Scene 1
The watch on the platform
Midnight on the battlements of Elsinore. The sentry Francisco is relieved by Barnardo — "'Tis bitter cold, and I am sick at heart" — and Horatio, a scholar friend of the prince, arrives with Marcellus to confirm a story he has refused to believe. Twice already, the soldiers tell him, a figure has appeared on the wall in the dark: armed exactly as the late king was when he killed the king of Norway in single combat thirty years ago. The ghost appears. Horatio commands it to speak; it will not. The cock crows and it disappears. Horatio decides Hamlet must be told.
Scene 2
The new king's court
The court convenes. Claudius opens with a long, polished speech reconciling joy ("our sometime sister, now our queen") with sorrow (the dead king) and gets immediately to business — Norway is threatening, ambassadors must be sent, Laertes wants leave to return to Paris. Then he turns to Hamlet, still in mourning black, and tries to coax him out of his grief. Hamlet is contemptuous in clipped half-lines. Gertrude pleads. He stays. After they leave, Hamlet's first soliloquy: "O that this too too solid flesh would melt." Horatio enters and tells him about the ghost. They agree to watch on the platform tonight.
Scene 3
In Polonius's house
In a private room of Polonius's house, Laertes prepares to leave for Paris. He warns his sister Ophelia about Hamlet — the prince's affections, he says, are not to be trusted because his choices belong to the state, not to himself. Polonius arrives with the play's most quoted body of fatherly advice ("neither a borrower nor a lender be... to thine own self be true"). He blesses Laertes off and, when alone with Ophelia, repeats Laertes's warning more sharply: stop seeing Hamlet, return his letters, do not believe his vows. Ophelia obeys.
Scene 4
The platform again
Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus on the platform. From the castle behind them, the new king's drinking can be heard — a custom of Elsinore that Hamlet finds shameful. He delivers the speech about how a single fault can blacken a man's whole reputation ("the dram of evil / doth all the noble substance of a doubt..."). Then the ghost appears. It will not speak in the soldiers' presence; it beckons Hamlet to follow it apart. Horatio and Marcellus warn him not to go — it might be a devil; it might lead him to a cliff. Hamlet pulls free and follows.
Scene 5
The ghost's charge
The ghost speaks. It is, it says, the spirit of Hamlet's father, suffering by night for sins committed by day. Then the news. The story given out at court — that the king died of a snakebite while sleeping in the orchard — is false. The king was poisoned by his own brother, Claudius, who poured a juice of cursed hebenon into his ear and won, by the same act, his crown and his queen. The ghost commands Hamlet to revenge — but to leave Gertrude to "her own conscience" and the prickings of heaven. Dawn is coming; it must go. "Adieu, adieu, adieu! Remember me." Hamlet, in shock, swears he will. When Horatio and Marcellus catch up he makes them swear too on his sword, with the ghost's voice from beneath the stage echoing the oath.
Scene 6
Ophelia's report
Polonius sends his servant Reynaldo to Paris with elaborate instructions on how to spy on Laertes. The methods are characteristic — start rumors of bad behavior to see what people will tell you in confirmation. Reynaldo leaves. Then Ophelia comes in distraught. Hamlet has just appeared in her bedroom: doublet unbraced, stockings around his ankles, "pale as his shirt" with "a look so piteous in purport / as if he had been loosed out of hell to speak of horrors." He took her hand, stared at her face, and left without a word. Polonius, certain he has found the cause of Hamlet's strange behavior, takes Ophelia to the king. "This is the very ecstasy of love."
