User:DionysosProteus/HamletShortened

Act one
On a cold winter night, two sentries try to convince the sceptical student Horatio that they have seen the ghost of the recently-deceased King Hamlet, when the ghost suddenly appears. Horatio tries to question it but it stalks away. He proposes they tell the old king's son, Hamlet.

Claudius, the new king, proclaims an end to the official mourning for his brother, in light of his marriage to Gertrude, his brother's queen. Claudius and Gertrude try to persuade Hamlet to abandon his melancholy and not to return to university in Wittenburg. Hamlet promises to try to obey his mother. Left alone, he vents his frustration at her hasty remarriage. He is interrupted by Horatio and the sentries, who inform him of the portentous apparition.

That night, Hamlet speaks to his father's ghost, who reveals that he was poisoned by Claudius. He commands Hamlet to avenge his murder. Hamlet vows to do so and swears his companions to secrecy. He decides to disguise his true intents by feigning madness.

Act two
Ophelia reports to her father, the King's counsellor Polonius, how Hamlet came to her bedroom in a fit of madness. Polonius deduces an "ecstasy of love" is to blame. Meanwhile, Claudius enlists two of Hamlet's school-friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to discover the cause of Hamlet's madness. Polonius puts his theory to Claudius and Gertrude.

Hamlet greets Rozencrantz and Guildenstern warmly, but soon discerns their duplicity. He professes a disaffection with the world, for which Rozencrantz recommends a troupe of actors, who soon arrive. Hamlet solicits a passionate performance from one of them. Alone, he reflects on the feigned passion of the actor and his own failure to act. Uncertain whether the ghost was genuine, he resolves to confirm his uncle's guilt by observing his response to the staging of a play, which he later calls The Mousetrap.

Act three
Claudius agrees to attend the play, but first he and Polonius hide themselves, to spy on Hamlet with Ophelia. Thinking he is alone, Hamlet reflects on his predicament, until Ophelia alerts him to her presence. Hamlet berates her for her immodesty and dismisses her to a nunnery, causing her great distress. The king decides to send Hamlet to England, but Polonius persuades him first to allow the Queen to try to discover the cause of Hamlet's distemper.

Hamlet directs the actors' preparations. The court assembles and the play begins; Hamlet offers a running commentary throughout. When the action shows a king poisoned, Claudius rises abruptly and leaves, from which Hamlet deduces his guilt.

Hamlet is summoned to his mother's bedchamber. On his way, he discovers Claudius praying. Poised to kill, Hamlet hesitates. He reasons that to kill Claudius in prayer would send him to heaven.

Hamlet confronts his mother in her chamber. Gertrude panics and cries out. Polonius, hiding behind a tapestry, responds, prompting Hamlet to stab wildly in that direction. Hoping it was the king, he discovers Polonius' corpse. Hamlet directs a sustained accusation at Gertrude, who admits some guilt. The ghost appears to bid him treat her gently and to spur him on to his revenge. Unable to see the apparition, Gertrude takes Hamlet's behaviour for a sign of madness. Hamlet drags the corpse away.

Act four
Claudius sends Hamlet to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who carry a secret request for his execution. Having watched the army of Fortinbras (nephew to the Norwegian king) pass through, Hamlet reflects on his own inaction.

Ophelia wanders the court in grief-induced madness, singing incoherently. Laertes (Polonius’s son recently returned from abroad), seeking revenge for his father's murder, bursts into the royal chamber at the head of a rabble that clamours for him to be king. The sight of his sister, Ophelia, in her distracted state further incenses him. Claudius convinces Laertes that Hamlet is to blame. Learning of Hamlet's escape and return to Denmark, Claudius proposes a rigged fencing-match, using poisioned rapiers, as a surreptitious vehicle for Laertes' revenge. Gertrude interrupts to report that Ophelia has drowned.

Act five
Two clowns debate the legality of Ophelia's apparent suicide, whilst digging her grave. Hamlet arrives with Horatio and banters with a gravedigger, who unearths the skull of a jester from Hamlet's childhood, Yorick. A funeral procession approaches. On hearing that it is Ophelia's and seeing Laertes leap into her grave, Hamlet advances and the two grapple.

Back at Elsinore, Hamlet tells Horatio the story of his escape and how he arranged the deaths of Rozencrantz and Guildernstern. A courtier informs Hamlet of the King's wager on a fencing match with Laertes. Hamlet agrees to participate.

