Hamlet is also responsible for the next four deaths in the play, which all occur in the same scene. When one of the king’s courtiers tells Hamlet that the king “has laid a great wager on your head” (5.2.97-8), Hamlet learns that he is challenged to a duel with Laertes which is to happen before the king and queen. Even though Hamlet has a sword in his hand and Claudius perfectly reachable he still does not kill him. It is a shame too because what Hamlet does notknow is that Claudius planned the duel in order to kill him. In an earlier scene Claudius and Laertes make plans to poison the tip of Laertes’s sword so that the slightest cut will kill Hamlet. Claudius decides that if Laertes cannot cut Hamlet they will need another way, so Claudius will also put some of the poison in a drink which Hamlet will drink after he has won the duel. Unfortunately Gertrude drinks in celebration after Hamlet gets a second hit on Laertes. Laertes finally wounds Hamlet and in a scuffle, the two men end up switching swords. This is when Hamlet gets his third hit. When Laertes realizes he has been cut with the poisonous sword, he says, “I am just kill’d with mine own treachery” (5.2.281). Before Gertrude dies she tells Hamlet “the drink, the drink!--I am poison’d” (5.2.283). Hamlet demands that the doors be locked and that the treachery be seeked out. Laertes explains to Hamlet that the two of them will both die and that “the treacherous instrument is in thy hand” (5.2.290). Laertes also says to Hamlet, “Here I lie, / Never to rise again: thy mother’s poison’d: / I can no more:--the king, the king’s to blame” (5.2.292-4). This is the point in the play when Hamlet does what he has had many chances to do and finally kills Claudius by stabbing him. If only Hamlet would have used his thinking time to think of the best way to kill Claudius, instead thinking about whether or not the ghost was real, or whether or not the ghost was honest, then so many people would not have died.

��the serpent that did sting thy father’s life / now wears his crown” (1.5.39-40). Hamlet learns that Claudius murdered his father by pouring poison in his ear. With all of the things Hamlet was already upset about he now had an even bigger problem to face, avenging his father’s death. With this news one would think that Hamlet would find his uncle and ki

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