 Now let's examine what happens in Act 3. Now in this act there are six scenes in total and arguably this is really where the play Starts really accelerating towards its tragic ending. Now in Act 3 scene 1 Essentially we find that Claudius has become really impatient with Hamlet's behavior. He's very unpredictable for Claudius's own taste He's either extremely melancholic or he's showing Antic disposition and to some degree actually Claudius appears to somewhat doubt if he's truly mad Now because he becomes really really impatient with Hamlet's behavior. He decides to send Hamlet away However, Polonius convinces him to really let Gertrude his wife speak to him his wife and Hamlet's mother Therefore Claudius decides okay. I'll let Gertrude speak to him. Now in scene 2 The actors who Hamlet has asked to perform the murder of Gazango They do so the next night and of course they perform to the audience of the King, Queen, Hamlet and so on And of course whilst they're performing Hamlet intently watches Claudius in order to see his reaction Now bear in mind that Hamlet is supposed to be feigning madness. People are not entirely sure what's happening to him It's only his best friend Horatio who knows that he's feigning an antic disposition Now whilst the actors are performing the King's murder Essentially Claudius becomes really really intensely unhappy He shows outward signs of agitation and he stops them from performing the play just before the new King inside the play Has a marriage to the wife within the play and of course this has Exact similarities with what happened with King Hamlet and of course what Claudius did to his brother and ultimately marrying Gertrude He does so and then storms out Hamlet who's been watching Claudius's reaction is really happy to see that what the ghost had told him is true through his reaction And he brags his friend Horatio that he has discovered that Claudius is Culpable he's wrong and he's the one that ultimately did plot and successfully kill his father Now in scene 3 Claudius who's now stormed out goes and prays inside a church Okay, so he goes to pray and he's trying to pray whilst he's doing so and of course He's he's trying to pray is on his knees and he's trying to utter prayer because he's feeling guilty at his actions towards his brother Hamlet creeps up behind him and he lifts a dagger in order to kill him because of course He now knows that Claudius did kill his father and he needs to avenge him However, just as he's lifting the dagger He realizes or he justifies not killing Claudius by saying that firstly if you kill somebody inside a church Whilst they're praying to God that will basically just send them directly to heaven And this is not a fate that he wants or Claudius Claudius deserves to go to hell Okay, so he decides against this action and he creeps out and unbeknown to him He doesn't realize that Claudius is actually not praying He's unable to pray he's unable to utter this prayer and of course it shows that he's very very corrupt very far away from God However, Hamlet spares his life and he creeps out and Claudius doesn't know this now in scene 4 so at 3 scene 4 Hamlet goes and speaks to Gertrude of course Gertrude has been asked to go and speak to him Now Hamlet speaks to Gertrude in her bedroom and at first he's really really angry and he's talking about her semen stained sheets He's making lots of allusion to the sexual relationship that she has with her new husband Claudius Who's her uncle and he seems to have almost who's Hamlet's uncle apologies and he seems to have almost this Obsession with his mother's sexuality and he's really really angry towards her So he reveals his anger towards her and whilst he's talking to her He's also telling her that you've married a murderer. You've married my brothers and my uncle my father's brother And you have married a murderer. So whilst he's getting more and more agitated and more and more angry and Gertrude is becoming fearful He doesn't realize that Polonius the whole time was watching him then he hears a noise and he realizes that somebody is in the room with them and ultimately he stabs the sheet and kills Polonius so Hamlet kills Polonius and Gertrude who's really shocked at this entire scene. She's really destabilized Hamlet leaves in a rage Claudius does go back to Gertrude does go back to Claudius and tell him that she does indeed believe that Hamlet has gone mad Now prior to Hamlet's storming out the ghost did also appear in this scene After he killed Polonius and the ghost reminds Hamlet that he's not there to tell off his mom and to be angry at his Mom the ghost reminds him that it's Claudius you need to be killing not getting angry at your mother and hence Hamlet storms out Okay, so this scene is a very very tense scene There's a lot of theory around this and tied for example to the Oedipus complex So I'm going to talk about later on however this scene is really where it starts reaching its crescendo now in scene five Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who are sent by Claudius to find him to find Hamlet They do ultimately find Hamlet. They ask him to show him where to show them where the body of Polonius is and they refuse to Leave until he shows them Polonius's body But Hamlet also refuses to reveal where Polonius's corpse is Also Hamlet tells them so Hamlet tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that they too easily listen to King Claudius They too easily respect him and respect his authority and he kind of mocks them because of this Now in the final scene so scene six Hamlet reveals where Polonius corpse is to everybody and Claudius decides to send Hamlet to England Okay So going back to act one when he was deciding in scene one where he was deciding whether or not to send Hamlet away Of course his actions show Claudius that he's a massive threat And therefore he decides to tell everybody that he's going to send Hamlet to England Of course Hamlet agrees that he's going to be sent to England But Hamlet doesn't realize that Claudius secretly has also had planned to have him killed once he arrives in England Okay, so there's a lot of deception but also bear in mind There's still a lot of spying everyone spying everyone's counter spying on each other Okay, so really arguably act three is now where the play really accelerates to its final tragic ending