Hamlet

Also known as: Hamlet the Dane / Lord Hamlet / young Hamlet · Family: Denmark · Role: prince · First appears: Hamlet · Act I, Scene I

As Denmark’s prince, Hamlet remains at Elsinore instead of returning to Wittenberg. After Horatio, Marcellus, and Barnardo tell him that his father’s apparition has appeared on watch, Hamlet follows the Ghost, who reveals himself as his father and says that Claudius, his brother, murdered him and took his life, crown, and queen. Hamlet accepts the command to seek revenge, asks Horatio and Marcellus to conceal his planned antic disposition, and continues his strained ties with Claudius and Gertrude, while Ophelia reports that he has declared his affection for her and Polonius orders her to reject his visits.

Hamlet’s apparent madness deepens after Ophelia denies him access, and Claudius, Gertrude, and Polonius use Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and a secretly observed meeting with Ophelia to investigate him. Hamlet retains his old fellowship with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, but discovers that they were sent for him; he commissions a play showing a poisoning like his father’s murder and, with Horatio, confirms Claudius’s guilty reaction. After confronting his mother, while Polonius hides behind the arras, Hamlet kills Polonius by mistake, is sent to England under Claudius’s orders, and distrusts the schoolfellows escorting him. He escapes after being taken prisoner by pirates and forges a commission ordering Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to be executed instead of himself.

On his return, Hamlet encounters Yorick’s skull, publicly declares his love for Ophelia, and grapples with Laertes at her grave. Claudius and Laertes arrange a poisoned fencing match against him; Hamlet and Laertes wound one another, and Laertes reveals the treachery before dying. Hamlet then forces the poisoned drink on Claudius, is fatally poisoned himself, and gives his dying voice to Fortinbras. Fortinbras orders Hamlet’s body carried with a soldier’s funeral, saying he might have “prov’d most royally.”