Sentinels spot the ghost of the dead King of Denmark stalking the battlements of Elsinore Castle.

The ghost tells Hamlet that Claudius murdered him by pouring poison into his ear while he slept.

Hamlet swears Horatio and the sentinels to secrecy about the ghost's appearance and its accusation.

Claudius and Gertrude summon Hamlet's childhood friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy on him and find the cause of his behavior.

Hamlet arranges for a company of actors to perform a play that mirrors his father's murder in order to test Claudius.

Claudius rises and flees the theatrical performance, confirming to Hamlet and Horatio that he is guilty of murder.

Hamlet stabs Polonius through a tapestry in Gertrude's room, mistaking him for Claudius hiding and eavesdropping.

Claudius dispatches Hamlet to England under escort, secretly ordering the English king to execute him on arrival.

Hamlet discovers the sealed execution orders and rewrites the commission to condemn Rosencrantz and Guildenstern instead.

Pirates attack the ship bound for England, and Hamlet escapes in the confusion and returns to Denmark.

Claudius and Laertes devise a plan for a rigged duel using a poisoned sword, with poisoned wine as a backup.

Gertrude delivers the news that Ophelia has fallen into a brook and drowned.

Hamlet and Laertes grapple inside Ophelia's open grave, each insisting his love for her was greater.

Gertrude drinks from the poisoned wine meant for Hamlet and collapses, dying before the duel ends.

Hamlet stabs Claudius with the poisoned blade and forces poison wine down his throat before dying in Horatio's arms.

Pool 1 follows the central chain of cause and effect in Hamlet, from the ghost's shocking accusation to the final bloodbath. The ghost's revelation that Claudius murdered him sets Hamlet on a path of investigation and planned revenge. Through a staged theatrical trap, Hamlet confirms Claudius's guilt, but his indecision leads to accidental violence when he kills Polonius instead. Claudius's attempts to eliminate Hamlet backfire catastrophically, drawing a grieving Laertes into a fatal conspiracy of poisoned swords and wine. The final duel claims nearly every major character, including Gertrude, Laertes, Claudius, and Hamlet himself, leaving Denmark without an heir.

The headline events that drive Denmark to ruin.

The ghost appears on the battlements but refuses to speak and vanishes when the rooster crows at dawn.

Claudius holds court and grants Laertes permission to return to France as a loyal courtier.

Laertes warns his sister Ophelia that Hamlet's love is fleeting and she risks losing her honor to him.

Polonius instructs Ophelia to distance herself from Hamlet and refuse to see him or accept his attentions.

Ophelia reports to Polonius that Hamlet appeared in her room acting disheveled and deeply distressed.

Polonius presents Claudius and Gertrude with one of Hamlet's love letters to Ophelia, claiming lovesickness explains his strange behavior.

Hamlet confronts Ophelia, denies he ever loved her, and repeatedly commands her to go to a nunnery.

Hamlet instructs the visiting actors to perform with restraint and naturalism before the play-within-a-play begins.

Hamlet and Horatio excitedly confirm Claudius's guilt to each other after watching his panicked reaction to the play.

Fortinbras and his Norwegian army pass peacefully through Denmark on their way to battle the Poles.

Laertes returns to Denmark from France and storms the palace demanding violent revenge for his father's death.

Ophelia wanders through the royal court in a state of madness, singing fragments of songs about love and death.

Sailors deliver a letter from Hamlet to Horatio, reporting that his ship was attacked by pirates.

Two gravediggers debate whether Ophelia deserves a Christian burial given the circumstances of her death.

Horatio remains the only survivor and vows to tell Fortinbras the true story of Denmark's fall.

Pool 2 traces the secondary threads running through Hamlet's main action, beginning with the ghost's initial refusal to speak and ending with Horatio's final pledge to preserve the truth. Ophelia is warned and controlled by her brother and father, establishing her tragic vulnerability to the forces around her, while Polonius and Claudius scheme to observe and exploit Hamlet's erratic behavior. The actors' arrival provides the mechanism for Hamlet's trap, and after the play succeeds, Hamlet and Horatio celebrate their discovery together. As the story accelerates, Laertes storms home for revenge while Ophelia sinks into madness and distributes flowers to the stunned court. The pool closes in the aftermath of the final carnage, with Horatio the lone survivor pledging to bear witness.

The supporting events that shape the tragedy from behind the scenes.

Hamlet arrives at court dressed in mourning black and expresses deep disgust at his mother's hasty remarriage to Claudius.

Horatio brings Hamlet news of the ghost's appearance, and Hamlet eagerly agrees to meet it that night.

Hamlet follows the ghost onto the dark battlements despite Horatio's urgent warnings about the danger of following it.

Hamlet tells Horatio he plans to feign madness, offering no explanation for why this is necessary.

Claudius and Polonius arrange to spy on a staged encounter between Hamlet and Ophelia to find the cause of his madness.

Hamlet delivers the "To be, or not to be" soliloquy, weighing the merits of enduring life against ending it.

Claudius reveals in an aside that his own conscience is tormented by the guilt of his unconfessed crime.

Hamlet finds Claudius alone and kneeling in prayer but deliberately chooses not to kill him in that moment.

Claudius admits in his attempted prayer that he cannot truly repent because he refuses to give up what he gained.

The ghost reappears in Gertrude's room wearing nightclothes and is visible only to Hamlet, not to Gertrude.

Hamlet encounters Norwegian soldiers willing to die for a worthless patch of land and resolves to take decisive bloody action.

Claudius reveals to an enraged Laertes that Hamlet, not Claudius, was responsible for Polonius's death.

Hamlet picks up the exhumed skull of the court jester Yorick and meditates on the inevitable equality of death.

Hamlet apologizes to Laertes before their duel begins, attributing the harm he caused to his madness.

Laertes confesses the entire poisoned sword plot to Hamlet as both men lie fatally wounded by the blade.

Pool 3 focuses on the pivotal moments where characters make choices or confront truths that determine everything that follows. Hamlet's initial response to his father's death and his decision to feign madness drive the play's central tension, while his famous soliloquy lays bare the paralysis at his core. His deliberate choice to spare the praying Claudius fatally delays justice and costs him his own life. Hidden revelations — Claudius's tortured conscience, the ghost's second appearance, and Hamlet's meditation on Yorick's skull — punctuate the story with moments of raw truth beneath all the deception. The pool ends in the duel's final moments as Laertes's deathbed confession strips away every layer of pretense, forcing a brutal and fatal reckoning.