Hamlet, Victim of a Corrupt World Troubled by royal betrayal, ruthless intrigues and a ghost, Denmark is on the brink of destruction. Immediately after the death of King Hamlet, the widowed Queen Gertrude remarried Claudius, the king's brother. Prince Hamlet considers the union of his mother and uncle to be a “hasty and incestuous” act (Charles Boyce, 232). He then discovers that Claudius is responsible for the treacherous murder of his father. The ghost of his father asks Hamlet to avenge his death and Hamlet agrees. He plans very carefully, making sure he doesn't kill Claudius when he has already been forgiven for his sins. Hamlet accidentally kills Polonius, the king's advisor, thinking it was Claudius hiding behind a curtain spying on Hamlet and his mother. This drives Ophelia, Polonius' daughter and Hamlet's lover, crazy. She then drowns in a suspected suicide when she falls from a tree into a river. Laertes, Ophelia's brother, teams up with Claudius and plots revenge on the uptight prince. Hamlet agrees to a sword match with Laertes without knowing that Laertes will get a sharp, poisoned sword while he will receive a dull sword. To ensure that their plan to kill Hamlet worked, Claudius poisoned a drink to give to Hamlet, but Gertrude ended up drinking it, causing their plan to fail. Laertes then wounds Hamlet with the poisoned sword, but in the scuffle they exchange weapons and Hamlet slashes Laeretes with the poisonous blade. He then strikes Claudius with the poisoned blade and forces him to drink from the poisonous cup. The four die but with his last breath, Hamlet begs Horatio not to drink from the cup so that he can tell his tragic story and announces Fortinbras as king of Denmark. In this tragic story, Hamlet is also a deeply sensitive man. good and too noble to cope or stay in the wicked world he finds himself in. According to the prince, the whole world is corrupt, he denies life, saying: “How tired, bland, flat and useless / It seems to me that all the uses of this world! . . . things of a foul and gross nature / Just possesses him” (William Shakespeare, 29). He also declares: "I have recently... lost all my cheerfulness and this beautiful framework of the earth seems to me a barren promontory, this canopy more excellent than the air .