 VCCS Litonline
Plot Summary for Hamlet
This demonstration uses two kinds of summary. The first is for the
entire play and is quoted from a Website; the second is mind and focuses on
the scene. You might use one or the other in a handout, PowerPoint, or
webpage for your presentation. The brackets at the end of the play
summary allow me to add information.
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When Hamlet returns to his
elaborate palace at Elsinore after his studies, he finds his uncle
Claudius married to his mother Gertrude. Bernardo, Horatio, and
Marcellus show him a ghost who looks like his father, so Hamlet pursues
him into the woods, where he is told to avenge his father's murder by
his own uncle. Hamlet debates with himself, and even visualizes himself
skewering Claudius from a confession box, but wants not to send him to
heaven. When the king and queen bring Hamlet's school friends to see
what is wrong with him as he puts on an air of madness, he assembles a
play similar to his father's murder, which has him chased throughout the
palace, and sent to Norway and to England. When Hamlet kills his
girlfriend Ophelia's father, Polonius, counsel to the king [making her
crazy and suicidal], her brother Laertes sets out to avenge his death
[and hers]. Meanwhile, the Prince Fortinbras of Denmark, whose father
was killed by old Hamlet, sets out to take the area lost in battle with
him, often shown in flashbacks, as are many scattered memories
throughout the film. [In the final scene, Gertrude drinks poison set up
by Claudius for Hamlet, Laertes dies when Hamlet stabs him with his own
poisoned sword, and Hamlet use both poisons on Claudius before he dies
himself from the wound Laertes gave him.] Summary written by Scott
Hutchins
{sahutchi@cord.iupui.edu}
Internet Movie Database 1996
http://us.imdb.com/Plot?0116477 2/10/00
See also the Internet Movie Database at—
http://us.imdb.com/ for reviews.
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Summary of Excerpt from Scene 3.1
Having just contemplated suicide in front of Claudius and Polonius,
Hamlet confronts Ophelia, who has been sent to return his love tokens in
order to see if he is, as his fake note suggested, crazy over love of
Ophelia. Denying the gifts, Hamlet tests Ophelia's loyalty to him after
claiming he didn't love her (as Hamlet heard her brother and father claim
earlier to her); she lies about her father's whereabouts (he and the king
are eavesdropping on the conversation), setting Hamlet off on a rant against
women and marriage--partly against her, partly, it seems against his
mother. Hamlet's aim to convince Claudius that he is not a threat because
he is crazy for love backfires and gets him shipped off to England for
execution.
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