The Exam Paper
The paper has six questions, one for each stretch of the play. What does the ghost want? Is Hamlet really mad? What is the play within the play for? Why does he wait so long? Who is to blame for Ophelia? And why does it end like that?
Full spoilers, ending included. A prince’s father is dead, his uncle wears the crown and has married his mother, and a ghost says murder. By the last scene eight characters have died, the prince among them, not counting the old king, who was killed before the play begins. I will answer each question act by act, with act and scene numbers so you can find the lines.
Which Text And How I Counted
This summary uses the Project Gutenberg text, ebook number fifteen twenty-four, titled The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Its header names no editor or edition, so I will not guess. Its own headings give five acts and twenty scenes, and every citation here follows them.
Now our numbers. I counted every spoken word, and left out speaker names, scene headings and stage directions. A letter read aloud counts for the person reading it. The total is twenty-nine thousand, five hundred and thirty-four words.
Hamlet speaks eleven thousand, five hundred and fifty of them. That is thirty-nine percent, in three hundred and fifty-eight speeches, and more than the next five characters combined. Claudius is next with fourteen percent. Polonius has nine, Horatio seven, Laertes five, Ophelia four.
Act One: What Does The Ghost Want?
Act one opens on a freezing night at Elsinore. Guards have seen a figure that looks like the dead king, and in the second scene we meet the court. Claudius is king, and he has married Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother. Hamlet says she did it within a month, and mutters, a little more than kin, and less than kind.
In scene five the ghost finally speaks to Hamlet, and this is the answer to question one. It says, revenge his foul and most unnatural murder. Claudius poured poison in the old king’s ear while he slept in the orchard, and the story of a snake bite was a lie.
But the ghost wants three things, not one. Take revenge on Claudius. Taint not your mind, and leave Gertrude to heaven. And remember me, which is its last line. Hamlet swears his friends to secrecy, warns that he may put on an antic disposition, and calls the time out of joint.
Our count: the ghost has only fourteen speeches, six hundred and seventy-six words, in two scenes. Its big speech in scene five runs three hundred and seventy-three words, the second longest in the play, so a character can matter far more than his airtime.
Act Two: Is Hamlet Really Mad?
Act two is where everyone starts diagnosing him. Ophelia tells her father that Hamlet came to her room, pale, with his clothes undone, sighed, and left. Polonius decides it is love madness, and in scene two he reads Hamlet’s love letter to the king and queen. Claudius sends for Hamlet’s old friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to find out what is wrong.
So is he mad? The play lets Hamlet answer himself. In act one he warns Horatio about an antic disposition. In act two he tells his friends he is but mad north-north-west, and knows a hawk from a handsaw. Polonius, in the same scene, admits there is method in it.
The count says madness is a main topic. The words mad and madness appear forty-three times in the play. Hamlet says them thirteen times, and act two uses them most. So when your teacher asks about madness, there is plenty to quote.
Here is the safest exam answer, in my reading. He is acting, and the grief under the act is real. In act three, scene four, he tells his mother he is mad in craft. When she cannot see the ghost, he insists his pulse is healthy. Yet in act five he blames his madness for wronging Laertes, so he also uses it as a shield.
Act Three: What Is The Play For?
At the end of act two, Hamlet makes a plan. He fears the ghost may be the devil in a pleasing shape, so he wants better proof. Visiting actors will perform The Murder of Gonzago, with a few lines he adds. The play’s the thing, he says, wherein he will catch the conscience of the king.
In act three, scene two, he calls it The Mousetrap, and tells Horatio to watch Claudius. A dumb show acts out the poisoning first, and the text gives Claudius no reaction. He rises only when the murderer pours poison in the sleeper’s ears. Give me some light, the king says. Away.
So the play does three jobs. It tests the ghost, it tests Claudius, and it warns Claudius that Hamlet knows. Hamlet tells Horatio he will take the ghost’s word for a thousand pound. And Claudius answers by hurrying along the trip to England.
There is a second exam answer. In the same scene Hamlet tells the players to hold the mirror up to nature, and the play within the play is a mirror, with Claudius staring into it. Our count puts the title, The Mousetrap, fifty-two percent of the way through the spoken words, close to the middle of the play.
Why Does Hamlet Wait?
