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Claudius character analysis: in-depth guide.

Claudius and Gertrude Character Analysis

Claudius is the primary antagonist of the play “Hamlet”. This Claudius character analysis will give you a detailed study on his role and contribution to the plot. Check the complete character list of Hamlet so that you get a thorough understanding of all characters in the play.

Claudius is a criminal but is portrayed as a polite and wise King in the early part of the play. He displays genuine anguish at Polonius’s death and Ophelia’s madness. His words are not like that of a Shakespearean villain but of a kind-hearted King.

He gained his throne and his queen by worst methods, but he now seems to be passionately and genuinely longing for peace.

In the confrontation of King Claudius and Laertes, the King shows a fine dignity. His love for his ill-gotten wife appears to be quite genuine, so there is no ground for suspecting him of having used her as a mere means to the throne.

His conscience, though ineffective, is certainly not dead. In spite of all the reproaches of his conscience, he plots new crimes to ensure his stability; and yet this plotting makes him unhappy ( Act 3 ).

Claudius unexpected Characteristics

  • Claudius is courteous and never undignified.
  • He performs his ceremonial duties efficiently.
  • He takes good care of national interests.
  • Claudius nowhere shows cowardice.
  • When Laertes and the mob forced their way into the palace, he confronts a dangerous situation with coolness and confidence.

The King’s appraisal of Hamlet’s “madness” is creditable. The King finds that Polonius’s harping on love-madness is stupid. He quickly thinks of a way of getting rid of Hamlet. He determines to send him to England on a pretext connected with the payment of tribute by the English King. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are his agents in this undertaking, and so to them, he talks freely and intimately. Claudius has the schemer’s facility of quickly adjusting his plans to the current circumstances.

When the tragic incidents close in on him, Claudius is not insensitive. At the end of the scene in the graveyard, he remains in control. He reminds Laertes of his resolution and tells him that the fencing-match will take place without delay. In the castle-hall, the King, seemingly patient and unruffled, goes over the conditions of the match, and he watches without a show of passion as Hamlet and Laertes fight to the death. When he is stabbed he tries to make little of his death, saying “Oh yet defend me, friends, I am but hurt”.

Claudius: What he is and what he isn’t!

  • Claudius is a man of mean appearance.
  • He is bloated by excessive drinking.
  • He had a small nature.

On the other hand

  • He wasn’t stupid, but quick-witted and adroit.
  • He won the Queen with the “witchcraft of his wit” or intellect.
  • Claudius seems to have been soft-spoken, ingratiating in manner.
  • He used to smile on the person he addresses (“that one may smile and smile, and be a villain”).
  • He isn’t a tragic character.

Hamlet scarcely ever speaks to him without an insult, but he never shows resentment, hardly even annoyance.

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Claudius, Hamlet

Claudius is a character in Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet. He is one of Shakespeare’s most manipulative characters.

We tend to think that Hamlet, is all about the prince. But it’s a play with a full cast of characters all interacting intricately with each other. Claudius is without doubt the second character in Hamlet . The substance of all dramas is the playing out of human relationships, and the action of Hamlet is mainly concerned with the relationship between Hamlet and Claudius. On the story level the two play a cat and mouse game with each other.

Claudius, Hamlet 1

Patrick Stewart as Claudius

On the death of his father, the king of Denmark, the young prince returns from university to the Danish court at Elsinore Castle only to find that his father’s brother, Claudius has not only managed to make himself king, but has also married his brother’s widow, Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude. It is a giddy situation, everything happening very fast, and Hamlet is stunned into a surly sulk.

Claudius is a smooth-tongued, self-assured and convincing man – an experienced politician – and he slips easily into the role of king, where he takes command and presents himself as a charismatic national leader. The young man he has disinherited is an inexperienced student, a private, inward-looking man, not having the first idea of how to deal with the situation in which he finds himself.

What is particularly galling for Hamlet is that his mother has married this man who, compared with his late father, is a parody of a king. He’s also galled by Claudius’ pleasure-seeking habits – his eating and drinking and his excessive sexual appetite.

Both Claudius and Gertrude attempt to break through to Hamlet, imploring him to take off his black mourning suit and realise that everyone dies, that one just has to get back to normal and carry on with one’s life. But Hamlet is unable to do that.

Hamlet’s university friend, Horatio, has also come for the king’s funeral. He tells Hamlet that the guards on the castle battlements have seen the ghost of the dead king and that he should check it out for himself.

Hamlet goes to the battlements and his father’s ghost appears and tells him that he was murdered by his brother and that Hamlet should avenge his murder.

The rest of the action is about that. Hamlet finds himself paralysed by his inability to know what to do and is simply unable to do as the ghost has instructed him. For several reasons he just can’t bring himself to act. But that doesn’t stop Claudius from regarding him as a threat and he begins to plot against Hamlet’s life. He is a ruthless murderer sheltering behind the facade of a genial, likeable king. He employs some of Hamlet’s fellow students to spy on him. He and his most senior aide, Polonius, spy on him themselves as well, and as the threat grows, he finally sends Hamlet on a mission to England and gives instructions to the English king to execute him.

Hamlet manages to escape from that trap and, with the help of pirates, returns to Denmark. He gives up all thought of avenging his father’s death, deciding that he will just allow matters to take their course. A Christian theme creeps into the text here as Hamlet decides to let Heaven punish the wrongdoers.

Matters do take their own course and the wrongdoers do meet their ends in the final scene.

Claudius arranges a fencing match between Hamlet and Laertes, the son of Polonius, recently killed accidentally by Hamlet and he and Laertes plot to murder Hamlet in the match by poisoning the tip of Laertes’ sword.

The duel takes place in the final scene of the play. So many characters die in that scene that Shakespeare has to bring in extra characters to carry the bodies off the stage! During the course of the play all those who have plotted against Hamlet die in the execution of their plots. That’s where the term ‘hoisted by one’s own petard’ comes from – Hamlet’s description to Horatio of what he thinks is going to happen.

Claudius is one of the most rounded of Shakespeare’s villains. For example he is not as heartless as his behaviour suggests and we get an insight into his remorse for the bad things he has done. He is aware that all those things – murdering his brother, marrying his widow, and plotting against Hamlet – are terrible. At the same time as he is carrying out his villainous deeds he is suffering badly from the effects of his acts in the extent of the guilt that he feels..

At one point he tries to pray for forgiveness but, displaying a measure of self-knowledge, he gives up because he recognises that the benefits of what he has done are things he couldn’t bear to give up and so could not hope for forgiveness. He has gained the throne, and a beautiful queen. He gets up from his knees because he knows that his words are flying up to heaven but his thoughts are solidly grounded in the realm of human ambition.

Claudius is a terrible human being but Shakespeare presents him in such a way as to allow us to sympathise with him. he takes us inside Claudius’ head and what we see is a very talented man and a gifted politician who, overwhelmed by ambition, has committed one of the worst possible crimes – the murder of his own blood. However, he is his own greatest critic and hates what he has done. And then to top it all and make him even more human, he admits to himself that he is too weak to do what he knows would be the right thing.

