Hamlet Summary & Plot Analysis

Hamlet may well be Shakespeare’s most popular play, even if you may not be familiar with the summary of the play. It may even be said that it is one of the world’s or the world’s most widely recognized works of literature, at least by name. The play centers around the story of Prince Hamlet, who has to find justice for his father, the late King Hamlet, who has been killed by his evil brother, King Claudius, who covets both his wife and throne.

The play is ambitious in its themes. It explores the nature of revenge versus justice, while using Hamlet’s character as a study of what it takes for man to strike a proper balance between quelling his desire for vengeance and observing the standards of divine justice. The play also focuses on the theme of kingship, representing the sacred order of heaven, portraying the murder of King Hamlet as a moral rot that Hamlet is tasked with healing.

The summary and plot of the play reflect these themes quite masterfully.  In this article, we provide a summary of the play and its narrative arc and how they work toward supporting the themes of the play. 

Depiction of the Closet Scene in Hamlet.

Hamlet summary

In Act 1, Hamlet, our protagonist, begins the play depressed and disturbed thinking there’s something wrong with the world. He is bothered by the fact that his mother married his uncle less than a month after his father’s death. His intuition is proven correct when he finds out from his father’s ghost that King Claudius was responsible for killing King Hamlet to steal the throne and Queen — Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother.

In Act 2, Hamlet decides to avenge his father’s death. This involves a convoluted plot, where he acts insane to protect himself against the spies that Claudius sends after him, including Ophelia, his girlfriend, whom he rejects because he rightfully suspects that she is spying on behalf of King Claudius and her father Polonius who works for Claudius. However, he needs further proof besides the testimony of a ghost. This leads to the rising action and climax of the play in three famous scenes in Act 3. 

Hamlet hires a troop of actors to perform a play before the royal court, depicting how King Claudius would have killed his father King Hamlet. 

The king’s reaction to the play proves that he is guilty of the murder. Immediately after this scene, Hamlet catches a slightly repentant King Claudius praying after he confesses to the murder in a soliloquy before Hamlet arrives. Hamlet makes up his mind to kill King Claudius but changes his mind as he thinks killing a man while he prays means that Claudius would go to heaven, and Claudius is not good enough for that.

Later in the Closet Scene, Hamlet is speaking with his mother when he realizes there is someone hiding behind the curtain. Thinking it Claudius, he stabs, saying “How now, a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead” (Act 3, Scene 4). Hamlet is mistaken, and it is Polonius, the king’s adviser. 

In Act 4, King Claudius exiles Hamlet to England. Hamlet is accompanied by his two childhood friends — Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The king has given them letters to be delivered to the king of England with secret orders to kill Hamlet. Hamlet discovers the letter, rewrites it to appear that Rosecrantz and Guidenstern should be killed, and returns to Denmark instead. 

Act 5 is the final act of the play and its resolution. Laertes, the son of Polonius, the man killed by Hamlet in the Closet Scene decides to get involved in a conspiracy to kill Hamlet with King Claudius. This conspiracy involves poisoning Hamlet with a fixed rapier in a fencing match, with a backup plan of poisoning him with wine if that doesn’t work. 

Hamlet accepts participation in the fencing match with Laertes, but the plan goes awry. Laertes poisons Hamlet as well as himself. Moreover, Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, accidentally drinks from the poison cup and dies immediately. Laertes before dying confesses everything to Hamlet who kills the king by forcing him to drink from the poison cup before he himself dies. The play ends with the king of Norway, Fortinbras, taking over the kingship of Denmark. 

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The narrative arc of Hamlet

The plot for Hamlet does a good job of demonstrating the changing fortunes of the protagonist and his character arc while emphasizing the themes of the play. It can be said that Hamlet is the literary archetype of the sacrificial hero. He suffers and sacrifices himself for the greater good of the country. For a more detailed analysis of Hamlet as the sacrificial hero, you can take a look at this article: An Analysis of Hamlet | An Archetypal Approach.

