truly after all, and he struggles with this question until he orders the actors in the court to perform a certain play using the same scenario of near relations, murder and marriage to see Claudius’s reaction and thereby confirm the words of the ghost and the suspicions in his own mind. To add load to an already weighted heart and mind, Hamlet’s love, Ophelia, thinks him insane, along with everyone else due to his recent behavior. He has behaved so wildly to Ophelia that she can only believe his cruelty stems from madness, and so she repeals his letters and denies him access to her. This, understandably causes everyone else to believe that his supposed madness is love for Ophelia, as it would seem from the verse he has written her: “Doubt that the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love.” Even more damaging to his sense of humanity and his relationship with Ophelia, Hamlet then mistakenly kills Polonius, Ophelia’s father, believing he is Claudius. He then tells his mother of her husband’s sins and his accusations against him. She, in turn, runs to Claudius with the same, and Hamlet is sent away to England under charge of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who would seem Hamlet’s friends, but who, in actuality are spies for Claudius. Going to England, Hamlet feels, may help him better deal with his father’s death, but he is also terribly confused, and it seems he cannot trust anyone. He soon learns that the plan is to have him put to death by the English court, so he replaces his name in the declaring papers with the names of the two friends who were so ready to betray him and escapes on board a pirate ship leaving them to their fate and going on to meet his. Returning home, Hamlet finds the worst ha...