Top Claudius Quotes

‘Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet, To give these mourning duties to your father. But to persever In obstinate condolement is a course Of impious stubbornness. ‘Tis unmanly grief. It shows a will most incorrect to heaven, A heart unfortified, a mind impatient, An understanding simple and unschooled: ( act 1, scene 2 )

This sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet, To give these mourning duties to your father, But you must know your father lost a father, That father lost, lost his — and the survivor bound In filial obligation for some term To do obsequious sorrow. But to persever In obstinate condolement is a course Of impious stubborness, ’tis unmanly grief, It shows a will most incorrect to heaven.  ( act 1, scene 2 )

How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience. The harlot’s cheek beautied with plast’ring art Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it Than is my deed to my most painted word. O heavy burden! ( act 3, scene 1 )

O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven; It hath the primal eldest curse upon ‘t, A brother’s murder. ( act 3, scene 3 )

poor Ophelia Divided from herself and her fair judgment, Without the which we are pictures or mere beasts; ( act 4, scene 5 )

See All Hamlet Resources

Hamlet | Hamlet summary | Hamlet characters : Claudius , Fortinbras , Horatio , Laertes , Ophelia . Osric , Polonius , Rosencrantz and Guildenstern | Hamlet settings | Hamlet themes  | Hamlet in modern English | Hamlet full text | Modern Hamlet ebook | Hamlet for kids ebooks | Hamlet quotes | Hamlet quote translations | Hamlet monologues | Hamlet soliloquies | Hamlet performance history | All about ‘To Be Or Not To Be’

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  • Hamlet’s Claudius: Villain analysis

Claudius is undoubtedly considered the main villain in Hamlet, due to the murder of the King. However, Shakespeare has made his character a lot more nuanced.

His actions after his initial villainous crime are representations of his ability to manipulate, showing his intelligence rather than his villainy. This argument is supported by a possible interpretation of the fact that the killing of the Old King may have been justifiable, and beneficial for the country.

The King also shows signs of affection and empathy, causing one to rethink their assumption about him as a villain. When one sees his character, not in the presence or being talked about by Hamlet or the Old King, there are many instances where he is capable of evoking sympathy from the audience.

These mostly occur near the end of the play, or as soliloquies; as this is the only chance we must see Claudius’s perspective, rather than the bias of Hamlet or the Ghost.

We are informed by the Ghost that, “Thus was I, sleeping by a brother’s hand, Of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatched” , proving Claudius had done a villainous deed by taking King’s life, for his own gain. The fact that Claudius then waves the death off by telling Hamlet, “ But you must know, your father lost a father” , suggesting that Claudius perceives the death as an inevitable act of nature, completely justifiable.

Shakespeare uses repetition to emphasize Claudius’s point and creates a rhythmic structure to the sentence. It also makes the situation less personal, as the listing of people causes the audience to momentarily forget about the old King, making him just seem one of many. In the 1600s, when the play was first acted out, it was believed that the King was the embodiment of God, and murdering a King was blasphemy. Therefore in that era, Claudius would be despised by everyone watching.

This alone is enough reason to think that Claudius was solely a villain, and it would prevent the audience in Shakespeare’s time from thinking this could be for valid reasons. To a modern audience, Claudius’s action of murder is still wrong; but if there is a possibility that he did it to preserve Denmark, and its honor and people. There is a chance he had a firm belief in himself to rule Denmark better, as his level of intelligence is a proven trait of his.

This level of intelligence again may bring him across as a villain as his intentions are not moral, especially when he attempts to manipulate Laertes in order to kill Hamlet by playing his weakness against himself. Laertes is furious about the death of his father and insists that, “My revenge will come” .

To spur him on, Claudius subtly asks, “Was your father dear to you? Or are you like the painting of the sorrow”. This shows his ability to manipulate the exact way for each individual. It may seem villainous, however, one can also interpret that as having a high level of intelligence, which may be essential to the running of Denmark.

Claudius shows this in the opening scenes, where even though his attitude towards the death of the King is considered villainous, the fact that is overlooked is that he is concerned for the country, and talks about how, “ Young Fortinbras, holding a weak supposal of our worth ”, showing the audience his concern for the country.

One gets a biased view of Claudius, mainly through Hamlet and the Ghost; whom he has directly wronged. This portrays him to be villainous but one needs to consider the perceptual bias Hamlet has of Claudius. When one sees Claudius in the presence of other characters such as Gertrude or Ophelia, they see his loving side blossom, where Gertrude is, “ conjunctive to my life and soul” .  

With Ophelia, he shows genuine concern, as he questions, “ how do you, pretty lady?” Hamlet though fails to have the empathy Claudius has. Claudius has the empathy to understand the loyalty of Laertes, regardless of his intentions. Hamlet, “ clefts” his mother’s, “ heart in twain ”, and due to his lack of courage, is the root of Ophelia’s madness.

He tells her, “ get thee to a nunnery ”, as he projects his feelings of frustration and clear madness on them. One may even suggest that he is choosing to abuse women, as they are powerless against him. Claudius, compared to Hamlet; respects both women and protects them, regardless of his heinous crimes is not completely immoral.

One can presume that all of this is an act, and it seems so when he sends Hamlet to England, “ Hamlet, this deed, for thine especial safety—. Which we do tender as we … For your own protection” . In previous more private scenes, it is obvious Claudius thinks, “How dangerous is it that this man goes loose!”, which on one hand shows his superficiality and ease in lying to get rid of any chance of him being found out, but also shows him as caring.

Hamlet abused his mother, Ophelia, and was showing strong signs of madness; hence another instance where we are never shown enough about Claudius; lacking the soliloquy to decide which way is more likely.

As his soliloquy is a pivotal point of the play, where we see why he is not a complete villain and conjures the most sympathy for him. One must also consider that due to him being alone, there is a high chance that his true feelings about his crimes are finally heard. Claudius, uses strong imagery and variance of sentence structure to show his mental state as well as strong emotions about his actions.

His first sentence is shocking, where he tells the audience that, “my offence is rank. It smells to heaven” . This shows the audience that he is aware of the gravity of his crime, that its stench has reached the gods and Claudius laments that fact. “Pray can I not” is where the first real motive to evoke sympathy is shown, as he is unable to pray, due to the heaviness of the guilt.

These small actions represent Claudius’s extremely troubled state of mind, and the small sentences represent his instability; and dark imagery. Him talking about his, “bosom as black as death!” represents his high emotions, as well as the depressed state. All of these work together, in order that the audience is moved by him; and although this does not make him less of a villain, it does mean that one can feel sorry for him.

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claudius hamlet character analysis essay

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Claudius Character Analysis in Hamlet

There are plenty of characters in the play of Hamlet that affect Hamlet and the play as a whole. I chose King Claudius for this research project as he was the center of most if not all problems in the play. From this I was able to decipher the 3 main points. These points are what is Claudius’s significance to the play, what actions does he take that affect Hamlet's actions and inactions, and what themes does he impose?

To start this off I will bring up what I had previously said up above as the first point. So I  can answer the question of what was King Claudiues significance to the play? Claudius was the sole person that started the whole play as later in the play the ghost informs us the readers and the audience here “With juice of … my smooth body” (Hamlet 1.5.65-69) that King Hamlet was killed By his own brother Claudious who later becomes the new king of Denmark. He was killed by using a certain flower to poison the king and he poisoned him by playing it in his ear while he was sleeping as King Hamlet had a habit of taking naps. Even before knowing the true nature of his fathers death he was very depressed but after knowing how and who killed his father he aspirated into a deeper depression and was also engulfed with the sole goal of revenge for his father.

