After Hamlet exits, Claudius decides that Hamlet’s erratic behavior is not caused by love and announces a plan to send Hamlet on an embassy to England. Hamlet is at first courteous to Ophelia, but suddenly he turns on her: he denies having loved her, asks where her father is, attacks womankind, and tells her she should enter a nunnery. Act 3, scene 1 After Rosencrantz and Guildenstern report their failure to find the cause of Hamlet’s madness, Polonius places Ophelia where he and Claudius may secretly observe a meeting between her and Hamlet.Hamlet hopes that when the players stage The Murder of Gonzago for the court, he can determine whether Claudius is guilty of King Hamlet’s death. Hamlet persuades one of them to deliver a speech, and recognizes, to his shame, that he has shown less intensity in avenging his father’s murder than the actor has done in performance. As they talk, a company of touring actors enters. When Hamlet himself enters, he is confronted first by Polonius and then by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, whom he quickly identifies as Claudius’s spies. Act 2, scene 2 Claudius and Gertrude set Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two boyhood friends of Hamlet, to spy on him.Polonius decides that Hamlet has been made insane by Ophelia’s refusing to see him. Ophelia enters, deeply disturbed about a visit she has just had from an apparently mad Hamlet. Act 2, scene 1 Polonius sends his servant Reynaldo to Paris to question Laertes’s acquaintances.Hamlet, horrified, vows to “remember” and swears his friends to secrecy about what they have seen. Saying that he is the spirit of Hamlet’s father, he demands that Hamlet avenge King Hamlet’s murder at the hands of Claudius. Act 1, scene 5 The Ghost tells Hamlet a tale of horror.Hamlet’s friends try to stop his following the Ghost, but Hamlet will not be held back. Act 1, scene 4 While Claudius drinks away the night, Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus are visited by the Ghost.Polonius joins them, sends Laertes off, then echoes Laertes’s warnings to Ophelia, finally ordering her not to see Hamlet again. Act 1, scene 3 In Polonius’s chambers, Laertes says good-bye to his sister, Ophelia, and tells her not to trust Hamlet’s promises of love.Hamlet makes plans to join them that night. The audience learns that the marriage took place “within a month” of the former king’s death.Horatio, Barnardo, and Marcellus arrive and tell Hamlet about the Ghost. Hamlet, mourning for his father’s death, is left alone to vent his despair at what he regards as his mother’s all too hasty marriage to his uncle, Claudius. He gives Laertes permission to return to France but denies Hamlet’s request to return to the university in Wittenberg. After thanking his courtiers for their recent support, he dispatches ambassadors to Norway to halt a threatened attack from Fortinbras. Act 1, scene 2 In an audience chamber in Elsinore, Claudius, the new king of Denmark, holds court.Horatio decides to tell his fellow student, Prince Hamlet, about the Ghost’s appearance. The Ghost, in the form of the late King Hamlet of Denmark, appears but will not speak.
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