Hamlet (Prince)

Hamlet is the main protagonist and eponymous character of William Shakespeare's play Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.

At the beginning of the play, Hamlet has just returned to Ellsinore, the palace of Denmarkk, from the University of Wittenberg, where he is a student. The occasion for his return is not a happy one: His father has died suddenly. His uncle, Claudius, has succeeded to the throne, and married his mother, Gertrude. Hamlet deeply resents Claudius's seizure of both his father's throne and his father's wife, and is especially scandalized by how soon the marriage occurred after his father's death.

Toward the end of the first act, his father's ghost appears before Hamlet and explains that, since he was killed before he had had the chance to receive the grace of extreme unction, he went before God still in a state of sin, and was punished accordingly. (Though Hamlet was written when Anglicanism was the state-sponsored religion of England, this fact of the elder Hamlet's death is consistent with contemporary Catholic teachings on Purgatory and the Sacrament of Last Rites. This among other instances has led to some speculation that Shakespeare was an underground Catholic writer.)  The ghost also reveals that his death was caused not by a snakebite but by murder--and Claudius was the killer. He demands that Hamlet avenge his death by slaying his successor.

Hamlet is deeply rattled by the apparition and spends several weeks of inactivity, wondering whether the apparation was in fact his father's ghost or an attempt by the devil to lure Hamlet into the commission of a mortal sin, the murder of an innocent man. He eventually confirms his father's ghost's story by writing a play, The Murder of Gonzago, in which a monarch is murdered just as the ghost claimed to have been, and observing Claudius's reaction, then eavesdropping on Claudius's prayers of repentance after the king abruptly leaves the production.

While Claudius is in prayer, Hamlet has the opportunity to kill him, but decides not to, fearing that, if Claudius dies in the middle of prayerful repentance, God will forgive him his sins and grant him a higher place in the afterlife than He did for Hamlet's father.

Hamlet continues to look for opportunities to slay Clauius in the midst of some sin or scandal, but Claudius has become aware of this and begins looking for ways to kill Hamlet as well. He attempts to send Hamlet as an ambassador to England with sealed orders, which will instruct the English to execute their bearer; but Hamlet escapes this by convincing his former friends, Claudius's agents, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to deliver the orders instead.

Hamlet returns to Denmark and is saddened to learn of the death of his love interest, Ophelia. Claudius easily persuades Ophelia's surviving brother, Laertes, to challenge Hamlet to a duel, and gives Laertes a secretly-poisoned fencing foil. Hamlet and Laertes's fencing leads to both of them being mortally wounded by the poisoned sword and Laertes betraying Claudius by explaining how the king had planned to kill him with the sword, and how both young men were now doomed. On learning of this, Hamlet, now in possession of the poisoned blade, declares "The tip's envenomed, too? Then venom, do thy work!" and stabs Claudius with it, dooming his uncle to suffer the same fate. He also forces Claudius to drink from a poisoned goblet of wine which had recently killed Gertrude, declaring "Take this, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane!" This additional poison accelerates Claudius's death and allows Hamlet to live to see him die. Hamlet then claims the crown of Denmark, declares that it shall pass to the Norwegian warlord Fortinbras upon his imminent death, instructs his friend Horatio to remain alive (Horatio had intended suicide) and tell the world what happened in Ellsinore, and then dies.

Throughout most of the play Hamlet's behavior is extremely erratic, and the other characters wonder whether he has become insane, but have no hard evidence one way or the other. This is also true of audiences, and the debate over Hamlet's sanity has continued unresolved in literary circles for centuries.

Hamlet in Ruled Britannia
When Lord Westmoreland's Men performed The Prince of Denmark, the role of Hamlet was played by Richard Burbage. His interpretation of the prince was well-received by London's theater-goers and fueled the debate over the character's sanity.

That debate captured the imagination even of playwrights comparable in talent to Shakespeare himself, including Christopher Marlowe and Lope de Vega. Shakespeare did not enlighten his colleagues on the question.