Summary:
On a dark winter’s night, a ghost walks the ramparts of Elsinore Castle in Denmark. The watcmen immeditely call Hamlet’s school friend Horatio. The ghost resembles the recently deceased King Hamlet, whose brother Claudius has inherited the throne and married the king’s widow, Queen Gertrude. Horatio and the guards, bring Prince Hamlet, the son of the King and Queen, to see the ghost. The ghost speaks to the Prince, ominously declaring that it is indeed his father’s spirit, and that he was assassinated by Claudius. The ghost orders Hamlet to seek revenge on the man who usurped his throne and married his wife, as dawn rises the ghost disappears.

Prince Hamlet devotes himself to avenging his father’s death, but due to his contemplative and thoughtful nature, he delays the undertaking, entering a state of deep melancholy and even apparent madness, but this is a ruse. Claudius and Gertrude worry about the prince’s unsettled behavior and try to discover its cause. They recruit a pair of Hamlet’s friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to watch him. When Polonius, the pompous Lord Chamberlain, implies that Hamlet may be insane with love for his daughter Ophelia, Claudius agrees to spy on Hamlet whilst in conversation with the girl. But though Hamlet certainly appears to be mad, he does not seem to love Ophelia: he orders her to enter a nunnery and declares that he wishes to ban marriages.

A group of traveling actors comes to Elsinore, and Hamlet seizes upon an idea to test his uncle’s guilt. He intends to have the actors perform a scene, that closely resembles the sequence of events which Hamlet imagines may have happened while his uncle murdered his father, so that if Claudius is guilty, he will surely react. When the scene of the murder is acted out in  the theater, Claudius leaps up and abruptly leaves. Hamlet and Horatio agree that this ascertains his guilt. Hamlet goes to kill Claudius, but finds him praying. Given that he believes that killing Claudius while in prayer would send Claudius’s soul to heaven, Hamlet considers that it would be an inadequate revenge and decides to delay. Claudius, now spooked by Hamlet’s madness and fearing for his own safety, orders that Hamlet be sent to England at once.

Hamlet goes to confront his mother, in whose bedchamber Polonius has hidden behind a tapestry. Hearing a noise from behind the tapestry, Hamlet assumes the king is hiding there. He draws his sword and stabs through the fabric, thus killing Polonius. For this crime, he is immediately dispatched to England along with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. However, Claudius’s plan for Hamlet includes more than banishment. He has given Rosencrantz and Guildenstern sealed orders for the King of England demanding that Hamlet be put to death. Hamlet discovers the king’s plan and returns alone to Denmark, sending his companions Rosencratz and Guildenstern to their deaths in his place.
Meanwhile in the aftermath of her father’s death, Ophelia goes insane with grief and rejection, therefore drowns herself in a river. Polonius’s son, Laertes, who has been sojourning in France, upon receiving the news of his sister’s death, returns in a fury to Denmark. Claudius persuades him that Hamlet is to blame for his father’s and sister’s deaths. When Horatio and the king receive news from Hamlet informing them that he has returned to Denmark, after pirates attacked his ship en route to England, Claudius devises a plan to use Laertes’ desire for revenge, thus securing Hamlet’s death. The plan foresees that Laertes and Hamlet, will  partake in what ssem an innocuous bout of fencing, but Claudius will poison Laertes’ blade so that if he draws blood, Hamlet will die. As a backup plan, the king decides to poison a goblet, which he will then  give to Hamlet to drink, should he score the first or second hits of the match. Hamlet returns to the proximity of Elsinore and meets his friend Horatio in the graveyard, just as Ophelia’s funeral is taking place. Stricken with grief, he attacks Laertes and declares that he had in fact always loved Ophelia. Later once back at the castle, he confides to Horatio that he believes one must be prepared to die, since death may come at any moment. A senseless courtier named Osric on Claudius’s orders, arrives to arrange the fencing match between Hamlet and Laertes.

The fencing duel begins. Hamlet scores the first hit, but declines to drink from the king’s proffered goblet. But unintentionaly Gertrude drinks from the chalice and is swiftly killed by the poison. Laertes is able to wound Hamlet, though Hamlet does not immediately die of the poison. During the duel Laertes is also cut by his own poisoned blade, but before perishing, he reveals to Hamlet that Claudius is responsible for the poisoned chalice and the queen’s death. Hamlet then stabs Claudius through with the poisoned sword and forces him to drink the remainder of the poisoned wine. Claudius dies, and so does Hamlet soon after achieving his revenge.

At that very moment,  the Norwegian prince named Fortinbras, who has led a victorious army to Denmark after having previously attacked Poland, enters the court accompanied by the ambassadors from England, who report that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. Fortinbras is stunned by the gruesome sight of the entire royal family, lying sprawled dead on the floor. He moves to take power of the kingdom. Horatio, fulfilling Hamlet’s last request, recounts Hamlet’s tragic story. Fortinbras orders that Hamlet be carried away and buried with the honours befitting a fallen soldier.

Meanwhile, Robin, Wagner’s clown, has picked up some magic on his own, and with his fellow stablehand, Rafe, he undergoes a number of comic misadventures. At one point, he manages to summon Mephastophilis, who threatens to turn Robin and Rafe into animals (or perhaps even does transform them; the text isn’t clear) to punish them for their foolishness.