Hamlet

by Sean Quinn

Imagine living in Denmark as the prince. Your life is good because you get to do whatever you want to. Then your father dies and instead of you becoming king, your uncle does. Months later you find out that your father was poisoned by your uncle, the new king. You have to find a way to let it be known that the new king killed your father so that your father's spirit may rest in peace. This is the story of Hamlet, written by William Shakespeare. Hamlet is an exciting story to read and it would probably be even more exciting to see the play or the movie.

The setting of Hamlet is Elsinore Castle and the main characters are Hamlet, prince of Denmark, Cladius, the king of Denmark, Gertrude, the Queen, Polonius, the king's councilor, and Ophelia, Polonius's daughter and Hamlet's love interest. The story starts out when two royal guards on duty and meet the ghost of recently deceased king. He doesn't speak to the guards and they decide that the ghost might speak to his son Hamlet. They go and find Hamlet and on the next night Hamlet meets the ghost. The ghost tells Hamlet that, while he (the king) was in the garden, Cladius poured poison into his ear so that he would then be able to become king and marry Gertrude. He also tells Hamlet to avenge his death. At first Hamlet doesn't know whether or not to believe the ghost. As Hamlet stews over his problem, others believe he might be becoming sick so they hire a group of traveling actors to hopefully cheer him up and make him feel better. They tell Hamlet about the actors and he then devises a plan to find out if the ghost's story was true. He writes a play about a king that has poison dumped in his ear while he is asleep in a garden. Hamlet will then be able to tell the validity of the story by the reaction of Cladius as he watches the play. Hamlet gives the play to the actors and they perform it the next evening. As the king in the play gets poisoned, Cladius stands up in terror and calls of the rest of the play, and thereby admits his guilt. Everyone knew that Hamlet wrote the play and they really begin to worry about him. Polonius and Gertrude decide to see how sick Hamlet is. Polonius decides to hide in the queen's room while she speaks to Hamlet. She summons Hamlet and he begins to tell her the tale of the murder of his father. She cries out in disbelief and so does Polonius. Hamlet, hearing Polonius's cry, believes that Cladius is in the room and therefore draws his sword and stabs it into the tapestry behind which Polonius is hiding. Hamlet then finds out his mistake, along with everyone else in the royal family and Hamlet is sent to England by Cladius. Hamlet finds a way to not go and comes back to Denmark. Meanwhile, Cladius and Laertes, Polonius's son, come up with a plot to kill Hamlet. Laertes will duel Hamlet and the tip of his sword will be poisoned and if that fails they will give Hamlet a poisoned drink. They have their duel and Hamlet is hit with the poisoned sword, somehow they switch swords and Laertes is hit. The queen gets thirsty and drinks the poisoned drink. She tells Hamlet the drink was poisoned and then dies. Laertes tells Hamlet of the plot to kill him and then dies. Hamlet, infuriated by knowing that he will die shortly, runs his sword through Cladius and, in the end, they all die. I believe that the theme of this story is, revenge is a very bad thing.

There were three things that I liked about Hamlet: the use of sarcasm, the entire story line, and the ending. First was Shakespeare's use of sarcasm. The sarcasm helped to add humor into such a serious play. When he was speaking of the queen getting remarried so quickly after the kings death he says, "The funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables" (Shakespeare 16). He used sarcasm throughout the story in Hamlet's dialogue, but the above quote is the best example in the entire play. That is why I liked the use of sarcasm. Second was Shakespeare's entire story line. Hamlet is an all around good story. There are not very many boring parts and it always has a new twist in it to make the story more interesting. That is why I liked the entire story line. Third was the ending. There was no, "and they all lived happily ever after ending". Instead, it turned out the way it would probably have turned out in the real world. Everyone dying is more realistic that just the death of the evil king. That is why I liked the ending. Hamlet is an excellent play because of Shakespeare's use of sarcasm, his entire story line, and his realistic ending.

There is only one thing that I disliked about Hamlet, the language. I can not stand all of the 'twere's and tis's and thou's. They just make the reading so hard to understand because the reader then has to look at all of the foot notes, sometimes there were twenty- five on a single page, to figure out what is being said and then has to try and find their spot again. This becomes extremely frustrating, especially when you forget what you had just looked up. Therefore, I hated the language in Hamlet because it made it almost impossible to understand.

Overall, Shakespeare's Hamlet is a terrific play because of his use of sarcasm, his story line, and his realistic ending, but the language made it a little hard to understand. I would recommend this play to anyone that enjoys a good story. Back to the little fantasy in the beginning of this paper. How would you have acted in that position? Like Hamlet, or would you have done something else?