Scene 1
The watch on the platform
Midnight at Elsinore. Two soldiers and a scholar wait on the platform; the dead king's ghost appears in armor, refuses to speak, vanishes at the cock's crow. Horatio decides the prince must be told.
Hamlet — chapter by chapter
All 20 scenes, by act and beat — from the ghost on the wall to the duel that kills everyone.
Hamlet is structured as five acts of unequal length. Act 1 is the haunting and the charge. Act 2 is what Hamlet does with it (and what others do with him). Act 3 is the explosion: the play-within-a-play, the prayer scene, the killing of Polonius. Act 4 is the long aftermath — Hamlet sent away, Ophelia broken, Laertes returned. Act 5 is the graveyard and the duel. Twenty scenes total.
Act 1 · The ghost
The watch on the wall. Hamlet meets his father.
Scene 2
A room of state — the new king's court
The court convenes. Claudius runs through state business with brisk competence and tries to coax Hamlet out of mourning. Hamlet stays in black, refuses to be coaxed, and after the court leaves delivers the first of his four soliloquies. Horatio arrives with the news of the ghost.
Scene 3
In Polonius's house: Laertes, Ophelia, the warning
Polonius's household. Laertes warns Ophelia not to take Hamlet's affections seriously. Polonius gives Laertes the most-quoted body of advice in Shakespeare and then orders Ophelia to break off the relationship. She obeys.
Scene 4
The platform again — Hamlet sees the ghost
Hamlet on the wall with Horatio and Marcellus. The new king's drinking can be heard from the castle; Hamlet calls it a shameful custom. The ghost appears and beckons. Hamlet, against his friends' warnings, follows it apart.
Scene 5
The ghost's charge
The ghost names Claudius as his murderer, describes the poisoning in the orchard, and demands revenge. Hamlet swears it; Horatio and Marcellus swear secrecy. Hamlet announces he may "put an antic disposition on" and the play's long pretense begins.
Act 2 · The pretence
Hamlet feigns madness. Polonius watches him.
Scene 6
Polonius and Reynaldo; Ophelia's report
Polonius sends his servant Reynaldo to Paris with detailed instructions on how to spy on Laertes. Then Ophelia bursts in: Hamlet has just appeared in her bedroom in a frightening state, taken her hand, stared at her, and left wordless. Polonius is certain it's love-madness and takes her to the king.
Scene 7
Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, the players, the rogue and peasant slave
A long scene. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are recruited to spy on Hamlet; he sees through them at once. The players arrive. One of them weeps real tears performing Hecuba's grief; Hamlet, disgusted with his own delay, decides to use them. The "Mousetrap" plan is born.
Act 3 · The explosion
The play-within-a-play, the prayer scene, the killing of Polonius.
Scene 8
To be, or not to be; the nunnery scene
The most famous soliloquy in literature ("To be, or not to be") followed by the cruelest scene in the play. Hamlet denies he ever loved Ophelia, tells her to get to a nunnery, and rages. Claudius, watching, decides to send Hamlet to England. Polonius proposes one more test.
Scene 9
The Mousetrap
The play within the play. Hamlet briefs the actors, stations Horatio to watch Claudius, and stages a re-enactment of the murder. Claudius rises and bolts mid-scene. Hamlet has his proof. The ghost was telling the truth.
Scene 10
The prayer scene
Hamlet finds Claudius alone, on his knees, trying to pray. He draws his sword and stops — claiming he will not kill the king at prayer because the soul would go to heaven. He goes to his mother instead. Claudius, alone, says: "my words fly up, my thoughts remain below."
Scene 11
The closet scene; Polonius dies
Hamlet confronts Gertrude in her chamber. Polonius, hidden behind the arras, cries out; Hamlet runs his sword through the curtain thinking it might be Claudius. It is Polonius. The ghost appears one last time to redirect Hamlet to his mother. Hamlet drags the body out.
Act 4 · The aftermath
Hamlet sent away. Ophelia broken. Laertes returned.
Scene 12
After the killing
Gertrude tells Claudius about the killing. Claudius recovers fast — Hamlet must be sent away tonight, ostensibly for everyone's safety, in fact to remove the only person who knows the truth.
Scene 13
The body hidden
A short scene of antic disposition. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern try to extract the body's location; Hamlet treats them to riddles ("the body is with the king, but the king is not with the body"). The pursuit through the castle continues.
Scene 14
"At supper" — and to England
Claudius extracts the body's location from Hamlet — by way of a famous monologue on worms, kings, and beggars. Then Hamlet is escorted to the ship. Claudius, alone, reveals that the sealed letter accompanying the prince orders his execution in England.
Scene 15
Fortinbras's army; "how all occasions"
On a plain in Denmark. Hamlet sees Fortinbras's army marching past on its way to fight Poland over a worthless plot of land. The fourth soliloquy: "how all occasions do inform against me." Twenty thousand men march to die for a name; he has done nothing.
Scene 16
Ophelia mad
Ophelia, mad after her father's death, drifts through the court singing fragments of bawdy songs and giving symbolic flowers. Then Laertes bursts in with an armed mob demanding answers. Claudius, with breathtaking poise, talks the mob down and the prince into hearing him out.
Scene 17
Hamlet's letter
A short transitional scene. Horatio reads a letter from Hamlet — pirates attacked the ship, he is back in Denmark, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have continued on without him. Horatio sets off to find him.
Scene 18
The plot with Laertes; Ophelia drowned
Claudius and Laertes plot. They will stage a fencing match; Laertes will use a poisoned blade; Claudius will have a poisoned cup as backup. Gertrude enters and reports — in some of the most-quoted lines in the play — that Ophelia has drowned.
Act 5 · The end
A graveyard, a duel, and a stage of corpses.
Scene 19
The graveyard; Yorick
The graveyard scene. Gravediggers joke about decay. Yorick's skull is unearthed; Hamlet delivers the most famous speech of mortality in English. Ophelia's funeral procession arrives. Laertes leaps into the grave; Hamlet leaps in after him. They are separated.
Scene 20
The duel; the end
The end. Hamlet tells Horatio about the sea voyage. The duel begins. Both Hamlet and Laertes are wounded with the poisoned blade. Gertrude drinks the cup. Laertes confesses; Hamlet kills Claudius; everyone dies but Horatio. Fortinbras takes the throne by default.