Original: O that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Modern: Oh, I wish my body would just melt away,

Original: Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!
Modern: Dissolve and turn into drops of dew!

Original: Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d
Modern: Or I wish that God had not made

Original: His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
Modern: His law against suicide! Oh God! God!

Original: How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Modern: How tired, boring, meaningless, and pointless

Original: Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Modern: Everything in this world seems to me!

Original: Fie on’t! ah, fie! ‘Tis an unweeded garden
Modern: Curse it! Oh, curse it! Life is like a neglected garden

Original: That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Modern: That’s gone to waste; disgusting and foul things

Original: Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
Modern: Have completely taken over. That things should get this bad!

Original: But two months dead! Nay, not so much, not two.
Modern: My father’s only been dead two months! No, not even two.

Original: So excellent a king, that was to this
Modern: He was such a great king, compared to my uncle he was like

Original: Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
Modern: A sun god compared to a beast; he was so loving to my mother

Original: That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Modern: That he wouldn’t even let the gentle winds

Original: Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Modern: Touch her face too harshly. My God!

Original: Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him
Modern: Do I have to remember this? She used to cling to him

Original: As if increase of appetite had grown
Modern: As if her love for him grew stronger

Original: By what it fed on; and yet, within a month-
Modern: The more she was with him; and yet, within a month-

Original: Let me not think on’t! Frailty, thy name is woman!-
Modern: I can’t bear to think about it! Weakness, your name is woman!-

Original: A little month, or ere those shoes were old
Modern: Just a short month, before the shoes were even worn out

Original: With which she followed my poor father’s body
Modern: That she wore following my poor father’s coffin

Original: Like Niobe, all tears- why she, even she
Modern: Crying like a woman from mythology- why she, even she

Original: (O God! a beast that wants discourse of reason
Modern: (Oh God! Even a mindless animal

Original: Would have mourn’d longer) married with my uncle;
Modern: Would have mourned longer) married my uncle;

Original: My father’s brother, but no more like my father
Modern: My father’s brother, but he’s no more like my father

Original: Than I to Hercules. Within a month,
Modern: Than I am like Hercules. Within a month,

Original: Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Modern: Before the salt from her fake tears

Original: Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
Modern: Had even dried from her red, irritated eyes,

Original: She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
Modern: She got married. Oh, what evil haste, to rush

Original: With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
Modern: So skillfully into a forbidden, disgusting marriage bed!

Original: It is not, nor it cannot come to good.
Modern: This is wrong, and nothing good can come of it.

Original: But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue!
Modern: My heart may break, but I have to keep quiet about it!

In Act I, Scene ii of Hamlet, the newly crowned King Claudius addresses his court at Elsinore castle. He announces his recent marriage to Gertrude, the widow of his deceased brother King Hamlet, explaining that he has balanced grief for his brother with joy for his new bride. Claudius also reveals that young Fortinbras of Norway has been making military threats against Denmark, demanding the return of lands his father lost to the late King Hamlet. The king dispatches Cornelius and Voltimand as ambassadors to Norway to address this threat with Fortinbras’s uncle, the current Norwegian king.

Claudius then turns his attention to court business, granting Laertes permission to return to France after he requests leave from his father Polonius. When the king addresses Hamlet, asking why he continues to mourn his father’s death so intensely, Hamlet responds with bitter wordplay, distinguishing between outward shows of grief and his genuine inner sorrow. After Claudius and Gertrude urge Hamlet to abandon his mourning and remain at court rather than returning to university in Wittenberg, Hamlet reluctantly agrees to stay. The royal court then exits, leaving Hamlet alone to deliver his first soliloquy, in which he expresses his deep anguish over his father’s death and his mother’s hasty remarriage to his uncle.

Hamlet tells the story of Prince Hamlet of Denmark, who is visited by the ghost of his recently deceased father. The ghost reveals that he was murdered by Hamlet’s uncle Claudius, who has now married Hamlet’s mother Gertrude and assumed the throne. Commanded by his father’s spirit to seek revenge, Hamlet struggles with doubt, melancholy, and the moral complexity of his task. To investigate the ghost’s claims and plan his revenge, he feigns madness, which creates tension throughout the Danish court.

As Hamlet deliberates, his erratic behavior affects everyone around him, particularly his love interest Ophelia, daughter of the king’s advisor Polonius. To test Claudius’s guilt, Hamlet stages a play mirroring his father’s murder, which confirms the king’s culpability. However, Hamlet’s actions become increasingly destructive—he accidentally kills Polonius while the old man spies on him, and his rejection of Ophelia contributes to her descent into genuine madness and eventual drowning.

The play reaches its climax when Ophelia’s brother Laertes returns to avenge his father’s death. Claudius manipulates Laertes into challenging Hamlet to a duel, secretly poisoning Laertes’s sword and preparing poisoned wine as backup. The final scene erupts in tragedy: during the duel, both Hamlet and Laertes are wounded by the poisoned blade, Gertrude accidentally drinks the poisoned wine, and Hamlet finally kills Claudius. As Hamlet dies, he names Prince Fortinbras of Norway as Denmark’s next ruler, bringing the cycle of revenge and political instability to a close. The play ends with Fortinbras restoring order to the Danish court as bodies are carried off in a funeral march.