The table below shows how the narrative plays out in Hamlet:

Narrative Arc Element	Definition	Example from Hamlet
Exposition	The introduction of the setting, main characters, and central conflict.	The play begins with the appearance of King Hamlet’s ghost on the battlements of Elsinore Castle, who reveals that he was murdered by his brother Claudius, who coveted his throne and queen. Thus,  the central conflict of Hamlet’s quest for revenge  is set up. (Act 1, Scenes 1–5)
Rising Action	A series of events that build tension and develop the conflict.	Hamlet carries out the play or Mousetrap to elicit proof of King Claudius’s guilt. (Act 3, Scene 2)
Climax	The turning point where the hero’s fate is sealed.	Hamlet kills Polonius behind the arras, thinking it is Claudius. This act leads directly to his downfall and shifts the play from uncertainty to inevitable tragedy. (Act 3, Scene 4)
Falling Action	Events that unfold as a result of the climax; complications begin to resolve.	Claudius sends Hamlet to England with a secret message for Hamlet to be executed, which fails after Hamlet discovers it.  Laertes returns seeking revenge and plots with Claudius. (Act 4, Scenes 1–7)
Resolution (Denouement)	The conflict is resolved, and the story concludes, often with a sense of closure.	In the fixed fencing match between Hamlet and Laertes, Gertrude, Laertes, Claudius, and Hamlet all die, with Hamlet killing Claudius.(Act 5, Scene 2)

To understand Hamlet’s narrative arc, we should focus on one of the central motifs of the play — rot and decay. There are many other motifs in the play, if you want a close reading of these motifs, you can check out our prior article here: Looking at Literary Motifs in Hamlet. 

The rot in the play is a moral and spiritual rot. It affects Hamlet’s mind and he can find no happiness at court and seemingly in the world. So much so, he contemplates suicide in his famous soliloquy: 

O that this too too solid flesh would melt,

Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!

.  .  .

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable

Seem to me all the uses of this world!

Fie on’t! O fie! ’tis an unweeded garden,

That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature

Possess it merely. That it should come to this!

The world is described as “an unweeded garden” where “things rank and gross in nature” flourish. The word “rank” means stinky and rotten. We are given the reason he thinks like this, when he later says of his mother marrying his uncle quickly after his father’s death:

But two months dead!—nay, not so much, not two:

So excellent a king; that was, to this,

Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother,

That he might not beteem the winds of heaven

Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!

Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him

As if increase of appetite had grown

By what it fed on: and yet, within a month,—

Let me not think on’t,—Frailty, thy name is woman!— (Act 1, Scene 2)

In short, he is disappointed that his mother has moved on so quickly after his father’s death. However, Hamlet is soon visited by his father’s ghost, who gives a wider perspective on the rot that Hamlet has identified: 

 Now, Hamlet, hear.

’Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard,

A serpent stung me. So the whole ear of Denmark

Is by a forgèd process of my death

Rankly abused.  (Act 1, Scene 5)

Here, the ghost of the king is comparing his murder to a rot that affects the whole of Denmark by using a pun or play of words with the human ear and ear of wheat/corn. The king was poisoned through the ear. He compares his poisoning by ear, and by extension the poisoning of Denmark’s body politic, to an ear of corn/wheat being infected by a single diseased grain. This is where Hamlet’s character arc begins to rise. Where before he was suicidal and feel betrayed by his mother’s sex life, he is being informed that the wrong that has to be righted is more related to healing the body politic than indulging in personal grievances. 

Hamlet, then, is faced with the task of proving that Claudius killed his father and bringing Claudius to justice. The Mousetrap Scene where he puts on the play successfully reveals or proves that Claudius committed murder. The Prayer Scene where he catches King Claudius praying and is tempted to kill him can be seen as the universe testing Hamlet. 

Claudius is an antagonist who violates both earthly and heavenly law to kill the King. For better or for worse, he is now king and to set the kingdom right and rid the land of Denmark of this royal rot, King Claudius should be brought to justice by fair means. Killing him as he is on his knees praying makes a mockery out of the idea of justice. Claudius can only be killed via  court of law or through an act of self-defense. 

So Hamlet passes the test. However, soon after in the Closet Scene, which is the climax of the play, he is tested again and fails after he kills a spying Polonius after mistaking him for the king. It’s almost as if the play is making the point that taking vengeance in your own hands is the same as killing an innocent person. In any event, this seals the fate of Hamlet. The son of Polonius, Laertes, is motivated to side and plot against Prince Hamlet to avenge his father.

His fate also follows that of Hamlet, where he is killed by accidentally poisoning himself — again paying the price of taking vengeance in one’s own hand. The denouement of the play shows Hamlet accepting the fixed fencing match even as he knows it's a trap. While he dies, he gives Fortinbras, the king of Norway, his support for the kingship of Denmark. 

So with Hamlet, we see a positive character arc of transformation. Hamlet evolves from a self-centered man contemplating suicide because he thinks that he is personally wronged to a man who sacrifices himself to rid his country of its moral blight. 

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Cite this EminentEdit article

Antoine, M. (2025, November 09). Hamlet Summary & Plot Analysis.  EminentEdit. https://www.eminentediting.com/post/hamlet-summary