Part 1 of 2
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.
Précis
Hamlet, heir to the throne of Denmark, returned home to find that his father was dead, and his uncle ready to marry the Queen and take the crown. His father’s ghost demanded that Hamlet avenge his murder. Even as he hesitated, unwilling to take any life, Hamlet killed the father of Ophelia, his lover, by accident. (56 / 60 words)
Part Two
HAMLET’S changed behaviour, and the death of her father, made Ophelia so unhappy that she cared nothing for her own life, and drowned in the river.
Claudius easily persuaded her brother Laertes to blame Hamlet. A supposedly friendly fencing match was arranged, in which only Laertes’s rapier would be sharpened, and tipped with poison.
Laertes managed to nick Hamlet with the poisoned tip, but in the struggle the swords changed hands, and to his horror Hamlet (who thought his sword was blunt) pierced Laertes through to the heart.
Amidst all this drama, no one noticed the Queen drink Hamlet’s wine — and the poison meant for him took his mother’s life.
Hamlet’s father, his mother, and Ophelia were all gone; he had killed Polonius and Laertes, and his own life was ebbing away. He now did what he had so long hesitated to do, and with his last strength, Hamlet ran Claudius through.
the end
Précis
After Ophelia drowned, Hamlet’s uncle Claudius offered to help her brother Laertes revenge himself on Hamlet in a sham fencing match. Laertes fatally wounded Hamlet, but both he and Hamlet’s mother were killed by poison intended for Hamlet. With his last breath, Hamlet avenged them and his father by killing Claudius. (51 / 60 words)