Once again I will repull what I said from the paragraph above to answer the second question of what actions does Claudius take that affect Hamlet's actions and inactions. One Major one is the fact that Hamlet Goes into a deeper depression and becomes engulfed into revenge after knowing the truth of how and who had killed his father. Another Major one if not it is quite possible the most important is the duel that Claudius presents to Hamlet on the behalf of Laertes. As stated here “Stay; give me drink… my sprite” (Hamlet 5.2.284-366) Claudius Rigs the duel from the start to favor Claudius and Laertes as they both want to have Hamlet killed. He rings the duel in two ways: he poisons the cases of wine for Hamlet as he was to drink from it for his victory and the other way was that Claudius poisoned the blade of the rapier that Laertes was going to use against Hamlet. These actions that Clauidus had taken to kill Hamlet would ultimately accomplish that goal at the cost of his own life and the whole Family line of Hamlet as Hamlets mother insists on taking the sip for Hamlet's victory in hits and she is poisoned and dies. From this Laertes was able to land a hit on Hamlet poisoning him and then they switch blades and He is able to hit Laertes back after this He stabs Claudius with the rapier and makes him drink the poisoned chalice of wine that Queen Gutruded took ultimately killing him off and later as the poison sets in Laertes and Hamlet are killed as well. The actions that Claudius takes back there accomplishment ultimately ending there family line as it was Claudius’s doings as he rigid the duel with Poison.

Finally to answer the third question on what themes does Clausdius impose in the play of Hamlet. He places the what looks to be the continuous Theme of poisoning which is also a recurring theme throughout most if not all of Shakespeare’s works. Its very apparent that this is a recurring theme here in this play as Claudius Brings poinsion to the table in terms of the play as not only does he Posion his brother (Hamlet 1.5.65-69), but he also Poisons his wife, Hamlet and even himself in a way (Hamlet 5.2.284-366). As Hamlet is the one that poisons him but there was poison at the duel because of Claudius riging the duel in the first place so in other words he really poisoned himself.

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Claudius Character Analysis Essay

claudius hamlet character analysis essay

Show More Claudius is a manipulative and spiteful major character (and antagonist) in the play “Hamlet”. Claudius is the new king of Elsinore after he kills the previous king, who was also his brother, king Hamlet, by pouring poison in his ear during his nap time. Hamlet is the only one that knows of Claudius’s deeds as the ghost of King Hamlet told him that, “The serpent that did sting thy father 's life Now wears his crown.”, in which the serpent that he refers to is Claudius. In the beginning, one could actually picture Claudius as a capable ruler as he fixes the tension with Norway and addresses his brother’s death. he was really manipulating his way to the throne as he convinces the court to accept his marriage with Gertrude by saying, “Yet so far …show more content… He would be a sociopath because the characteristics of compulsive lying, which is something Claudius does all throughout the book, impulsive behavior and paranoia, a very obvious trait in Claudius as he constantly fears whether his crown will be taken from him, being a sexual deviant (kind of self explanatory since he married his dead brother’s wife), and having a cold, manipulative, calculating nature is what a sociopath is. The manipulative and calculating nature is the key point in what shows Claudius’s sociopathic tendencies, and one of the traits that seem be in every politician ever. Killing his brother and then marrying his wife and simultaneously the kingdom, reveals his calculating side because he planned out King Hamlet’s death. He found out that King Hamlet had daily naps and, using that as his gateway to fortune, poured poison in his ear. Convincing everyone that a snake bit King Hamlet and finding conniving ways to get rid of Hamlet, reveals his manipulative side. If the media were to react to Claudius’s actions, they would be surprised and he would be everywhere on the news, as well as disdainful and disregarding. They would be surprised because they wouldn’t really expect someone to go so far because of their greed. They would have disdain because of how Claudius would generally be a scum of a human being and, after finding …show more content… If Claudius never existed there would be no Hamlet. King Hamlet would have probably died of natural causes or something else and when he died, Hamlet would just take the throne without any problem. Claudius set up the whole play from the moment he poured the poison down King Hamlet’s ear. With the crown as his goal he tells the public that his “dear brother” died after being bitten by a snake, and proceeds to take Elsinore and Gertrude. After the ghost of King Hamlet tells Hamlet that, “that incestuous, that adulterate beast, with witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts….won to his shameful lust the will of my most seeming-virtuous queen.”, that is what starts the plot as Hamlet is now filled with anger and revenge as he says, “It is 'Adieu, adieu! Remember me. ' I have sworn 't.” Claudius is also the cause of the deaths of the characters. Hamlet is the one who physically slayed Polonius, but Hamlet only did that because he that Claudius was there, before he pulls the curtain he asks, “Nay, I know not. Is it the king?” Which he indirectly admits his wish that he had slain Claudius right there. After figuring out it wasn’t Claudius, he also shows his disappointment as “Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell! I took thee for thy better.” He also provides more obstacles for Hamlet as he tries to send to England, which was particularly dangerous at that time, as a way to

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Claudius

The present king of Denmark, Claudius, had gained his crown and wife by murdering his own brother. Worse still, it was poisoning, a cowardly and treacherous way of dealing somebody out. Thus, the method itself characterizes Claudius as a craven villain, good at plotting and scheming.

It seems that Shakespeare loathed this character just a little too much: he draws a rather direct comparison of Claudius with Cain, the world’s most famous kinslayer, and with the Serpent in the Garden of Eden. Every spectator and reader is familiar with these fundamental symbols, so these are perfectly understandable for audience at any given period.

In spite of all his vices, one has to admit that Claudius is not a bad king at all: he has an admirable diplomatic skill. He persuades everyone, except Hamlet, that his hurried marriage to Gertrude was a decision made for the good of Denmark, no less. Claudius manages to resolve a conflict with Norway, at least temporarily. He calms down Laertes, enough to stop his rebellion and redirect his hate to Hamlet, who is actually and unwillingly guilty of the accidental death of Polonius and everything that befell poor Ophelia.

Thanks Shakespeare, Claudius in not a cartoon villain. He completely understands his vices and shows some remorse, even if presumably no one is watching. However, he acknowledges his inability to repent completely. Note that repentance is an important aspect of Christian conscience, so no wonder that Claudius is anxious about it. At this, he also is a hypocrite and a selfish man until the end: while seeing Gertrude drinking poisoned wine, he merely murmurs several words and nothing more; fulfilling his plan is more important than the life of his supposedly beloved wife. In the end he predictably dies, killed by Hamlet and simultaneously poisoned by the weapon he prepared himself and intended to use (by the hand of Laertes) against the young prince.

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Claudius in the Essays

Both Hamlet and Frankenstein deal with the concept of revenge. In a well-organized essay discuss the importance of revenge as a central theme in either Frankenstein OR Hamlet . Avoid mere plot summary. You must provide strong textual references to support your ideas. The revenge theme came in both...

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Essays on hamlet.

Essays On Hamlet

Written as the author taught Hamlet every semester for a decade, these lightning essays ask big conceptual questions about the play with the urgency of a Shakespeare lover, and answer them with the rigor of a Shakespeare scholar. In doing so, Hamlet becomes a lens for life today, generating insights on everything from xenophobia, American fraternities, and religious fundamentalism to structural misogyny, suicide contagion, and toxic love.

Prioritizing close reading over historical context, these explorations are highly textual and highly theoretical, often philosophical, ethical, social, and political. Readers see King Hamlet as a pre-modern villain, King Claudius as a modern villain, and Prince Hamlet as a post-modern villain. Hamlet’s feigned madness becomes a window into failed insanity defenses in legal trials. He knows he’s being watched in “To be or not to be”: the soliloquy is a satire of philosophy. Horatio emerges as Shakespeare’s authorial avatar for meta-theatrical commentary, Fortinbras as the hero of the play. Fate becomes a viable concept for modern life, and honor a source of tragedy. The metaphor of music in the play makes Ophelia Hamlet’s instrument. Shakespeare, like the modern corporation, stands against sexism, yet perpetuates it unknowingly. We hear his thoughts on single parenting, sending children off to college, and the working class, plus his advice on acting and writing, and his claims to be the next Homer or Virgil. In the context of four centuries of Hamlet hate, we hear how the text draws audiences in, how it became so famous, and why it continues to captivate audiences.

