
Meanwhile, Ophelia has been suffering from madness after falling out with Hamlet. He sets up a plot to have Hamlet killed, but Hamlet escapes and returns to Denmark. Claudius orders Hamlet to be exiled to England. It turns out that he has killed Polonius, a royal advisor and Ophelia's father. Someone moves behind a curtain and Hamlet, thinking it is Claudius, stabs him. He instead visits his mother, and they have an argument because Hamlet is unhappy that she married Claudius. Hamlet has a chance to kill Claudius in the castle chapel, but cannot bring himself to do it. Claudius panics when he sees the play, and Hamlet sees this as proof that his uncle is a murderer. He eventually has the idea of getting some actors to put on a play about a king being killed, in the same way that the ghost described, to see how Claudius reacts.

His behaviour causes him to fall out with Ophelia, a girl he was in love with. As the play goes on, it becomes hard to tell if Hamlet is actually mad or still just pretending. He pretends to be mad to hide what he is doing. Hamlet is at first not sure whether to believe the ghost, so he tries to investigate. The ghost demands that Hamlet kill Claudius in revenge. Hamlet meets a ghost of his dead father, who tells him that he was poisoned by Claudius. Instead, Hamlet's uncle Claudius took the throne for himself and married Hamlet's mother, Gertrude. Hamlet is a young prince in Denmark who was supposed to become king when his father (also named Hamlet) died.

With 4042 lines and 29551 words, Hamlet is the longest Shakespearean play. Hamlet was written between 16, and first printed in 1603. It is one of his best-known plays, and many lines have become famous quotations. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is a tragedy play by William Shakespeare.
