William Shakespeare

● One of the greatest playwrights in history, crafted stories that continue to resonate
across time and cultures. His works, ranging from comedies to tragedies, are marked by
intricate plots, compelling characters, and universal themes such as love, power,
betrayal, and ambition.
● Mastery of language, inventing new words, expressions, and a poetic form that breathes
life
● Elizabethan era, a time of great change and cultural flourishing. The English
Renaissance, with its focus on art, literature, and humanism, provided fertile ground for
his growth as a playwright and poet.
● Reflection of the human condition, making his plays timeless. His exploration of complex
psychological motives and social issues, like class, race, and gender, ensures that his
works are continually relevant, whether studied in classrooms or performed on stages
worldwide.

Main characters in play

● Hamlet: The tragic hero, Hamlet is introspective, philosophical, and consumed by his
quest for revenge. His indecision and tendency toward overthinking lead to his tragic
downfall.

● Claudius: The antagonist, Claudius is a manipulative and power-hungry figure who

murders his brother to become king. His guilt surfaces later in the play, showing the
moral complexity of his character.

● Gertrude: Hamlet’s mother, who marries Claudius shortly after her husband’s death.
She is often viewed as morally weak or unaware of Claudius’ actions, though she cares
deeply for Hamlet.

● Ophelia: Polonius’ daughter and Hamlet’s love interest, Ophelia is driven to madness by
Hamlet’s behavior and the death of her father. She represents innocence caught in the
crossfire of political intrigue.

● Polonius: The king’s advisor, Polonius is a meddling figure whose death at Hamlet’s
hands sets off a chain of tragic events. He is often seen as foolish, but his loyalty to the
throne drives his actions.

● Laertes: Polonius’ son and a foil to Hamlet, Laertes seeks revenge for his father’s death
but acts more swiftly than Hamlet, making him a contrast to the prince’s hesitance.

Summary
As Shakespeare’s play opens, Hamlet is mourning his father, who has been killed, and
lamenting the behaviour of his mother, Gertrude, who married his uncle Claudius within a month
of his father’s death. The ghost of his father appears to Hamlet, informs him that he was
poisoned by Claudius, and commands Hamlet to avenge his death. Though instantly galvanized
by the ghost’s command, Hamlet decides on further reflection to seek evidence in corroboration
of the ghostly visitation, since, he knows, the Devil can assume a pleasing shape and can easily
mislead a person whose mind is perturbed by intense grief. Hamlet adopts a guise of
melancholic and mad behaviour as a way of deceiving Claudius and others at court—a guise
made all the easier by the fact that Hamlet is genuinely melancholic.

Hamlet’s dearest friend, Horatio, agrees with him that Claudius has unambiguously confirmed
his guilt. Driven by a guilty conscience, Claudius attempts to ascertain the cause of Hamlet’s
odd behaviour by hiring Hamlet’s onetime friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy on him.
Hamlet quickly sees through the scheme and begins to act the part of a madman in front of
them. To the pompous old courtier Polonius, it appears that Hamlet is lovesick over Polonius’s
daughter Ophelia. Despite Ophelia’s loyalty to him, Hamlet thinks that she, like everyone else, is
turning against him; he feigns madness with her also and treats her cruelly as if she were
representative, like his own mother, of her “treacherous” sex.

Hamlet contrives a plan to test the ghost’s accusation. With a group of visiting actors, Hamlet
arranges the performance of a story representing circumstances similar to those described by
the ghost, under which Claudius poisoned Hamlet’s father. When the play is presented as
planned, the performance clearly unnerves Claudius.

Moving swiftly in the wake of the actors’ performance, Hamlet confronts his mother in her
chambers with her culpable loyalty to Claudius. When he hears a man’s voice behind the
curtains, Hamlet stabs the person he understandably assumes to be Claudius. The victim,
however, is Polonius, who has been eavesdropping in an attempt to find out more about
Hamlet’s erratic behaviour. This act of violence persuades Claudius that his own life is in
danger. He sends Hamlet to England escorted by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, with secret
orders that Hamlet be executed by the king of England. When Hamlet discovers the orders, he
alters them to make his two friends the victims instead.

Upon his return to Denmark, Hamlet hears that Ophelia is dead of a suspected suicide (though
more probably as a consequence of her having gone mad over her father’s sudden death) and
that her brother Laertes seeks to avenge Polonius’s murder. Claudius is only too eager to
arrange the duel. Carnage ensues. Hamlet dies of a wound inflicted by a sword that Claudius
and Laertes have conspired to tip with poison; in the scuffle, Hamlet realizes what has
happened and forces Laertes to exchange swords with him, so that Laertes too dies—as he
admits, justly killed by his own treachery. Gertrude, also present at the duel, drinks from the cup
of poison that Claudius has had placed near Hamlet to ensure his death. Before Hamlet himself
dies, he manages to stab Claudius and to entrust the clearing of his honour to his friend Horatio.

Important lines
 ● Brevity is the soul of wit. (Polonius, Act 2 Scene 2)
● To be, or not to be, that is the question. (Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 1)
● The rest is silence. (Hamlet, Act 5 Scene 2)

Inner Meanings and Themes:

• The Complexity of Revenge: Hamlet revolves around the idea of vengeance

and its destructive consequences. Hamlet’s hesitation to kill Claudius reflects deeper moral
questions about justice and retribution, as he grapples with the cost of revenge on his soul.
• Madness and Sanity: Hamlet’s feigned madness mirrors the real mental
unraveling of Ophelia, showing how grief and guilt can distort reality. The play asks whether
Hamlet’s madness is entirely an act or if his indecision is a sign of real internal instability.
• Death and Mortality: Shakespeare confronts death head-on, particularly in
Hamlet’s famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy. The play reflects on death’s inevitability and the
mystery of the afterlife, themes that make the characters confront their own mortality.
• Corruption and Power: The court of Denmark is rotten at its core. Claudius’
usurpation of the throne and the deceit that follows highlights how the pursuit of power can lead
to moral decay.

References

Bevington, David. “Hamlet | Summary, Plot, and Characters.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 29 Oct.

2024, www.britannica.com/topic/Hamlet-by-Shakespeare.

Famous Quotes | Hamlet | Royal Shakespeare Company.

www.rsc.org.uk/hamlet/about-the-play/famous-quotes.

“Hamlet.” Shakespeare Birthplace Trust,

www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/shakespedia/shakespeares-plays/hamlet