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What are the inciting and rising actions in Hamlet?
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The inciting action in "Hamlet" occurs when Hamlet encounters his father's ghost, who reveals that Claudius murdered him and urges Hamlet to seek revenge. The rising action involves Hamlet's internal struggle and strategic inaction, which allows Claudius to plot against him. Key events include Hamlet's feigned madness, the play-within-a-play to confirm Claudius's guilt, and the accidental killing of Polonius, leading to Laertes's return and the climactic duel orchestrated by Claudius.
The inciting action or incident that sets the plot of Hamletinto motion is Hamlet's encounter with his father's ghost. The ghost tells Hamlet that Claudius, Hamlet's uncle and now Denmark's ruler, murdered him, and says that Hamlet must avenge his death. It is not everyday that one encounters a ghost, especially one who delivers such a bombshell as this one does, so a gripping inciting incident starts the drama.
The rising action includes, paradoxically, Hamlet's initial inaction, which is integral to how the final tragedy unfolds. A more impulsive character, say a Laertes or a Romeo, would simply rush in, kill the uncle and be done with it, giving the uncle no time to maneuver. Not so Hamlet. He contemplates what has happened. Part of the rising action is his questioning of the motives of the apparition he saw. Was it really his father's ghost telling...
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him the truth or was it a demon tempting him to kill an innocent man? Hamlet's experiment to find out the truth, having actors enact his father's supposed murder in pantomime to gauge Claudius's reaction to it, tips off Claudius, as does Hamlet's mistaken murder ofPolonius. Polonius's death also contributes to the rising action by propelling Laertes back to Denmark to kill Hamlet. When Hamlet also appears back in Denmark, having foiled his uncle's plot to have him murdered, the scene is set for the final tragedy. Claudius manipulates Laertes into a duel with Hamlet and introduces poison to tip the balance in favor of Laertes. This leads to the final climax in which the stage ends up strewn with corpses.
What is the rising action in Hamlet?
The rising action of this play, and most of Shakespeare’s plays, is everything that happens after the first scene or two of Act 1 through the climactic moment, which usually occurs in Act 3. In the case of Hamlet, the rising action starts in earnest when the ghost actually talks to Hamlet and reveals the truth about his murder by Claudius and commands him to seek revenge for the foul crime. From then on, the play builds: Hamlet starts to act crazy in order to try to prove Claudius’s guilt; Ophelia is used by Polonius and Claudius in attempt to determine what is wrong with Hamlet; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are summoned, and fail to discover anything about Hamlet; the Players arrive and plan to enact The Murder of Gonzago for Hamlet, so that Hamlet can try to “catch the conscience of the King.” Once Hamlet knows the truth and yet fails to kill Claudius when he had the chance (while Claudius is at prayer), the play moves into falling action and actually picks up speed to bring us the dramatic conclusion, with 8 people in total dead by the end of the story.