Hamlet

Hamlet is Shakespeare's most famous play, a 400-year old tragedy about incest, revenge, madness, homicide, suicide and duels to the death.

The title character is the son of King Hamlet, who appears in a ghostly meeting to the young prince. The dead king accuses his brother (young Hamlet's uncle) of murdering him.

Hamlet's quest to avenge his father's murder destroys his own life. As Prince Hamlet investigates, he faces a conspiracy involving schoolmates Rosencrantz and Guildenstern; Ophelia's father Polonius; and even his own mother.

He betrays his suspicions inopportunely in an angry tirade and is watched closely from then on. Polonious, a pompous old fool who is the king's advisor, thinks Hamlet's acting strange out of love for Ophelia and orders her to break off her relationship with Hamlet.

Hamlet wonders why would his mother would betray her husband and marry his brother only two months after his death. He grows indecisive ("To be or not to be") and unsure about the ghost's story. He comes up with an idea to stage a pantomime play to check it.

"The play's the thing / Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King."

During the play, he makes a nuisance of himself, commenting on the action and teasing Ophelia with nasty double-entendres, but he gets confirmation of the ghost's accusation when the King sees a scene showing a man poisoned in his his sleep and clasping the widow in an adulterous embrace. The King orders them to stop the play and storms out.

Hamlet confronts his mother (Queen Gertrude) in her bedroom, not knowing that the king's advisor Polonious is hidden behind a wall hanging. Hearing a movement, Hamlet kills Polonius (for spying on him) while he is hidden. Ophelia, already upset over the sudden end of the courtship, goes crazy after learning Hamlet has killed her father and drowns herself.

Hamlet's only friend in the lengthy play, his schoolchum Horatio, is the only major character who doesn't die. When Hamlet feigns mental illness to cover his unusual activities, he confides to Horatio, "I am only mad north by northwest" and "There's a method to my madness".

Major film versions of the play have starred Laurence Olivier, Mel Gibson, Kenneth Branagh and Ethan Hawke. For years, Olivier's performance was considered an inapproachable ideal. The Gibson version used modernized English and portrayed a grittier, tougher Hamlet. The Branagh version, clocking in at 4 hours because it includes every line in the play, features Billy Crystal in a comic role as the gravedigger. The Ethan Hawke version is set in Manhattan with Denmark as a corporation and Julia Stiles as a girl friend driven to suicide by Hamlet's antics.

External links

• Hamlet for the Shakespeare-Impaired