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Hamlet: A Brief Summary

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Prince Hamlet is in shock to know his mother Gertrude has already remarried, prior to having been summoned back to Denmark from Germany to attend his father’s funeral. The queen had been married to Claudius, the late king’s brother, and the usurper to the throne.

A ghost walks in the walls of Elsinore Castle in Denmark on a dark winter night. It was first discovered by a pair of watchmen, then by Horatio, a scholar. The ghost resembles the late King Hamlet. Horatio and the watchmen brought Prince Hamlet to see the ghost. The ghost declared that he was murdered by Claudius, and ordered the prince to seek revenge on the man who killed him to steal the throne and married his wife, and then disappeared.

Prince Hamlet was devoted to avenge …show more content…

He had the actors to perform a murder scene that he had been told by the ghost as to how his uncle killed his father. When the moment of murder arrives, Claudius got out of the room, implying that he is really guilty, as Hamlet and Horatio have agreed on. Hamlet went to kill his uncle but then didn’t. Claudius, now fearing for his own safety, ordered to send Hamlet to England …show more content…

Hamlet scores the first hit, but didn’t drink from the king’s proposed goblet. Instead, the queen takes a drink from it and instantly died due to the poison. Laertes succeeds in wounding Hamlet, but Hamlet does not die of the poison immediately. Laertes got wounded by his own sword’s blade, and, after revealing to Hamlet that Claudius is responsible for the queen’s death, he dies from the blade’s poison. Hamlet then stabs Claudius through with the poisoned sword and forces him to drink the rest of the poisoned wine.
Before his death, Hamlet proclaims to pass the throne to Prince Fortinbras of Norway. He also requested Horatio to tell accurately the events that have happened at Elsinore. With his last breath, he releases himself from the prison of his words: "The rest is silence." Fortinbras instructs that Hamlet be carried away in a manner fit for a slain

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