Soon Laertes wounded Hamlet with his poisoned sword. In
the fight which followed, Hamlet and Laertes dropped their swords and, by
mistake, Hamlet picked up Laertes' sword.
Then he wounded Laertes with the poisoned sword.
Suddenly the queen fell to the floor.
"The queen!" Hamlet cried. "What's the matter?"
"She feels sick at the sight of the blood running
from your wound," said Claudius.
But before she died, the queen cried, "The drink,
the drink. It's poison!"
Hamlet dies
"Shut all the doors!"
cried Hamlet.
Laertes fell, wounded and poisoned.
"Nothing can save you, Hamlet," he cried.
"I have wounded you with a poisoned sword. I have been wounded with it
too. Your mother has drunk a cup of poison. The king has caused all this to
happen."
Hamlet looked at the sword in his hand. "Poisoned
and sharp!" he said. He ran towards Claudius. "Here is the best place
for a poisoned sword," he cried, as he drove the point into the king's
heart.
Then he watched Claudius fall and die.
"It is right that the king should die," cried
the dying Laertes. "He mixed the
poison which has killed him. Forgive me, Hamlet. It was not you who caused my father's death and
mine."
Hamlet knew that he was dying. He turned to his oldest
friend, Horatio. "Horatio," he said. "I am dying Tell the world
what has happened."
"There is still some poison left in this cup,"
cried Horatio. "I shall die, too."
"Don't drink it, if you ever loved me," Hamlet
cried "You must live and tell my story to the world.
Then people will know the truth. - The rest is
silence."
The end