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Hamlet was the only son of the King of Denmark. He loved his father
and mother dearly--and was happy in the love of a sweet lady named
Ophelia. Her father, Polonius, was the King's Chamberlain.
While Hamlet was away studying at Wittenberg, his father died. Young
Hamlet hastened home in great grief to hear that a serpent had stung
the King, and that he was dead. The young Prince had loved his
father so tenderly that you may judge what he felt when he found
that the Queen, before yet the King had been laid in the ground a
month, had determined to marry again--and to marry the dead King's
brother.
Hamlet refused to put off mourning for the wedding.
"It is not only the black I wear on my body," he said, "that proves
my loss. I wear mourning in my heart for my dead father. His son at
least remembers him, and grieves still."
Then said Claudius the King's brother, "This grief is unreasonable.
Of course you must sorrow at the loss of your father, but--"
"Ah," said Hamlet, bitterly, "I cannot in one little month forget
those I love."
With that the Queen and Claudius left him, to make merry over their
wedding, forgetting the poor good King who had been so kind to them
both.
And Hamlet, left alone, began to wonder and to question as to what
he ought to do. For he could not believe the story about the
snake-bite. It seemed to him all too plain that the wicked Claudius
had killed the King, so as to get the crown and marry the Queen. Yet
he had no proof, and could not accuse Claudius.
And while he was thus thinking came Horatio, a fellow student of
his, from Wittenberg.
"What brought you here?" asked Hamlet, when he had greeted his
friend kindly.
"I came, my lord, to see your father's funeral."
"I think it was to see my mother's wedding," said Hamlet, bitterly.
"My father! We shall not look upon his like again."
"My lord," answered Horatio, "I think I saw him yesternight."
Then, while Hamlet listened in surprise, Horatio told how he, with
two gentlemen of the guard, had seen the King's ghost on the
battlements. Hamlet went that night, and true enough, at midnight,
the ghost of the King, in the armor he had been wont to wear,
appeared on the battlements in the chill moonlight. Hamlet was a
brave youth. Instead of running away from the ghost he spoke to
it--and when it beckoned him he followed it to a quiet place, and
there the ghost told him that what he had suspected was true. The
wicked Claudius had indeed killed his good brother the King, by
dropping poison into his ear as he slept in his orchard in the
afternoon.
"And you," said the ghost, "must avenge this cruel murder-- on my
wicked brother. But do nothing against the Queen-- for I have loved
her, and she is your mother. Remember me."
Then seeing the morning approach, the ghost vanished.
"Now," said Hamlet, "there is nothing left but revenge. Remember
thee--I will remember nothing else--books, pleasure, youth--let all
go--and your commands alone live on my brain."
So when his friends came back he made them swear to keep the secret
of the ghost, and then went in from the battlements, now gray with
mingled dawn and moonlight, to think how he might best avenge his
murdered father.
The shock of seeing and hearing his father's ghost made him feel
almost mad, and for fear that his uncle might notice that he was not
himself, he determined to hide his mad longing for revenge under a
pretended madness in other matters.
And when he met Ophelia, who loved him--and to whom he had given
gifts, and letters, and many loving words--he behaved so wildly to
her, that she could not but think him mad. For she loved him so that
she could not believe he would be as cruel as this, unless he were
quite mad. So she told her father, and showed him a pretty letter
from Hamlet. And in the letter was much folly, and this pretty
verse--
"Doubt that the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love."
And from that time everyone believed that the cause of Hamlet's
supposed madness was love.
Poor Hamlet was very unhappy. He longed to obey his father's
ghost--and yet he was too gentle and kindly to wish to kill another
man, even his father's murderer. And sometimes he wondered whether,
after all, the ghost spoke truly.
Just at this time some actors came to the Court, and Hamlet ordered
them to perform a certain play before the King and Queen. Now, this
play was the story of a man who had been murdered in his garden by a
near relation, who afterwards married the dead man's wife.
You may imagine the feelings of the wicked King, as he sat on his
throne, with the Queen beside him and all his Court around, and saw,
acted on the stage, the very wickedness that he had himself done.
And when, in the play, the wicked relation poured poison into the
ear of the sleeping man, the wicked Claudius suddenly rose, and
staggered from the room--the Queen and others following.
Then said Hamlet to his friends--
"Now I am sure the ghost spoke true. For if Claudius had not done
this murder, he could not have been so distressed to see it in a
play."