Question four is the big one. In act three, scene three, Hamlet finds Claudius kneeling and has a clear shot. He says, now might I do it pat. But he holds back, because killing a man at prayer might send him to heaven. He wants Claudius drunk, or in bed, doing something with no relish of salvation.
We have just heard Claudius say his prayer failed. My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Hamlet does not hear that. Moments later, in his mother’s room, he stabs through a curtain, crying dead for a ducat. It is Polonius.
In act four, scene four, he watches Fortinbras’s army march to fight over a patch of ground, and says it spurs his dull revenge. He offers reasons, bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple of thinking too precisely. Then he says he does not know. So list the reasons the text gives: doubt about the ghost, the chance at prayer, and his habit of thinking.
The numbers show the wait. The ghost says revenge at eighteen percent of the spoken words. Hamlet’s sword reaches Claudius at ninety-eight percent, and only after Laertes says the king is to blame. In between he has seven solo speeches, one thousand seven hundred and forty-four words, fifteen percent of all he says.
Act Four: Who Is To Blame For Ophelia?
Act four is the act Hamlet nearly vanishes from. He speaks seven hundred and eight words, fourteen percent of the act, against fifty-seven percent in act three. Claudius ships him to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and letters asking England for his death. The stage fills with other people’s grief.
In scene five Ophelia comes in singing about a dead father and handing out flowers. Rosemary, she says, that’s for remembrance. Laertes storms in with a crowd shouting that he should be king. In scene seven he and Claudius plan the duel, with a sharp sword, a poisoned tip, and a poisoned cup as backup.
Then Gertrude reports that Ophelia has drowned. She is the only person who describes it. In act five a priest says the death was doubtful, and the gravediggers argue over whether Ophelia sought it. So the play will not tell you exactly what happened.
Who is to blame, then? In my reading, a chain. Laertes and Polonius tell her to drop Hamlet in act one, scene three. Polonius and Claudius use her as bait in act three, scene one. Hamlet tells her to get thee to a nunnery, and later kills her father. Claudius buries Polonius in hugger-mugger, his own word.
Act Five: Why Does It End That Way?
Act five begins in a graveyard. Two gravediggers joke, and Hamlet holds the skull of Yorick, the king’s jester. Alas, poor Yorick, he says. Then Ophelia’s funeral arrives, and Hamlet and Laertes fight in her grave. At the grave Hamlet says he loved her, and forty thousand brothers could not match his love.
In scene two Hamlet tells Horatio how he escaped. He found the letters, rewrote them, and sealed them with his father’s signet, so Rosencrantz and Guildenstern go to their own deaths. Then Osric brings the king’s wager, a duel with Laertes. Hamlet says there is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. The readiness is all.
The duel is a double trap. Laertes has the poisoned point, and Claudius has the poisoned cup. Gertrude drinks the cup before Hamlet can. Laertes cuts Hamlet, they swap swords, Hamlet cuts Laertes, and Laertes confesses. The king, the king’s to blame. Hamlet stabs Claudius and makes him drink.
So why this ending? In my reading, the traps rebound, as Horatio says, purposes mistook fall on the inventors’ heads. Hamlet finally acts when he has no time left to think. He dies handing his voice to Fortinbras, the soldier from act four, who claims Denmark and orders a soldier’s funeral. The rest is silence.
The Body Count By Act
Here is the body count by act, as the story tells it. Act one has none, though the ghost tells us the old king was murdered before the play. Act two has none. Act three has one, Polonius. Act four has one, Ophelia.
Act five has six. Gertrude, Laertes, Claudius and Hamlet die on stage in scene two, and the English ambassador reports Rosencrantz and Guildenstern dead. That makes eight deaths in the story, nine with the old king, and four of them happen in the last scene.
Your Cheat Sheet
Here is the answer sheet. The ghost wants revenge on Claudius, mercy for Gertrude, and to be remembered. Hamlet says he is acting mad, and the grief underneath is real. The play tests the ghost and the king. He waits because he doubts, overthinks, and wants the perfect moment. Ophelia is failed by a chain of people. The ending is traps rebounding, then Fortinbras.
Every reading here is mine, so back it up with act and scene numbers. If this helped, subscribe, and tap like. And tell me in the comments which question your teacher asked you.
