HAMLET at Curtain Call

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2. HAMLET

The play is set in Elsinore, Denmark, at the royal court of the newly crowned King Claudius. With the throne, Claudius inherits an imminent threat of attack from neighbouring Norway, whose young Prince Fortinbras is seeking to avenge the defeat of his father by the former King, Prince Hamlet’s father.



Prince Hamlet is deeply depressed by the sudden death of his father, old Hamlet, and the hasty remarriage of his mother, Queen Gertrude, to his uncle Claudius. When the ghost of his father appears to Hamlet informing him that he was murdered by Claudius, and calling upon him to avenge his death, Hamlet is locked into a dangerous mission he would rather not have been given.



Instead of immediately obeying the father he loved and killing the murderer promptly, Hamlet initially chooses to feign madness in order to conceal his intentions and steadily becomes paralysed by inaction. He intellectualises the task and seeks further proof of Claudius’ guilt to the point where he himself is exposed to the murderer and has virtually signed his own death warrant.



Hamlet is disgusted by the relationship between his mother and uncle. He allows his jaundiced view of what he considers his mother’s infidelity to taint his attitude to women in general. Consequently, Hamlet abandons his girlfriend, Ophelia, who later loses her mind and drowns. He accidentally kills her father, the King’s Councillor, Polonius, when he mistakes him for Claudius. Claudius now frightened of Hamlet’s madness and fearing for his own safety, convinces Polonius’ son (and Ophelia’s brother), Laertes, to kill Hamlet. Finally a duel between Hamlet and Laertes, ends in the deaths of Claudius, Gertrude, Laertes, and Hamlet himself. The rule of the kingdom of Denmark passes to Fortinbras of Norway

Authors

• Thomas Cooper DeLeon
• William Shakespeare