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
With affection,
Ruben
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