At a time when the humanities are said to be in crisis, these essays are concrete examples of the mind-altering power of literature and literary studies, unravelling the ongoing implications of the English language’s most significant artistic object of the past millennium.

Publications

Why is Hamlet the most famous English artwork of the past millennium? Is it a sexist text? Why does Hamlet speak in prose? Why must he die? Does Hamlet depict revenge, or justice? How did the death of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, transform into a story about a son dealing with the death of a father? Did Shakespeare know Aristotle’s theory of tragedy? How did our literary icon, Shakespeare, see his literary icons, Homer and Virgil? Why is there so much comedy in Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy? Why is love a force of evil in the play? Did Shakespeare believe there’s a divinity that shapes our ends? How did he define virtue? What did he think about psychology? politics? philosophy? What was Shakespeare’s image of himself as an author? What can he, arguably the greatest writer of all time, teach us about our own writing? What was his theory of literature? Why do people like Hamlet ? How do the Hamlet haters of today compare to those of yesteryears? Is it dangerous for our children to read a play that’s all about suicide? 

These are some of the questions asked in this book, a collection of essays on Shakespeare’s Hamlet stemming from my time teaching the play every semester in my Why Shakespeare? course at Harvard University. During this time, I saw a series of bright young minds from wildly diverse backgrounds find their footing in Hamlet, and it taught me a lot about how Shakespeare’s tragedy works, and why it remains with us in the modern world. Beyond ghosts, revenge, and tragedy, Hamlet is a play about being in college, being in love, gender, misogyny, friendship, theater, philosophy, theology, injustice, loss, comedy, depression, death, self-doubt, mental illness, white privilege, overbearing parents, existential angst, international politics, the classics, the afterlife, and the meaning of it all. 

These essays grow from the central paradox of the play: it helps us understand the world we live in, yet we don't really understand the text itself very well. For all the attention given to Hamlet , there’s no consensus on the big questions—how it works, why it grips people so fiercely, what it’s about. These essays pose first-order questions about what happens in Hamlet and why, mobilizing answers for reflections on life, making the essays both highly textual and highly theoretical. 

Each semester that I taught the play, I would write a new essay about Hamlet . They were meant to be models for students, the sort of essay that undergrads read and write – more rigorous than the puff pieces in the popular press, but riskier than the scholarship in most academic journals. While I later added scholarly outerwear, these pieces all began just like the essays I was assigning to students – as short close readings with a reader and a text and a desire to determine meaning when faced with a puzzling question or problem. 

The turn from text to context in recent scholarly books about Hamlet is quizzical since we still don’t have a strong sense of, to quote the title of John Dover Wilson’s 1935 book, What Happens in Hamlet. Is the ghost real? Is Hamlet mad, or just faking? Why does he delay? These are the kinds of questions students love to ask, but they haven’t been – can’t be – answered by reading the play in the context of its sources (recently addressed in Laurie Johnson’s The Tain of Hamlet [2013]), its multiple texts (analyzed by Paul Menzer in The Hamlets [2008] and Zachary Lesser in Hamlet after Q1 [2015]), the Protestant reformation (the focus of Stephen Greenblatt’s Hamlet in Purgatory [2001] and John E. Curran, Jr.’s Hamlet, Protestantism, and the Mourning of Contingency [2006]), Renaissance humanism (see Rhodri Lewis, Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness [2017]), Elizabethan political theory (see Margreta de Grazia, Hamlet without Hamlet [2007]), the play’s reception history (see David Bevington, Murder Most Foul: Hamlet through the Ages [2011]), its appropriation by modern philosophers (covered in Simon Critchley and Jamieson Webster’s The Hamlet Doctrine [2013] and Andrew Cutrofello’s All for Nothing: Hamlet’s Negativity [2014]), or its recent global travels (addressed, for example, in Margaret Latvian’s Hamlet’s Arab Journey [2011] and Dominic Dromgoole’s Hamlet Globe to Globe [2017]). 

Considering the context and afterlives of Hamlet is a worthy pursuit. I certainly consulted the above books for my essays, yet the confidence that comes from introducing context obscures the sharp panic we feel when confronting Shakespeare’s text itself. Even as the excellent recent book from Sonya Freeman Loftis, Allison Kellar, and Lisa Ulevich announces Hamlet has entered “an age of textual exhaustion,” there’s an odd tendency to avoid the text of Hamlet —to grasp for something more firm—when writing about it. There is a need to return to the text in a more immediate way to understand how Hamlet operates as a literary work, and how it can help us understand the world in which we live. 

That latter goal, yes, clings nostalgically to the notion that literature can help us understand life. Questions about life send us to literature in search of answers. Those of us who love literature learn to ask and answer questions about it as we become professional literary scholars. But often our answers to the questions scholars ask of literature do not connect back up with the questions about life that sent us to literature in the first place—which are often philosophical, ethical, social, and political. Those first-order questions are diluted and avoided in the minutia of much scholarship, left unanswered. Thus, my goal was to pose questions about Hamlet with the urgency of a Shakespeare lover and to answer them with the rigor of a Shakespeare scholar. 

In doing so, these essays challenge the conventional relationship between literature and theory. They pursue a kind of criticism where literature is not merely the recipient of philosophical ideas in the service of exegesis. Instead, the creative risks of literature provide exemplars to be theorized outward to help us understand on-going issues in life today. Beyond an occasion for the demonstration of existing theory, literature is a source for the creation of new theory.

Chapter One How Hamlet Works

Whether you love or hate Hamlet , you can acknowledge its massive popularity. So how does Hamlet work? How does it create audience enjoyment? Why is it so appealing, and to whom? Of all the available options, why Hamlet ? This chapter entertains three possible explanations for why the play is so popular in the modern world: the literary answer (as the English language’s best artwork about death—one of the very few universal human experiences in a modern world increasingly marked by cultural differences— Hamlet is timeless); the theatrical answer (with its mixture of tragedy and comedy, the role of Hamlet requires the best actor of each age, and the play’s popularity derives from the celebrity of its stars); and the philosophical answer (the play invites, encourages, facilitates, and sustains philosophical introspection and conversation from people who do not usually do such things, who find themselves doing those things with Hamlet , who sometimes feel embarrassed about doing those things, but who ultimately find the experience of having done them rewarding).

Chapter Two “It Started Like a Guilty Thing”: The Beginning of Hamlet and the Beginning of Modern Politics

King Hamlet is a tyrant and King Claudius a traitor but, because Shakespeare asked us to experience the events in Hamlet from the perspective of the young Prince Hamlet, we are much more inclined to detect and detest King Claudius’s political failings than King Hamlet’s. If so, then Shakespeare’s play Hamlet , so often seen as the birth of modern psychology, might also tell us a little bit about the beginnings of modern politics as well.

Chapter Three Horatio as Author: Storytelling and Stoic Tragedy

This chapter addresses Horatio’s emotionlessness in light of his role as a narrator, using this discussion to think about Shakespeare’s motives for writing tragedy in the wake of his son’s death. By rationalizing pain and suffering as tragedy, both Horatio and Shakespeare were able to avoid the self-destruction entailed in Hamlet’s emotional response to life’s hardships and injustices. Thus, the stoic Horatio, rather than the passionate Hamlet who repeatedly interrupts ‘The Mousetrap’, is the best authorial avatar for a Shakespeare who strategically wrote himself and his own voice out of his works. This argument then expands into a theory of ‘authorial catharsis’ and the suggestion that we can conceive of Shakespeare as a ‘poet of reason’ in contrast to a ‘poet of emotion’.

