Hamlet: The Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare

Polonius, the garrulous old chamberlain, believed that Hamlet's behavior resulted from lovesickness for his daughter, Ophelia. Hamlet, meanwhile, became increasingly melancholy. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, as well as Polonius, were constantly spying on him. Even Ophelia, he thought, had turned against him. The thought of deliberate murder was revolting to him, and he was plagued by uncertainty as to whether the ghost represented good or evil. When a troupe of actors visited Elsinore, Hamlet saw in them a chance to discover whether Claudius was guilty. He planned to have the players enact before the king and the court a scene resembling the one that, according to the ghost, had taken place the day the old king died. By watching Claudius during the performance, Hamlet hoped to discover the truth for himself (Shakespeare, 52).

His plan worked. Claudius became so unnerved during the performance that he walked out before the end of the scene. Convinced by the king's actions that the ghost was right, Hamlet had no reason to delay in carrying out the wishes of his dead father. Even so, he failed to take advantage of the first chance to kill Claudius when, coming upon the king in an attitude of prayer, he could have stabbed him in the back. Hamlet refrained because he did not want the king to die in a state of grace.

When the queen summoned Hamlet to her chamber to reprimand him for his insolence to Claudius, Hamlet, remembering what the ghost had told him, spoke to her so violently that she screamed for help. A noise behind a curtain followed her cries, and Hamlet, suspecting that Claudius was eavesdropping, plunged his sword through the curtain, killing old Polonius. Fearing an attack on his own life, the king hastily ordered Hamlet to ...