Scene 7
The players arrive
A long scene with multiple movements. Claudius and Gertrude have summoned Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two of Hamlet's school friends, to spy on him; they accept the commission. Polonius bursts in with his theory of love-madness and reads aloud one of Hamlet's love letters to Ophelia. They plan to have Ophelia "loose" Hamlet in a corridor and watch what happens. Hamlet enters reading and runs verbal circles around Polonius. Then around Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, whom he sees through inside a minute ("were you not sent for?"). Then the players arrive. Hamlet asks one for a speech about Hecuba grieving; the player weeps real tears. Alone, Hamlet delivers the second soliloquy: "O what a rogue and peasant slave am I" — disgusted that an actor can weep for an imagined queen while he, with real cause, has done nothing. He decides to use the players. Tomorrow night they will perform a play that mirrors the murder; he will watch Claudius for guilt.
Scene 8
To be, or not to be
Polonius and Claudius arrange for Ophelia to be "loosed" in a corridor where Hamlet will pass. They withdraw behind an arras. Hamlet enters and delivers the soliloquy: "To be, or not to be." Then he sees Ophelia and the scene turns brutal. He denies he ever loved her. He tells her to get to a nunnery. He demands to know where her father is — she lies, he hears the lie — and explodes into a long denunciation of women in general and her in particular. She is left in tears: "O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!" Claudius, watching, concludes Hamlet is not mad with love but dangerous; he decides to send him to England. Polonius proposes one more test — Hamlet should be confronted by his mother privately, with Polonius hidden behind the arras to listen.
Scene 9
The Mousetrap
Hamlet briefs the players — "speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue" — Shakespeare's only surviving statement on acting. He stations Horatio in the audience to watch Claudius. The court enters. The play begins as a dumb-show: a king sleeping in a garden, a man pouring poison in his ear, taking the crown and the queen. Then the spoken play. As the poisoner addresses the sleeper, Claudius rises from his seat and storms out: "Give me some light! Away!" The play breaks up in confusion. Hamlet, exhilarated, has his proof. The ghost was telling the truth.
Scene 10
The prayer scene
Claudius, unsettled by the play, has decided to send Hamlet to England immediately under Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's escort. They go. Alone, Claudius kneels and tries to pray. The soliloquy is devastating: he knows what he has done, knows he cannot ask forgiveness without giving up what the murder won him (the crown, the queen), and so cannot pray honestly. Hamlet enters. His sword is drawn. He stops. The reasoning he gives himself for not killing Claudius now is that a man killed at prayer goes to heaven; he wants Claudius killed in some act of sin so the soul will go to hell. He sheathes the sword and goes to his mother's chamber. Claudius, alone, finishes: "my words fly up, my thoughts remain below — words without thoughts never to heaven go."
Scene 11
Polonius dies
Hamlet enters Gertrude's chamber. Polonius is hidden behind the arras. The conversation begins as Hamlet's denunciation of her marriage. She is frightened by his intensity and cries for help. Polonius, behind the arras, also cries for help. Hamlet, hearing a man's voice and assuming it is Claudius, runs his sword through the curtain — "is it the king?" — and kills Polonius. Then he turns on his mother. He shows her two pictures — one of his father, one of Claudius — and demands she compare. She begs him to stop. The ghost appears, visible only to Hamlet, and reminds him to leave Gertrude alone and continue with his task. Gertrude sees him talking to no one and is terrified. Hamlet drags Polonius's body out.
Scene 12
After the killing
A short scene. Gertrude tells Claudius what has happened. Hamlet has killed Polonius "in his weakness" and is mad as the sea in storm. Claudius is shaken but recovers fast — this is the excuse he has needed. Hamlet must be sent to England immediately for the safety of the realm. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dispatched to find the prince and the body.
Scene 13
The body hidden
Hamlet has hidden Polonius's body somewhere in the castle. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern arrive to demand it from him. Hamlet treats them to a long display of antic disposition — comparing Rosencrantz to a sponge soaking up the king's favors and ready to be wrung out at need, comparing the king to a thing of nothing. He refuses to tell them where the body is and leads them off, ostensibly to the king, in a chase through the castle.
