Original: ‘Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
Modern: It’s kind and praiseworthy of you, Hamlet,

Original: To give these mourning duties to your father;
Modern: To show this respect and grief for your father;

Original: But you must know, your father lost a father;
Modern: But you must understand, your father also lost his father;

Original: That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound
Modern: That father also lost his father before him, and the one who lived on was required

Original: In filial obligation for some term
Modern: By his duty as a son for a period of time

Original: To do obsequious sorrow. But to persever
Modern: To perform proper mourning. But to continue

Original: In obstinate condolement is a course
Modern: In this stubborn grieving is a path

Original: Of impious stubbornness. ‘Tis unmanly grief;
Modern: Of disrespectful stubbornness. This is weak, unmanly grief;

Original: It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,
Modern: It shows a spirit that goes against heaven’s will,

Original: A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,
Modern: A heart without strength, a mind without patience,

Original: An understanding simple and unschool’d;
Modern: And an immature and uneducated way of thinking;

Original: For what we know must be, and is as common
Modern: Because what we know must happen, and is as ordinary

Original: As any the most vulgar thing to sense,
Modern: As any of the most common things we experience,

Original: Why should we in our peevish opposition
Modern: Why should we in our childish resistance

Original: Take it to heart? Fie! ‘tis a fault to heaven,
Modern: Take it so personally? Shame! It’s an offense to heaven,

Original: A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
Modern: An offense against the dead, an offense to nature,

Original: To reason most absurd, whose common theme
Modern: And completely absurd to reason, which constantly teaches

Original: Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,
Modern: That fathers die, and which has always declared,

Original: From the first corse till he that died to-day,
Modern: From the first corpse until the person who died today,

Original: ‘This must be so.’ We pray you throw to earth
Modern: “This must happen.” We beg you to cast aside

Original: This unprevailing woe, and think of us
Modern: This useless sorrow, and think of me

Original: As of a father; for let the world take note
Modern: As your father; because let everyone know

Original: You are the most immediate to our throne,
Modern: You are next in line to my throne,

Original: And with no less nobility of love
Modern: And with just as much noble love

Original: Than that which dearest father bears his son
Modern: As the love a devoted father has for his son

Original: Do I impart toward you. For your intent
Modern: I offer to you. As for your plan

Original: In going back to school in Wittenberg,
Modern: To return to your studies in Wittenberg,

Original: It is most retrograde to our desire;
Modern: It goes completely against what I want;

Original: And we beseech you, bend you to remain
Modern: And I beg you, agree to stay

Original: Here in the cheer and comfort of our eye,
Modern: Here in the happiness and comfort of my presence,

Original: Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.
Modern: As my most important nobleman, nephew, and son.

Act I, Scene ii of Hamlet takes place in a grand state room of the castle at Elsinore. King Claudius opens the scene by addressing his court, acknowledging the recent death of his brother, the former King Hamlet, and his subsequent marriage to Gertrude, the widowed queen. He strikes a tone of measured celebration mixed with mourning, framing his swift remarriage as a politically necessary act of stability for Denmark. Claudius then turns to the matter of young Fortinbras of Norway, who is threatening to reclaim lands lost by his father to the late King Hamlet. Claudius dispatches ambassadors Voltemand and Cornelius to the elderly King of Norway to intervene and suppress Fortinbras’s campaign. He then grants Laertes permission to return to France, before turning his attention to Prince Hamlet, urging him to cease his prolonged mourning and think of Claudius as a father.

Hamlet, dressed in black and visibly grief-stricken, deflects Claudius’s overtures with thinly veiled hostility. When Claudius and Gertrude both urge him to remain in Denmark rather than return to his studies at Wittenberg, he reluctantly agrees to stay, at his mother’s request. Once the court exits, Hamlet delivers his first soliloquy, expressing his profound grief over his father’s death and his disgust at his mother’s hasty remarriage to Claudius. Horatio, Marcellus, and Barnardo then arrive and inform Hamlet of the ghost they have encountered, which bears the likeness of his deceased father. Hamlet, shaken and eager, agrees to join them that night on the battlements to see the apparition for himself.

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.