Hamlet Synopsis
from The Pocket Companion to Shakespeare’s Plays by J.C. Trewin

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, has not succeeded his father as King. On the throne is his uncle Claudius, who married Queen Gertrude immediately upon the death of her husband, the first King Hamlet. At midnight the ghost of the dead King (whom Claudius had poisoned) appears to his son on the battlements of the castle and commands revenge. “If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not.”

Hamlet, unsure at first, simulates madness (Act II) which overwhelms Ophelia (daughter of the Lord Chamberlain, Polonius) whom he loves. When a company of actors arrives, Hamlet asks for the performance of a play with a plot much like his father’s murder, so that he can see how the King responds. Claudius, deeply alarmed, plans (Act III) to send Hamlet at once to England. Before this can be done, Hamlet, going to his mother’s closet, fiercely reviles her for yielding to Claudius; then, hearing a noise, he stabs through the curtain, killing Polonius who has concealed himself there.

Two courtiers (Act IV) conduct Hamlet towards the voyage to England, bearing letters that order his death when he arrives. Meanwhile, Laertes, son of Polonius, enraged by the news of his father’s end finds that his sister Ophelia is helplessly mad, and swears to kill Hamlet (now coming home after a sea-fight in which he was saved by pirates).

Ophelia drowns herself; Hamlet is in time to see her burial (Act V). Later, at a fencing match where Laertes, after plotting with the King, seeks to stab Hamlet with a poisoned rapier, both men are wounded: Queen Gertrude drinks, in error, the poisoned wine Claudius has prepared for Hamlet as a second device. Laertes and Gertrude die; Hamlet, after killing Claudius, collapses in the arms of his friend Horatio and dies. Fortinbras, Prince of Norway, whose army has invaded Denmark, enters to take the throne that Hamlet, with his “dying voice”, has bequeathed. Fortinbras orders him to be borne up with military ceremonial: “For he was likely, had he been put on,/To have prov’d most royal.”




Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead Synopsis
Rosencrantz (“R”) and Guildenstern (“G”) are flipping coins, which keep coming up heads. Each time a coin lands on heads, R wins it. While G worries about the improbability of a coin landing on heads so many times in a row, R happily continues flipping. G wonders if they have entered a world where the laws of chance and time are absent. The pair struggles to recall why they are traveling and remember only that a messenger called them.
They encounter a troupe of actors, the Tragedians, whose leader is known as the Player. G turns the improbable coin-flipping episode to their advantage by offering the Player a bet. The Player loses but claims he cannot pay. G asks for a play instead. G starts to leave as the Tragedians prepare, and the two characters are suddenly inside Elsinore, the royal castle of Denmark where Claudius explains that he sent for them so that they could ascertain what is bothering Hamlet, their childhood friend.
Bewildered, R and G discuss how they might probe Hamlet for the cause of his supposed madness. They play a game of question-and-answer, further confusing themselves about their purpose and even their identities. As scene after scene from Shakespeare’s Hamlet unfold through R’s and G’s perspectives, the two despair about how little they learn of Hamlet’s feelings. They cannot decide whether he is insane.

After a performance of The Murder of Gonzago—the play within the play Hamlet— R and G find themselves on a boat, with the Tragedians, taking prince Hamlet to England. They are to give the English king a message telling him to kill Hamlet. Instead, Hamlet discovers this and switches the letter for another, telling the king to kill R and G. During the voyage, they are ambushed by pirates, lose Hamlet, and resign themselves to their fate.