A Danish prince, a ghost and a revenge that takes five acts, summarised act by act around the six questions students are asked.
A play that rewards a first read because the questions are built in: is he mad, why does he wait, what is the ghost for. The language is the hurdle, not the plot, and the Gutenberg text is free. Four out of five (draft).
Every guide comes as a video and a full written article. Pick the one you need: the review is spoiler-free, the ending explained is not.
Hamlet summary act by act, built around the six exam questions: the ghost, madness, the play within the play, the delay, Ophelia and the ending. Our word counts, a body count by act, full spoilers.
Hamlet is Shakespeare’s tragedy about a Danish prince, a ghost and a revenge that takes five acts. We use the free Project Gutenberg text, ebook #1524, titled The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark; its header names no editor or edition.
Below is a summary built around the six questions students are asked: the ghost, the madness, the play within the play, the delay, Ophelia and the ending, with act and scene numbers and our own word counts. Spoilers throughout.
A play that rewards a first read because the questions are built in: is he mad, why does he wait, what is the ghost for. The language is the hurdle, not the plot, and the Gutenberg text is free. Four out of five (draft). Read it if: you have hamlet on a syllabus and want the exam questions answered with act and scene numbers; you want the story of the ghost, the delay and the duel in plain words; you like tragedies where the hero talks more than he acts. Skip it if: you want a fast plot: the middle acts are mostly talk; verse and elizabethan wording slow you down and you will not use notes; you want a modern retelling, not the play itself.
Hamlet summary act by act, built around the six exam questions: the ghost, madness, the play within the play, the delay, Ophelia and the ending. Our word counts, a body count by act, full spoilers. Summary: Hamlet →
Prince Hamlet's father, the king of Denmark, is dead, and his uncle Claudius has taken the crown and married Hamlet's mother, Gertrude. A ghost tells Hamlet that Claudius murdered the old king with poison. Hamlet tests the ghost, delays, kills Polonius by mistake, and the play ends with Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude and Laertes dead and Fortinbras taking over.
In my reading he is acting, and the grief under the act is real. In act one, scene five he warns his friends he may put on an antic disposition, and in act three, scene four he tells his mother he is mad in craft. In act five he also blames his madness for wronging Laertes, so he uses it as a shield.
The play gives several reasons and Hamlet cannot name one: he doubts whether the ghost is honest (act two, scene two), he refuses to strike Claudius at prayer (act three, scene three), and in act four, scene four he blames bestial oblivion or a craven scruple of thinking too precisely. By our word count the ghost demands revenge about 18 percent of the way through the spoken words, and Hamlet stabs Claudius at about 98 percent.
The Mousetrap, in act three, scene two, tests the ghost's story. Hamlet asks Horatio to watch Claudius, who rises and calls for light when the murderer pours poison in the sleeper's ears. It also tells Claudius that Hamlet knows.
Hamlet, by a wide margin. In the Project Gutenberg text we counted 29,534 spoken words, excluding speaker names, scene headings and stage directions. Hamlet speaks 11,550 of them, about 39 percent, in 358 speeches. Claudius is next with about 14 percent.
Eight die within the story: Polonius in act three, Ophelia in act four, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (reported in act five), and Gertrude, Laertes, Claudius and Hamlet in the final scene. The old king was murdered before the play begins.
The Project Gutenberg text, ebook number 1524, titled The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Its header names no editor or edition. It has five acts and twenty scenes, and every act and scene number on this page follows its headings.
