The Most Power Tragedy In William Shakespeare's Hamlet

“To be or not to be, that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles..” - Hamlet Act III, Scene I. William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, written somewhere between 1599 and 1602, is regarded as one of the most power tragedies in English literature. The story is of Hamlet is told in five acts, but this paper will focus on three important events throughout the play -- when Hamlet meets his father’s ghost, when Hamlet’s uncle’s guilt starts to get the best of him and he plots to banish Hamlet, and finally, the tragic dismal climax, resulting in the death of everyone involved. When reading Hamlet, the reader quickly finds out that Hamlet’s father has

Titled The Mousetrap, Hamlet uses the performance of this play to build suspense to see if the ghost is really telling the truth about whether Claudius really killed him or not. The Mousetrap tells the tale of a real murder that was carried out in Vienna. While it was simple entertainment for the audience, Claudius cut the play short, letting Hamlet know what he needed to know: his uncle was guilty of his father’s murder. Hamlet was immediately ready to avenge his father’s death. In the next scene, Claudius is praying for forgiveness of his sins. “Oh, my offence is rank. It smells to heaven. It hath the primal eldest curse upon 't, A brother’s murder … My fault is past. But oh, what form of prayer Can serve my turn, ‘Forgive me my foul murder?’” Hamlet sees his uncle praying and is ready to kill him then and there but after thinking for a moment, he realizes that if he kills Claudius as he’s praying, he’ll be considered a martyr and go straight to heaven. He wants his uncle to suffer the same fate in purgatory just as his father. He decides that he’ll kill Claudius another

Claudius plots to have Hamlet killed. He calls for a duel between Hamlet and Laertes (brother of Hamlet’s love interest, Ophelia, who died before this point in the play). The sword Laertes will be using is dipped in poison and once Hamlet is stabbed with it, that’s how he will die. For the death to appear accidental though, Hamlet accepts the duel from Laertes in good faith. Claudius prepares a poisoned goblet of wine for Hamlet and offers it to him after he gained the first few points in the duel. Hamlet refuses the wine and his mother drinks instead … Oops. Laertes battles with himself whether or not he can actually stab Hamlet with the poison tipped sword and still keep a good conscience. He ends up striking him with the sword, and somehow in a scuffle, the two get their swords switched up and Laertes ends up being struck by his own poisoned sword. He deems that dying in this way is fitting to the treachery he just committed towards Hamlet. Queen Gertrude starts to experience the effects of the poisoned wine and cries out. Claudius tries to pass this off as how she acts upon seeing a duel and she cries that the wine she drank was poisoned. Hamlet realizes what is happening and Laertes tells that it’s all Claudius’s doing and that they both will die from the poison on the sword. Hamlet stabs Claudius with the same sword and to make sure that he dies, he forces him to drink the remainder of the poisoned wine. Just