Old Hamlet, the previous King of Denmark, has died and his ghost has been seen on the battlements of the castle. An old friend of Hamlet's, Horatio, sees the ghost.

Hamlet has come home and is struggling to cope with the fact that his mother, Gertrude, has married his uncle, Claudius, so quickly after his father's death. Claudius is now king and asks Hamlet to treat him like a father but Hamlet reacts badly to this, saying that he is 'A little more than kin and less than kind.'

Horatio tells Hamlet about the ghost saying ‘I knew your father: / These hands are not more like’. Hamlet goes to investigate and see if it could really be his father's ghost.

Laertes leaves Elsinore and warns his sister Ophelia to stay away from Hamlet before he goes. Ophelia then tells her father that Hamlet has expressed his love for her. Her father, Polonius, forbids her to see him.

The ghost of Old Hamlet appears to Hamlet and he questions it. The ghost tells him that 'The serpent that did sting thy father's life / Now wears his crown' and asks Hamlet to avenge his murder.

Ophelia tells her father that Hamlet has been behaving strangely and that he visited her in her room ‘As if he had been loosèd out of hell’. Polonius is worried and thinks that Ophelia ‘hath made him mad’ by refusing to see him.

King Claudius employs two of Hamlet’s old friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to find out what is wrong with Hamlet.

Polonius goes to Claudius and Gertrude to tell them Hamlet has gone ‘mad’ with love for Ophelia. The king and queen want evidence so Polonius suggests they listen in on a conversation between his daughter and Hamlet and ‘Markthe encounter’ to see how he behaves.

A group of travelling actors, or players, arrive at the castle to perform and Hamlet arranges for them to perform a play called ‘The Murder of Gonzago' in which a king is murdered in a similar way to the way the old king was murdered by Claudius.

Claudius and Polonius spy on Hamlet and wait for him to meet Ophelia so they can see if his love for Ophelia is causing his strange behaviour. Before talking to Ophelia, Hamlet reflects on life and existence delivering his famous speech that starts ‘To be, or not to be, that is the question’.

Ophelia returns some of her ‘remembrances’ to Hamlet while Claudius and Polonius watch in secret. Hamlet confuses her by saying ‘I did love you once’ and ‘I loved you not’, before telling her to go to a nunnery and never have any children. This upsets Ophelia.

Hamlet asks Horatio to watch Claudius carefully during the players’ performance to see how he reacts and if he is guilty. Before the players begin Hamlet speaks to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and suggests he knows that they have been spying on him. When the king is poisoned in the play, Claudius storms out and Hamlet and Horatio’s suspicions are confirmed.

While Claudius is praying alone he confesses that he murdered his brother for ‘My crown, mine own ambition and my queen’. Hamlet finds Claudius but convinces himself not to kill him while he is praying because his soul would go to heaven, saying ‘And now I’ll do it. And so he goes to heaven’.

Hamlet goes to see his mother and threatens her, accusing her of being immoral. Polonius watches from behind an arrasin Gertrude’s closet while all this happens. When he hears Polonius behind the arras, Hamlet stabs the screen and kills Polonius. He carries on accusing his mother of bad behaviour and then the ghost appears again. When he talks to the ghost, Gertrude believes he is hallucinating and declares ‘Alas, he's mad!’

Hamlet tells his mother he is going to England to study with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, as Claudius planned. Gertrude agrees to keep secret what has happened and Hamlet exits, taking Polonius' dead body with him.

Hamlet will not tell Rosencrantz and Guildenstern where Polonius’ body is but eventually tells Claudius, in a riddle, where the body can be found. Claudius plots to have Hamlet killed in England.

Queen Gertrude meets Ophelia, who is singing sad songs and speaking strangely. When Claudius joins them he tells Horatio to watch her and declares 'this is the poison of deep grief: it springs / All from her father's death.'

Laertes comes home because of his father’s death and he is angry to learn that Hamlet wasn’t punished for killing his father. When he sees Ophelia behaving strangely his anger grows, saying ‘And so have I a noble father lost, / A sister driven into desperate terms’. Claudius and Laertes plot to kill Hamlet when he returns.

As the king and Laertes plot, they receive news that the ship Hamlet was travelling on was attacked by pirates. Hamlet was captured but treated well by the pirates and has returned to Denmark. They plan to invite him to a duel and dip Laertes’ sword in deadly poison.

Gertrude announces that Ophelia has killed herself , saying ‘your sister’s drowned, Laertes’.

Two gravediggers debate whether Ophelia should be buried on church grounds because she killed herself. Hamlet appears and sees the gravediggers taking bones out of the ground as they dig out a new grave. Hamlet inspects a skull and realises it was the head of a jester that he once knew, called Yorick.

Coffin bearers bring out the body of Ophelia and Laertes jumps into her grave in an attempt to embrace his sister one last time. Hamlet appears and the two men fight over who loved her more, with Hamlet saying ‘I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers / Could not - with all their quantity of love - / Make up my sum’. Horatio intervenes and leads Hamlet away.

Hamlet tells Horatio that Claudius tried to have him killed in England but he changed the order so Rosencrantz and Guildenstern would be killed. A servant brings Hamlet an invitation, to fight Laertes. Hamlet accepts.

Before the duel, Hamlet says sorry to Laertes saying ‘Give me your pardon, sir: I’ve done you wrong’ but the fight goes ahead. They both choose their swords and Laertes picks the one he has poisoned. During the duel, Gertrude drinks poisoned wine meant for Hamlet and she begins to die slowly. The swords get mixed up during the fight and both men are wounded with the poisoned sword. Laertes reveals Claudius’ plan and Hamlet then kills his uncle, Claudius.

Hamlet tells Horatio that Fortinbras, the Prince of Norway, should become the new king of Denmark. He asks Horatio to tell Fortinbras and the rest of the world what happened before he says his last words, ‘The rest is silence. O, o, o, o’, and dies. Moments later, Fortinbras arrives.