Chapter Four “To thine own self be true”: What Shakespeare Says about Sending Our Children Off to College

What does “To thine own self be true” actually mean? Be yourself? Don’t change who you are? Follow your own convictions? Don’t lie to yourself? This chapter argues that, if we understand meaning as intent, then “To thine own self be true” means, paradoxically, that “the self” does not exist. Or, more accurately, Shakespeare’s Hamlet implies that “the self” exists only as a rhetorical, philosophical, and psychological construct that we use to make sense of our experiences and actions in the world, not as anything real. If this is so, then this passage may offer us a way of thinking about Shakespeare as not just a playwright but also a moral philosopher, one who did his ethics in drama.

Chapter Five In Defense of Polonius

Your wife dies. You raise two children by yourself. You build a great career to provide for your family. You send your son off to college in another country, though you know he’s not ready. Now the prince wants to marry your daughter—that’s not easy to navigate. Then—get this—while you’re trying to save the queen’s life, the prince murders you. Your death destroys your kids. They die tragically. And what do you get for your efforts? Centuries of Shakespeare scholars dumping on you. If we see Polonius not through the eyes of his enemy, Prince Hamlet—the point of view Shakespeare’s play asks audiences to adopt—but in analogy to the common challenges of twenty-first-century parenting, Polonius is a single father struggling with work-life balance who sadly choses his career over his daughter’s well-being.

Chapter Six Sigma Alpha Elsinore: The Culture of Drunkenness in Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Claudius likes to party—a bit too much. He frequently binge drinks, is arguably an alcoholic, but not an aberration. Hamlet says Denmark is internationally known for heavy drinking. That’s what Shakespeare would have heard in the sixteenth century. By the seventeenth, English writers feared Denmark had taught their nation its drinking habits. Synthesizing criticism on alcoholism as an individual problem in Shakespeare’s texts and times with scholarship on national drinking habits in the early-modern age, this essay asks what the tragedy of alcoholism looks like when located not on the level of the individual, but on the level of a culture, as Shakespeare depicted in Hamlet. One window into these early-modern cultures of drunkenness is sociological studies of American college fraternities, especially the social-learning theories that explain how one person—one culture—teaches another its habits. For Claudius’s alcoholism is both culturally learned and culturally significant. And, as in fraternities, alcoholism in Hamlet is bound up with wealth, privilege, toxic masculinity, and tragedy. Thus, alcohol imagistically reappears in the vial of “cursed hebona,” Ophelia’s liquid death, and the poisoned cup in the final scene—moments that stand out in recent performances and adaptations with alcoholic Claudiuses and Gertrudes.

Chapter Seven Tragic Foundationalism

This chapter puts the modern philosopher Alain Badiou’s theory of foundationalism into dialogue with the early-modern playwright William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet . Doing so allows us to identify a new candidate for Hamlet’s traditionally hard-to-define hamartia – i.e., his “tragic mistake” – but it also allows us to consider the possibility of foundationalism as hamartia. Tragic foundationalism is the notion that fidelity to a single and substantive truth at the expense of an openness to evidence, reason, and change is an acute mistake which can lead to miscalculations of fact and virtue that create conflict and can end up in catastrophic destruction and the downfall of otherwise strong and noble people.

Chapter Eight “As a stranger give it welcome”: Shakespeare’s Advice for First-Year College Students

Encountering a new idea can be like meeting a strange person for the first time. Similarly, we dismiss new ideas before we get to know them. There is an answer to the problem of the human antipathy to strangeness in a somewhat strange place: a single line usually overlooked in William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet . If the ghost is “wondrous strange,” Hamlet says, invoking the ancient ethics of hospitality, “Therefore as a stranger give it welcome.” In this word, strange, and the social conventions attached to it, is both the instinctual, animalistic fear and aggression toward what is new and different (the problem) and a cultivated, humane response in hospitality and curiosity (the solution). Intellectual xenia is the answer to intellectual xenophobia.

Chapter Nine Parallels in Hamlet

Hamlet is more parallely than other texts. Fortinbras, Hamlet, and Laertes have their fathers murdered, then seek revenge. Brothers King Hamlet and King Claudius mirror brothers Old Norway and Old Fortinbras. Hamlet and Ophelia both lose their fathers, go mad, but there’s a method in their madness, and become suicidal. King Hamlet and Polonius are both domineering fathers. Hamlet and Polonius are both scholars, actors, verbose, pedantic, detectives using indirection, spying upon others, “by indirections find directions out." King Hamlet and King Claudius are both kings who are killed. Claudius using Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy on Hamlet mirrors Polonius using Reynaldo to spy on Laertes. Reynaldo and Hamlet both pretend to be something other than what they are in order to spy on and detect foes. Young Fortinbras and Prince Hamlet both have their forward momentum “arrest[ed].” Pyrrhus and Hamlet are son seeking revenge but paused a “neutral to his will.” The main plot of Hamlet reappears in the play-within-the-play. The Act I duel between King Hamlet and Old Fortinbras echoes in the Act V duel between Hamlet and Laertes. Claudius and Hamlet are both king killers. Sheesh—why are there so many dang parallels in Hamlet ? Is there some detectable reason why the story of Hamlet would call for the literary device of parallelism?

Chapter Ten Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: Why Hamlet Has Two Childhood Friends, Not Just One

Why have two of Hamlet’s childhood friends rather than just one? Do Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have individuated personalities? First of all, by increasing the number of friends who visit Hamlet, Shakespeare creates an atmosphere of being outnumbered, of multiple enemies encroaching upon Hamlet, of Hamlet feeling that the world is against him. Second, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are not interchangeable, as commonly thought. Shakespeare gave each an individuated personality. Guildenstern is friendlier with Hamlet, and their friendship collapses, while Rosencrantz is more distant and devious—a frenemy.

Chapter Eleven Shakespeare on the Classics, Shakespeare as a Classic: A Reading of Aeneas’s Tale to Dido

Of all the stories Shakespeare might have chosen, why have Hamlet ask the players to recite Aeneas’ tale to Dido of Pyrrhus’s slaughter of Priam? In this story, which comes not from Homer’s Iliad but from Virgil’s Aeneid and had already been adapted for the Elizabethan stage in Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragedy of Dido, Pyrrhus – more commonly known as Neoptolemus, the son of the famous Greek warrior Achilles – savagely slays Priam, the king of the Trojans and the father of Paris, who killed Pyrrhus’s father, Achilles, who killed Paris’s brother, Hector, who killed Achilles’s comrade, Patroclus. Clearly, the theme of revenge at work in this story would have appealed to Shakespeare as he was writing what would become the greatest revenge tragedy of all time. Moreover, Aeneas’s tale to Dido supplied Shakespeare with all of the connections he sought to make at this crucial point in his play and his career – connections between himself and Marlowe, between the start of Hamlet and the end, between Prince Hamlet and King Claudius, between epic poetry and tragic drama, and between the classical literature Shakespeare was still reading hundreds of years later and his own potential as a classic who might (and would) be read hundreds of years into the future.