Now the Queen sent for Hamlet, by the King's desire, to scold him
for his conduct during the play, and for other matters; and
Claudius, wishing to know exactly what happened, told old Polonius
to hide himself behind the hangings in the Queen's room. And as they
talked, the Queen got frightened at Hamlet's rough, strange words,
and cried for help, and Polonius behind the curtain cried out too.
Hamlet, thinking it was the King who was hidden there, thrust with
his sword at the hangings, and killed, not the King, but poor old
Polonius.
So now Hamlet had offended his uncle and his mother, and by bad hap
killed his true love's father.
"Oh! what a rash and bloody deed is this," cried the Queen.
And Hamlet answered bitterly, "Almost as bad as to kill a king, and
marry his brother." Then Hamlet told the Queen plainly all his
thoughts and how he knew of the murder, and begged her, at least, to
have no more friendship or kindness of the base Claudius, who had
killed the good King. And as they spoke the King's ghost again
appeared before Hamlet, but the Queen could not see it. So when the
ghost had gone, they parted.
When the Queen told Claudius what had passed, and how Polonius was
dead, he said, "This shows plainly that Hamlet is mad, and since he
has killed the Chancellor, it is for his own safety that we must
carry out our plan, and send him away to England."
So Hamlet was sent, under charge of two courtiers who served the
King, and these bore letters to the English Court, requiring that
Hamlet should be put to death. But Hamlet had the good sense to get
at these letters, and put in others instead, with the names of the
two courtiers who were so ready to betray him. Then, as the vessel
went to England, Hamlet escaped on board a pirate ship, and the two
wicked courtiers left him to his fate, and went on to meet theirs.
Hamlet hurried home, but in the meantime a dreadful thing had
happened. Poor pretty Ophelia, having lost her lover and her father,
lost her wits too, and went in sad madness about the Court, with
straws, and weeds, and flowers in her hair, singing strange scraps
of songs, and talking poor, foolish, pretty talk with no heart of
meaning to it. And one day, coming to a stream where willows grew,
she tried to bang a flowery garland on a willow, and fell into the
water with all her flowers, and so died.
And Hamlet had loved her, though his plan of seeming madness had
made him hide it; and when he came back, he found the King and
Queen, and the Court, weeping at the funeral of his dear love and
lady.
Ophelia's brother, Laertes, had also just come to Court to ask
justice for the death of his father, old Polonius; and now, wild
with grief, he leaped into his sister's grave, to clasp her in his
arms once more.
"I loved her more than forty thousand brothers," cried Hamlet, and
leapt into the grave after him, and they fought till they were
parted.
Afterwards Hamlet begged Laertes to forgive him.
"I could not bear," he said, "that any, even a brother, should seem
to love her more than I."
But the wicked Claudius would not let them be friends. He told
Laertes how Hamlet had killed old Polonius, and between them they
made a plot to slay Hamlet by treachery.
Laertes challenged him to a fencing match, and all the Court were
present. Hamlet had the blunt foil always used in fencing, but
Laertes had prepared for himself a sword, sharp, and tipped with
poison. And the wicked King had made ready a bowl of poisoned wine,
which he meant to give poor Hamlet when he should grow warm with the
sword play, and should call for drink.
So Laertes and Hamlet fought, and Laertes, after some fencing, gave
Hamlet a sharp sword thrust. Hamlet, angry at this treachery--for
they had been fencing, not as men fight, but as they play--closed
with Laertes in a struggle; both dropped their swords, and when they
picked them up again, Hamlet, without noticing it, had exchanged his
own blunt sword for Laertes' sharp and poisoned one. And with one
thrust of it he pierced Laertes, who fell dead by his own treachery.
At this moment the Queen cried out, "The drink, the drink! Oh, my
dear Hamlet! I am poisoned!"
She had drunk of the poisoned bowl the King had prepared for Hamlet,
and the King saw the Queen, whom, wicked as he was, he really loved,
fall dead by his means.
Then Ophelia being dead, and Polonius, and the Queen, and Laertes,
and the two courtiers who had been sent to England, Hamlet at last
found courage to do the ghost's bidding and avenge his father's
murder--which, if he had braced up his heart to do long before, all
these lives had been spared, and none had suffered but the wicked
King, who well deserved to die.
Hamlet, his heart at last being great enough to do the deed he
ought, turned the poisoned sword on the false King.
"Then--venom--do thy work!" he cried, and the King died.
So Hamlet in the end kept the promise he had made his father. And
all being now accomplished, he himself died. And those who stood by
saw him die, with prayers and tears, for his friends and his people
loved him with their whole hearts. Thus ends the tragic tale of
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.
Hamlet
A Classic English Shakespeare Story
by
Edith Nesbit |
