Hamlet

Who He Is

Hamlet is the prince of Denmark, son of the dead king and of Gertrude, nephew and stepson of Claudius. He is a student at Wittenberg whom the king wants to keep at Elsinore, and he is in mourning for his father while the court is already celebrating his mother's marriage. On receiving from the Ghost the order to avenge the murder, he spends the play between feigned madness, doubt about what the ghost really is, the search for proof and the postponement of the blow, until the revenge is carried out when his own life is already lost. He dies in the duel, after killing Claudius, and leaves the throne to Fortinbras and to Horatio the task of telling his story.

Trajectory

In Act I, Scene 2, Claudius asks him to give up his mourning and stay at Elsinore, without returning to Wittenberg, and the queen insists. Hamlet yields only to his mother, and alone laments the haste of the marriage. The distance between what he feels and what he shows is already in what he answers the court:

In Act I, Scene 4, on the battlements, he follows the Ghost, and draws his sword so that his friends will leave him free. In Act I, Scene 5, he hears his father reveal the poison poured into his ear in the orchard and swears to remember. He makes Horatio and Marcellus swear silence on the sword, with the Ghost's voice echoing from beneath the stage, and asks them not to betray his future pretense.

In Act II, Scene 1, he appears to Ophelia disheveled, squeezes her wrist, sighs and leaves without taking his eyes off her. In Act II, Scene 2, he mocks Polonius, wrings from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern the confession that they were sent for, asks the actors for the speech about Pyrrhus and Priam and for the play The Murder of Gonzago. Alone, he reproaches his own inaction and decides to test the king through the theater.

In Act III, Scene 1, he speaks alone about living and dying and then treats Ophelia harshly, sending her to a convent. In Act III, Scene 2, he asks Horatio to watch the king's face during the poisoning scene, and Claudius's reaction convinces him of his guilt. In Act III, Scene 3, he finds the king on his knees, raises his sword and gives up: killing him at prayer would be sending him to heaven. In Act III, Scene 4, he runs his sword through the curtain, convinced that he is killing the king, and kills Polonius. Then he rebukes his mother before the portraits of her two husbands, sees the Ghost, whom only he sees, and leaves dragging the body.

In Act IV he is always on the way to another place. In Act IV, Scene 2 and in Act IV, Scene 3, he answers in riddles about Polonius's body and is shipped off to England. In Act IV, Scene 4, he meets Fortinbras's army and reproaches himself alone:

In Act IV, Scene 6, the letter to Horatio tells that a pirate ship attacked his, that he alone was taken prisoner and that the pirates treated him generously.

In Act V, Scene 1, in the graveyard, he thinks about the death that makes the powerful and beggars equal and, on learning from the gravedigger that one of the skulls is Yorick's, his father's jester, he is shaken. When Laertes leaps into Ophelia's grave, he reveals himself and jumps in after him, and the two fight. In Act V, Scene 2, he tells Horatio that on the ship he swapped the letter that ordered his death for another, which condemns Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. In answering Horatio before the duel, his stance is different:

Wounded by the poisoned sword, Hamlet drives the blade into Claudius and makes him drink the wine, asks Horatio to tell his story, hears Fortinbras's cannons, names him as successor, says that the rest is silence and dies.

Themes Embodied

In the Act II soliloquy, Hamlet reproaches himself before the actor who weeps for Hecuba for no reason, and on the plain, in Act IV, he reproaches himself again before Fortinbras, who marches for a worthless piece of land.

The Hamlet of Act V does not answer the question of Act IV, he sets it aside. Where before he accused himself of having motive and means and not acting, now he accepts being ready, and the revenge is carried out only when there is no longer time to choose.

Relationships

• Claudius: the uncle and stepfather who, according to the Ghost, killed his father. Hamlet tests him through the play, spares him at prayer and kills him only at the end, in the duel he himself set up.
• Gertrude: the mother, whom the Ghost asks to be spared. Hamlet confronts her in her chamber, before the portraits of her two husbands.
• The Ghost: the father, who summons him to revenge and reappears in Act III, Scene 4.
• Ophelia: the girl he courted. He treats her harshly in Act III, Scene 1, provokes her again in Act III, Scene 2 and meets her again only at her burial.
• Polonius: Ophelia's father, who spies on him. Hamlet kills him by mistake behind the tapestry.
• Laertes: Polonius's son, who sees him as the villain for having killed his father and joins Claudius in the duel.
• Horatio: the friend to whom he entrusts the watch, the plan and, at the end, the story.
• Fortinbras: the other son with a father to avenge, who marches across Denmark in Act IV and claims the throne at the end.