What's in a Story?

...The Play's the thing,
Wherein Ile catch the Conscience of the King.

Hamlet knew what every storyteller knows; a plot or
storyline is nothing, execution is all. The few lines
that Hamlet adds to the 'Murder of Gonzago' transform
a pedestrian revenge tale into a device to rip open
Claudius' soul.

Plots may be totally improbable and still work as
absorbing tales. Imagine a more improbable plot than a
son learning from a ghost that his father has been
murdered by his uncle, who then took over both kingdom
and queen-Hamlet's own mother. If Shakespeare had
written the part of Hamlet as he did Hotspur, the play
would have been over in one act. Straight from his
audience with King Hamlet, Hotspur/Hamlet, in a fine,
foaming eye-rolling bipolar frenzy would have sought
out Claudius and spitted the usurper, unless security
forces did for Hamlet, Jr. what Claudius did for
Senior. Either way, a half-dozen more or less innocent
bystanders would have lived on, including Polonius,
Ophelia and Laertes. Even Rosincrane and Guildensterne
would have lived to become perpetual graduate
assistants at Wittenberg U. But then nobody would have
remembered that eminently logical play.

The telling of the tale is how the playwright catches our
conscience, and our attention.