Chapter Twelve How Theater Works, according to Hamlet

According to Hamlet, people who are guilty of a crime will, when seeing that crime represented on stage, “proclaim [their] malefactions”—but that simply isn’t how theater works. Guilty people sit though shows that depict their crimes all the time without being prompted to public confession. Why did Shakespeare—a remarkably observant student of theater—write this demonstrably false theory of drama into his protagonist? And why did Shakespeare then write the plot of the play to affirm that obviously inaccurate vision of theater? For Claudius is indeed stirred to confession by the play-within-the-play. Perhaps Hamlet’s theory of people proclaiming malefactions upon seeing their crimes represented onstage is not as outlandish as it first appears. Perhaps four centuries of obsession with Hamlet is the English-speaking world proclaiming its malefactions upon seeing them represented dramatically.

Chapter Thirteen “To be, or not to be”: Shakespeare Against Philosophy

This chapter hazards a new reading of the most famous passage in Western literature: “To be, or not to be” from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet . With this line, Hamlet poses his personal struggle, a question of life and death, as a metaphysical problem, as a question of existence and nothingness. However, “To be, or not to be” is not what it seems to be. It seems to be a representation of tragic angst, yet a consideration of the context of the speech reveals that “To be, or not to be” is actually a satire of philosophy and Shakespeare’s representation of the theatricality of everyday life. In this chapter, a close reading of the context and meaning of this passage leads into an attempt to formulate a Shakespearean image of philosophy.

Chapter Fourteen Contagious Suicide in and Around Hamlet

As in society today, suicide is contagious in Hamlet , at least in the example of Ophelia, the only death by suicide in the play, because she only becomes suicidal after hearing Hamlet talk about his own suicidal thoughts in “To be, or not to be.” Just as there are media guidelines for reporting on suicide, there are better and worse ways of handling Hamlet . Careful suicide coverage can change public misperceptions and reduce suicide contagion. Is the same true for careful literary criticism and classroom discussion of suicide texts? How can teachers and literary critics reduce suicide contagion and increase help-seeking behavior?

Chapter Fifteen Is Hamlet a Sexist Text? Overt Misogyny vs. Unconscious Bias

Students and fans of Shakespeare’s Hamlet persistently ask a question scholars and critics of the play have not yet definitively answered: is it a sexist text? The author of this text has been described as everything from a male chauvinist pig to a trailblazing proto-feminist, but recent work on the science behind discrimination and prejudice offers a new, better vocabulary in the notion of unconscious bias. More pervasive and slippery than explicit bigotry, unconscious bias involves the subtle, often unintentional words and actions which indicate the presence of biases we may not be aware of, ones we may even fight against. The Shakespeare who wrote Hamlet exhibited an unconscious bias against women, I argue, even as he sought to critique the mistreatment of women in a patriarchal society. The evidence for this unconscious bias is not to be found in the misogynistic statements made by the characters in the play. It exists, instead, in the demonstrable preference Shakespeare showed for men over women when deciding where to deploy his literary talents. Thus, Shakespeare's Hamlet is a powerful literary example – one which speaks to, say, the modern corporation – showing that deliberate efforts for egalitarianism do not insulate one from the effects of structural inequalities that both stem from and create unconscious bias.

Chapter Sixteen Style and Purpose in Acting and Writing

Purpose and style are connected in academic writing. To answer the question of style ( How should we write academic papers? ) we must first answer the question of purpose ( Why do we write academic papers? ). We can answer these questions, I suggest, by turning to an unexpected style guide that’s more than 400 years old: the famous passage on “the purpose of playing” in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet . In both acting and writing, a high style often accompanies an expressive purpose attempting to impress an elite audience yet actually alienating intellectual people, while a low style and mimetic purpose effectively engage an intellectual audience.

Chapter Seventeen 13 Ways of Looking at a Ghost

Why doesn’t Gertrude see the Ghost of King Hamlet in Act III, even though Horatio, Bernardo, Francisco, Marcellus, and Prince Hamlet all saw it in Act I? It’s a bit embarrassing that Shakespeare scholars don’t have a widely agreed-upon consensus that explains this really basic question that puzzles a lot of people who read or see Hamlet .

Chapter Eighteen The Tragedy of Love in Hamlet

The word “love” appears 84 times in Shakespeare’s Hamlet . “Father” only appears 73 times, “play” 60, “think” 55, “mother” 46, “mad” 44, “soul” 40, “God" 39, “death” 38, “life” 34, “nothing” 28, “son” 26, “honor” 21, “spirit” 19, “kill” 18, “revenge” 14, and “action” 12. Love isn’t the first theme that comes to mind when we think of Hamlet , but is surprisingly prominent. But love is tragic in Hamlet . The bloody catastrophe at the end of that play is principally driven not by hatred or a longing for revenge, but by love.

Chapter Nineteen Ophelia’s Songs: Moral Agency, Manipulation, and the Metaphor of Music in Hamlet

This chapter reads Ophelia’s songs in Act IV of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in the context of the meaning of music established elsewhere in the play. While the songs are usually seen as a marker of Ophelia’s madness (as a result of the death of her father) or freedom (from the constraints of patriarchy), they come – when read in light of the metaphor of music as manipulation – to symbolize her role as a pawn in Hamlet’s efforts to deceive his family. Thus, music was Shakespeare’s platform for connecting Ophelia’s story to one of the central questions in Hamlet : Do we have control over our own actions (like the musician), or are we controlled by others (like the instrument)?

Chapter Twenty A Quantitative Study of Prose and Verse in Hamlet

Why does Hamlet have so much prose? Did Shakespeare deliberately shift from verse to prose to signal something to his audiences? How would actors have handled the shifts from verse to prose? Would audiences have detected shifts from verse to prose? Is there an overarching principle that governs Shakespeare’s decision to use prose—a coherent principle that says, “If X, then use prose?”

Chapter Twenty-One The Fortunes of Fate in Hamlet : Divine Providence and Social Determinism

In Hamlet , fate is attacked from both sides: “fortune” presents a world of random happenstance, “will” a theory of efficacious human action. On this backdrop, this essay considers—irrespective of what the characters say and believe—what the structure and imagery Shakespeare wrote into Hamlet say about the possibility that some version of fate is at work in the play. I contend the world of Hamlet is governed by neither fate nor fortune, nor even the Christianized version of fate called “providence.” Yet there is a modern, secular, disenchanted form of fate at work in Hamlet—what is sometimes called “social determinism”—which calls into question the freedom of the individual will. As such, Shakespeare’s Hamlet both commented on the transformation of pagan fate into Christian providence that happened in the centuries leading up to the play, and anticipated the further transformation of fate from a theological to a sociological idea, which occurred in the centuries following Hamlet .

Chapter Twenty-Two The Working Class in Hamlet

There’s a lot for working-class folks to hate about Hamlet —not just because it’s old, dusty, difficult to understand, crammed down our throats in school, and filled with frills, tights, and those weird lace neck thingies that are just socially awkward to think about. Peak Renaissance weirdness. Claustrophobicly cloistered inside the castle of Elsinore, quaintly angsty over royal family problems, Hamlet feels like the literary epitome of elitism. “Lawless resolutes” is how the Wittenberg scholar Horatio describes the soldiers who join Fortinbras’s army in exchange “for food.” The Prince Hamlet who has never worked a day in his life denigrates Polonius as a “fishmonger”: quite the insult for a royal advisor to be called a working man. And King Claudius complains of the simplicity of "the distracted multitude.” But, in Hamlet , Shakespeare juxtaposed the nobles’ denigrations of the working class as readily available metaphors for all-things-awful with the rather valuable behavior of working-class characters themselves. When allowed to represent themselves, the working class in Hamlet are characterized as makers of things—of material goods and services like ships, graves, and plays, but also of ethical and political virtues like security, education, justice, and democracy. Meanwhile, Elsinore has a bad case of affluenza, the make-believe disease invented by an American lawyer who argued that his client's social privilege was so great that it created an obliviousness to law. While social elites rot society through the twin corrosives of political corruption and scholarly detachment, the working class keeps the machine running. They build the ships, plays, and graves society needs to function, and monitor the nuts-and-bolts of the ideals—like education and justice—that we aspire to uphold.

