The Tragedy of Hamlet
The Prince of Denmark is bound to avenge his father’s murder.
1600
Introduction
The Danish Prince came home to find his father mysteriously dead, and his uncle ready to marry his mother the Queen, and claim the crown.
HAMLET, heir to the throne of Denmark, was away from court when he heard his father had died, apparently of a snake-bite.
His distress only grew when he found, on his return to his home and to his love Ophelia, that his widowed mother was already preparing to marry his uncle, Claudius, so making him King in Hamlet’s place.
Yet that same night, the ghost of Hamlet’s father appeared. He told Hamlet how he had been poisoned by Claudius, and bound the boy to exact revenge.
Hamlet was caught in an agony of indecision, which he masked with increasingly eccentric behaviour.
It was only when his mother confronted him about his odd manner that things began to move.
As they talked, Hamlet heard a sound from behind the curtain. He struck with his sword, thinking it was a rat, and then, maybe Claudius. But it was Polonius, Ophelia’s father; Hamlet, too, was now a murderer of the innocent.