Scene 14
"At supper"
Claudius questions Hamlet directly. Where is Polonius? "At supper." At supper where? Not where he eats, but where he is being eaten — by worms, who are emperor of all diet. Hamlet's whole speech here is one of the play's most acid meditations on mortality: "your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table — that's the end." He finally admits the body is up the stairs into the lobby. Claudius, exasperated, has him escorted onto the ship to England under Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's charge. The sealed letter the pair carry, Claudius says alone afterwards, orders the King of England to put Hamlet to death the moment the ship lands.
Scene 15
How all occasions
On a plain in Denmark. Hamlet, on his way to the harbor under guard, sees the army of Fortinbras crossing the country to fight Poland over a useless patch of ground. He questions a captain. The captain admits the patch isn't worth the cost. Hamlet is left behind. Fourth soliloquy: "How all occasions do inform against me." Twenty thousand men march to die for a name; he, with father killed, mother stained, kingdom usurped, has done nothing. The speech ends with the resolve: from this time forth my thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth.
Scene 16
Ophelia mad
Word of Polonius's death has reached his daughter. She walks in singing fragments of bawdy songs and giving flowers with hidden meanings — rosemary for remembrance, pansies for thoughts, fennel for flattery. Her sentences will not finish. Gertrude is moved to pity; Claudius, more pragmatically, is afraid of what her madness might cause among the people. Then Laertes bursts in at the head of an angry crowd, demanding to know how his father died and where the body is. Claudius, in one of his most impressive scenes, talks him down. He promises Laertes proof and his own innocence, if he will hear it.
Scene 17
Hamlet's letter
A short transitional scene. Horatio is brought a letter from Hamlet at sea. Two days out from England, the ship was attacked by pirates. In the boarding action Hamlet leapt onto the pirate ship and was carried off when the two ships separated; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern continued on toward England without him. The pirates, "thieves of mercy," have set Hamlet ashore on the coast of Denmark and he is on his way back to Elsinore. Horatio is to deliver the enclosed letters to Claudius and bring the bearer (the messenger) to wherever Hamlet is hiding.
Scene 18
The plot; Ophelia drowned
Claudius has finished telling Laertes the truth — Hamlet killed Polonius. Word arrives that Hamlet is back in Denmark. Claudius proposes a plan: he and Laertes will arrange a fencing match between Laertes and Hamlet. Laertes's blade will be unbated (sharp) and tipped with deadly poison; Claudius will also have a poisoned cup of wine ready in case the blade fails. Laertes agrees. Then Gertrude enters with one of the most-quoted speeches in the play — Ophelia, weaving garlands by a willow above a stream, has fallen in and drowned. Laertes, who has just consented to murder, weeps.
Scene 19
The graveyard
A churchyard. Two clowns — gravediggers — are at work on Ophelia's grave, joking about how long different professions take to rot and which builder builds the longest-lasting work. Hamlet and Horatio arrive. The first gravedigger hands up a skull. Hamlet recognizes it: Yorick, the king's old jester, dead twenty-three years, who carried Hamlet on his back when Hamlet was a boy. The most-quoted speech of mortality in literature follows: "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio." Then the funeral procession enters. Hamlet realizes whose body it is — Ophelia's. Laertes leaps into the grave and demands to be buried with her; Hamlet, enraged, leaps in after him. They are pulled apart.
Scene 20
The duel
Hamlet tells Horatio the full story of the sea voyage — how he found and replaced Claudius's sealed letter with one ordering Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's execution instead. A messenger named Osric arrives with the king's wager. The fencing match begins. Laertes wounds Hamlet with the poisoned blade. In a scuffle the blades are exchanged; Hamlet wounds Laertes with his own poison. Gertrude drinks the poisoned cup despite Claudius's warning ("I will, my lord; I pray you pardon me") and dies. Laertes, dying, confesses the plot. Hamlet stabs Claudius and forces him to drink the rest of the poison. Hamlet dies in Horatio's arms — "the rest is silence." Fortinbras enters and takes the throne by default, ordering Hamlet's body carried out "like a soldier."