Hamlet Questions Act 2 Scene 1-2: Why is Ophelia frightened by Hamlet

1. Hamlet has frightened her with his wild, unkempt appearance and deranged manners.

6. Hamlet requests the traveling players to perform a speech he once heard. The speech is from a play which depicts a murder similar to that which the ghost described to Hamlet. He wants to see if Claudius reaction to hearing the speech will reveal that he killed King Hamlet.

3. King Claudius has summoned Hamlet’s two school friends (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern) to Elsinore to have them spy on the Prince and report back to Claudius, recounting Hamlet’s every move.

4. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, once Hamlet’s childhood friends, betray him by pretending to still be his friends when in fact they are now in the service of Claudius as spies. Claudius enlists them to keep a close on eye on his erratic nephew.

5. He offers to loose Ophelia on Hamlet while he is reading alone in the library. Meanwhile, he suggests, he and Claudius could hide behind a tapestry and observe the meeting.

2. Polonius tells the king and queen, in a very indirect way, that he has discovered Hamlet’s foiled love of Ophelia, and that he believes this lost love to be the root cause of Hamlet’s madness.