Chapter Twenty-Three The Honor Code at Harvard and in Hamlet

Students at Harvard College are asked, when they first join the school and several times during their years there, to affirm their awareness of and commitment to the school’s honor code. But instead of “the foundation of our community” that it is at Harvard, honor is tragic in Hamlet —a source of anxiety, blunder, and catastrophe. As this chapter shows, looking at Hamlet from our place at Harvard can bring us to see what a tangled knot honor can be, and we can start to theorize the difference between heroic and tragic honor.

Chapter Twenty-Four The Meaning of Death in Shakespeare’s Hamlet

By connecting the ways characters live their lives in Hamlet to the ways they die – on-stage or off, poisoned or stabbed, etc. – Shakespeare symbolized hamartia in catastrophe. In advancing this argument, this chapter develops two supporting ideas. First, the dissemination of tragic necessity: Shakespeare distributed the Aristotelian notion of tragic necessity – a causal relationship between a character’s hamartia (fault or error) and the catastrophe at the end of the play – from the protagonist to the other characters, such that, in Hamlet , those who are guilty must die, and those who die are guilty. Second, the spectacularity of death: there exists in Hamlet a positive correlation between the severity of a character’s hamartia (error or flaw) and the “spectacularity” of his or her death – that is, the extent to which it is presented as a visible and visceral spectacle on-stage.

Chapter Twenty-Five Tragic Excess in Hamlet

In Hamlet , Shakespeare paralleled the situations of Hamlet, Laertes, and Fortinbras (the father of each is killed, and each then seeks revenge) to promote the virtue of moderation: Hamlet moves too slowly, Laertes too swiftly – and they both die at the end of the play – but Fortinbras represents a golden mean which marries the slowness of Hamlet with the swiftness of Laertes. As argued in this essay, Shakespeare endorsed the virtue of balance by allowing Fortinbras to be one of the very few survivors of the play. In other words, excess is tragic in Hamlet .

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Critchley, Simon; Webster, Jamieson. Stay, Illusion!: The Hamlet Doctrine . New York: Pantheon Books, 2013.

Curran, John E., Jr. Hamlet, Protestantism, and the Mourning of Contingency: Not to Be . Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006.

Cutrofello, Andrew. All for Nothing: Hamlet's Negativity . Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2014.

Dawson, Anthony B. Hamlet: Shakespeare in Performance . Manchester and New York: Manchester UP, 1995.

Desmet, Christy. “Text, Style, and Author in Hamlet Q1.” Journal of Early Modern Studies 5 (2016): 135-156

Dodsworth, Martin. Hamlet Closely Observed . London: Athlone, 1985.

De Grazia, Margreta. Hamlet without Hamlet . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Dromgoole, Dominic. Hamlet: Globe to Globe : 193,000 Miles, 197 Countries, One Play . Edinburgh: Canongate, 2018.

Dunne, Derek. “Decentring the Law in Hamlet .” Law and Humanities 9.1 (2015): 55-77.

Eliot, T. S. “Hamlet and His Problems.” The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism . London: Methuen, 1920. 87–94.

Evans, Robert C., ed. Critical Insights: Hamlet . Amenia: Grey House Publishing, 2019.

Farley-Hills, David, ed. Critical Responses to Hamlet, 1600-1900 . 5 vols. New York: AMS Press, 1996.

Foakes, R.A. Hamlet Versus Lear: Cultural Politics and Shakespeare's Art . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Frank, Arthur W. “‘Who’s There?’: A Vulnerable Reading of Hamlet,” Literaature and Medicine 37.2 (2019): 396-419.

Frye, Roland Mushat. The Renaissance Hamlet: Issues and Responses in 1600 . Princeton: Princeton UP, 1984.

Josipovici, Gabriel. Hamlet: Fold on Fold . New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.

Kastan, David Scott, ed. Critical Essays on Shakespeare’s Hamlet . New York: G. K. Hall, 1995.

Khan, Amir. “My Kingdom for a Ghost: Counterfactual Thinking and Hamlet.” Shakespeare Quarerly 66.1 (2015): 29-46.

Keener, Joe. “Evolving Hamlet: Brains, Behavior, and the Bard.” Interdisciplinary Literary Studies 14.2 (2012): 150-163

Kott, Jan. “Hamlet of the Mid-Century.” Shakespeare, Our Contemporary . Trans. Boleslaw Taborski. Garden City: Doubleday, 1964.

Lake, Peter. Hamlet’s Choice: Religion and Resistance in Shakespeare's Revenge Tragedies . New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020.

Lerer, Seth. “Hamlet’s Boyhood.” Childhood, Education and the Stage in Early Modern England , ed. Richard Preiss and Deanne Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017):17-36.

Levy, Eric P. Hamlet and the Rethinking of Man . Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2008.

Lewis, C.S. “Hamlet: The Prince or the Poem?” (1942). Studies in Shakespeare , ed. Peter Alexander (1964): 201-18.

Loftis, Sonya Freeman; Allison Kellar; and Lisa Ulevich, ed. Shakespeare's Hamlet in an Era of Textual Exhaustion . New York, NY: Routledge, 2018.

Luke, Jillian. “What If the Play Were Called Ophelia ? Gender and Genre in Hamlet .” Cambridge Quarterly 49.1 (2020): 1-18.

Gates, Sarah. “Assembling the Ophelia Fragments: Gender, Genre, and Revenge in Hamlet.” Explorations in Renaissance Culture 34.2 (2008): 229-47.

Gottschalk, Paul. The Meanings of Hamlet: Modes of Literary Interpretation Since Bradley . Albequerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1972.

Greenblatt, Stephen. Hamlet in Purgatory . Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001.

Hunt, Marvin W. Looking for Hamlet . New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007.

Iyengar, Sujata. "Gertrude/Ophelia: Feminist Intermediality, Ekphrasis, and Tenderness in Hamlet," in Loomba, Rethinking Feminism In Early Modern Studies: Race, Gender, and Sexuality (2016), 165-84.

Iyengar, Sujata; Feracho, Lesley. “Hamlet (RSC, 2016) and Representations of Diasporic Blackness,” Cahiers Élisabéthains 99, no. 1 (2019): 147-60.

Johnson, Laurie. The Tain of Hamlet . Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2013.

Jolly, Margrethe. The First Two Quartos of Hamlet: A New View of the Origins and Relationship of the Texts . Jefferson: McFarland, 2014.

Jones, Ernest. Hamlet and Oedipus . Garden City: Doubleday, 1949.

Keegan, Daniel L. “Indigested in the Scenes: Hamlet's Dramatic Theory and Ours.” PMLA 133.1 (2018): 71-87.

Kinney, Arthur F., ed. Hamlet: Critical Essays . New York: Routledge, 2002.

Kiséry, András. Hamlet's Moment: Drama and Political Knowledge in Early Modern England . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Kottman, Paul A. “Why Think About Shakespearean Tragedy Today?” The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Tragedy , ed. Claire McEachern (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013): 240-61.

