Book summary

Shakespeare's classic tragedy of love, madness, and revenge, first enacted in London in 1602. Young Prince Hamlet, in mourning for his dead father, receives an apparition of his father's ghost telling him that he was murdered by his own brother Claudius, who then assumed the throne and married Hamlet's mother, Gertrude. Intent on revenge, Hamlet feigns madness and plots how he might kill Claudius. When Polonius, Claudius's counselor, hides behind a curtain in Gertrude's bedroom to eavesdrop on Hamlet, Hamlet mistakes him for Claudius and stabs him to death. Claudius then sends Hamlet into exile, intending him to be killed abroad, but Hamlet outwits his assassins and makes his way back to Denmark. Polonius's daughter Ophelia, who had been in love with Hamlet, goes mad from grief over her father's death and Hamlet's exile, and she drowns herself. After Hamlet returns, he is challenged to a duel by Laertes, Ophelia's brother. Claudius secretly poisons the tips of the swords, and both Laertes and Hamlet die from their wounds, but not before Hamlet kills Claudius before the assembled court.