The court enters, ready for the match. Claudius orders cups of wine prepared, one of which he has poisoned. During the bout, Gertrude drinks from the poisoned cup. Laertes succeeds in piercing Hamlet with a poisoned blade, but, in the struggle, is wounded by it himself. Gertrude dies. With his dying breath Laertes reveals the king’s plot. Hamlet kills Claudius and, before succumbing to the poison, names Fortinbras as heir. As Fortinbras arrives, Horatio promises to recount the tale. Fortinbras orders Hamlet’s body borne off in honour.

Edit
I know we need to keep it punchy, but I have added a little. Some of it is style, I confess. I think it's desirable to narrate the dramatic logic underlying the events, which is most visible in sentence structures "this expectation but that happened" or "this cause so that effect" and the like, mainly because its this logic that makes it drama, rather than any other form of fiction. As a synopsis, too, using that logic feels like a better read - a narrative rather than a list of events. That's why I've reverted to a version of the show/tell dynamic - we settle down to hear the tale, when--surprise--ghost appears.

I couldn't avoid describing the ghost as It in the opening scene; sorry :). If it's any use, Marcellus does say "Question it Horatio" (1.1.45). It/he gets a more human tone in the description of 1.5; the point about H's skepticism is covered adequately in his motivations for the Mousetrap, I think.

I've tried to kill two birds with one stone in the second scene of act one. I take the point about the difference between analysis and description, but my points about this scene turn on how it feels in performance, not any critical evaluation, and for an inexperienced reader that feeling can be difficult to detect when studying the play-text in isolation. Very rarely, of course, a production goes against this dynamic (Peter Brook's shamefully piss-poor production at the Young Vic did something like this); it's probably the memory of that that is making the previous edit feel too soapy to me. The second issue is again, perhaps, one of style, but I really dislike back-story in the description of a play. I know the parenthetical structure of the previous edit was long-winded, but it did at least frame the past in terms of present action. So I've attempted to combine the two by rendering the narration of the succession in terms of Claudius' formal opening proclamation (which is how the audience get most of the back-story). The formality of the scene is rendered, I hope, by the use of "proclaims" and "official mourning". It's a little more accurate than "decrees", too. I know Hamlet's promise is a little verbose, but it's more accurate, since he doesn't actually agree to anything. This edit for this scene is only six words longer than the previous one.

In act two, I've removed Gertrude, as she doesn't enlist R&G to do this, she just says, please stay at court and go see H now. I've also returned the title of the play to The Mousetrap, with the qualification of it being H's title. The reason I put this in in the first place wasn't because the play is important--because it clearly isn't--but because this title is - that scene is referred to in critical shorthand as 'the mousetrap scene'. I think it's important that someone can find where these famous scenes are in the play by referring to wikipedia's synopsis.

That's the reason why I've returned Hamlet's To Be or Not To Be to the description. It's perhaps the most famous scene in the play, so it really can't not be in there. The action is the plot, not merely the external events. It'd be like having a sports highlights segment that fails to show the crucial goal. I also clipped the description of Hamlet's treatment of Ophelia, as it seemed too interpretative; this is what he does, whether it's cruel or not is up to the actor & director and then audience to decide.

The rest is minor clipping and clarifying, I think. I changed 'arras' to 'tapestry' as its a more familiar word. The scene where "Claudius convinces Laertes that Hamlet is to blame" actually isn't described very well, as it opens with Laertes saying, yes, I know Hamlet did it; why didn't you take stronger measures? On reflection, though, this is not such a bad inaccuracy. Describing Ophelia's suicide as a suicidal action was designed to tie it in with the play's questioning of the nature of action ("to act, to do, to perform," as the gravedigger says), and whether her inaction (like Hamlet's hesitant inaction) is an action. This can be covered in analysis, though.

I miss the king's concluding Hamlet's not mad but malcontent, since it links the play into a wider generic structure, but that can be covered in analysis too.

There are two bits that I'm not sure about: the most important is the king's soliloquy before praying, which is a crucial scene, as it's the first real non-supernatural evidence we get that he really is guilty. He's confessing to us, and that revelation of information isn't captured by the synopsis yet. The second is less significant--the penultimate scene. After a play-full of his hesitant nail-biting, for the first time Hamlet is in his groove... it's from this position he goes to confront his destiny; his outlining of his 'case' against Claudius is kind of important in that regard; its his just cause for action (the pirates, btw, I don't think are very important).

Anyhow, that's that. Not so much a trim as a slight restyle. The word count's not risen by much either - 18 extra words by my count.