Shakespeare's Tragedy of Hamlet Author:William Shakespeare Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Political Basis of the Action. The principal personages of the drama stand at or near the head of the State, and thus move in the highest public representativ... more »e capacity: the whole world of Denmark is most nearly concerned in them as the recognized supreme organs of the national life and law. In the political order of the play, the Danish crown is partly elective, partly hereditary ; that is to say, elective within the circle of a particular family and kindred. Whatever there is of hereditary right belongs to the Queen, who is accordingly described as " the imperial jointress of this warlike State." She was the only child of the former King ; and Hamlet's father was brought within the circle of eligibility by his marriage with her. Of course, when her first husband died, and she married a second, the second became eligible just as the first had done. So that Claudius, the present King, holds the crown by the same legal title and tenure as Hamlet's father had held it. A horrible crime has been committed, — a crime the meanest, the blackest, the hatefullest that man is capable of. Claudius has murdered his own brother and his King; stealing upon him in his sleep, and pouring a slow but deadly poison in his ear, which so wrought that he seemed to die of a natural though mysterious disease. The deed was done so secretly and with such consummate craft as to elude and defy all human discovery. It was and could be known only to the author of it, and to God; even the victim knew nothing of it till after his death. No trace of the crime, not an atom of evidence, nothing even to ground a suspicion upon, exists, save in the conscience of the criminal himself. So that the hideous secret lies buried in the grave of the murdered man; and no revelation of it is possible on Earth, butby his ...« less