Langis, Unhae. “Virtue, Justice and Moral Action in Shakespeare’s Hamlet .” Literature and Ethics: From the Green Knight to the Dark Knight , ed. Steve Brie and William T. Rossiter (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010): 53-74.

Lawrence, Sean. "'As a stranger, bid it welcome': Alterity and Ethics in Hamlet and the New Historicism," European Journal of English Studies 4 (2000): 155-69.

Lesser, Zachary. Hamlet after Q1: An Uncanny History of the Shakespearean Text . Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015.

Levin, Harry. The Question of Hamlet . New York: Oxford UP, 1959.

Lewis, Rhodri. Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017.

Litvin, Margaret. Hamlet's Arab Journey: Shakespeare's Prince and Nasser's Ghost . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011.

Loftis, Sonya Freeman, and Lisa Ulevich. “Obsession/Rationality/Agency: Autistic Shakespeare.” Disability, Health, and Happiness in the Shakespearean Body , edited by Sujata Iyengar. Routledge, 2015, pp. 58-75.

Marino, James J. “Ophelia’s Desire.” ELH 84.4 (2017): 817-39.

Massai, Sonia, and Lucy Munro. Hamlet: The State of Play . London: Bloomsbury, 2021.

McGee, Arthur. The Elizabethan Hamlet . New Haven: Yale UP, 1987.

Megna, Paul, Bríd Phillips, and R.S. White, ed. Hamlet and Emotion . New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.

Menzer, Paul. The Hamlets: Cues, Qs, and Remembered Texts . Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2008.

Mercer, Peter. Hamlet and the Acting of Revenge . Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1987.

Oldham, Thomas A. “Unhouseled, Disappointed, Unaneled”: Catholicism, Transubstantiation, and Hamlet .” Ecumenica 8.1 (Spring 2015): 39-51.

Owen, Ruth J. The Hamlet Zone: Reworking Hamlet for European Cultures . Newcastle-Upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2012.

Price, Joeseph G., ed. Hamlet: Critical Essays . New York: Routledge, 1986.

Prosser, Eleanor. Hamlet and Revenge . 2nd ed. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1971.

Rosenberg, Marvin. The Masks of Hamlet . Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992.

Row-Heyveld, Lindsey. “Antic Dispositions: Mental and Intellectual Disabilities in Early Modern Revenge Tragedy.” Recovering Disability in Early Modern England , ed. Allison P. Hobgood and David Houston Wood. Ohio State University Press, 2013, pp. 73-87.

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet . Ed. Neil Taylor and Ann Thompson. Revised Ed. London: Arden Third Series, 2006.

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet . Ed. Robert S. Miola. New York: Norton, 2010.

Stritmatter, Roger. "Two More Censored Passages from Q2 Hamlet." Cahiers Élisabéthains 91.1 (2016): 88-95.

Thompson, Ann. “Hamlet 3.1: 'To be or not to be’.” The Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare: The World's Shakespeare, 1660-Present, ed. Bruce R. Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016): 1144-50.

Seibers, Tobin. “Shakespeare Differently Disabled.” The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Embodiement: Gender, Sexuality, and Race , ed. Valerie Traub (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016): 435-54.

Skinner, Quentin. “Confirmation: The Conjectural Issue.” Forensic Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014): 226-68.

Slater, Michael. “The Ghost in the Machine: Emotion and Mind–Body Union in Hamlet and Descartes," Criticism 58 (2016).

Thompson, Ann, and Neil Taylor, eds. Hamlet: A Critical Reader . London: Bloomsbury, 2016.

Weiss, Larry. “The Branches of an Act: Shakespeare's Hamlet Explains his Inaction.” Shakespeare 16.2 (2020): 117-27.

Wells, Stanley, ed. Hamlet and Its Afterlife . Special edition of Shakespeare Survey 45 (1992).

Williams, Deanne. “Enter Ofelia playing on a Lute.” Shakespeare and the Performance of Girlhood (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014): 73-91

Williamson, Claude C.H., ed. Readings on the Character of Hamlet: Compiled from Over Three Hundred Sources .

White, R.S. Avant-Garde Hamlet: Text, Stage, Screen . Lanham: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2015.

Wiles, David. “Hamlet’s Advice to the Players.” The Players’ Advice to Hamlet: The Rhetorical Acting Method from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020): 10-38

Wilson, J. Dover. What Happens in Hamlet . 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1951.

Zamir, Tzachi, ed. Shakespeare's Hamlet: Philosophical Perspectives . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.

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Mini Essays

Shakespeare includes characters in Hamlet who are obvious foils for Hamlet, including, most obviously, Horatio, Fortinbras, Claudius, and Laertes. Compare and contrast Hamlet with each of these characters. How are they alike? How are they different? How does each respond to the crises with which he is faced?

Horatio’s steadfastness and loyalty contrasts with Hamlet’s variability and excitability, though both share a love of learning, reason, and thought. Claudius’s willingness to disregard all moral law and act decisively to fulfill his appetites and lust for power contrasts powerfully with Hamlet’s concern for morality and indecisive inability to act. Fortinbras’s willingness to go to great lengths to avenge his father’s death, even to the point of waging war, contrasts sharply with Hamlet’s inactivity, even though both of them are concerned with avenging their fathers. Laertes’ single-minded, furious desire to avenge Polonius stands in stark opposition to Hamlet’s inactivity with regard to his own father’s death. Finally, Hamlet, Laertes, and Fortinbras are all in a position to seek revenge for the murders of their fathers, and their situations are deeply intertwined. Hamlet’s father killed Fortinbras’s father, and Hamlet killed Laertes’ father, meaning that Hamlet occupies the same role for Laertes as Claudius does for Hamlet.

Many critics take a deterministic view of Hamlet ’s plot, arguing that the prince’s inability to act and tendency toward melancholy reflection is a “tragic flaw” that leads inevitably to his demise. Is this an accurate way of understanding the play? Why or why not? Given Hamlet’s character and situation, would another outcome of the play have been possible?

The idea of the “tragic flaw” is a problematic one in Hamlet . It is true that Hamlet possesses definable characteristics that, by shaping his behavior, contribute to his tragic fate. But to argue that his tragedy is inevitable because he possesses these characteristics is difficult to prove. Given a scenario and a description of the characters involved, it is highly unlikely that anyone who had not read or seen Hamlet would be able to predict its ending based solely on the character of its hero. In fact, the play’s chaotic train of events suggests that human beings are forced to make choices whose consequences are unforeseeable as well as unavoidable. To argue that the play’s outcome is intended to appear inevitable seems incompatible with the thematic claims made by the play itself.

Throughout the play, Hamlet claims to be feigning madness, but his portrayal of a madman is so intense and so convincing that many readers believe that Hamlet actually slips into insanity at certain moments in the play. Do you think this is true, or is Hamlet merely play-acting insanity? What evidence can you cite for either claim?

At any given moment during the play, the most accurate assessment of Hamlet’s state of mind probably lies somewhere between sanity and insanity. Hamlet certainly displays a high degree of mania and instability throughout much of the play, but his “madness” is perhaps too purposeful and pointed for us to conclude that he actually loses his mind. His language is erratic and wild, but beneath his mad-sounding words often lie acute observations that show the sane mind working bitterly beneath the surface. Most likely, Hamlet’s decision to feign madness is a sane one, taken to confuse his enemies and hide his intentions.

On the other hand, Hamlet finds himself in a unique and traumatic situation, one which calls into question the basic truths and ideals of his life. He can no longer believe in religion, which has failed his father and doomed him to life amid miserable experience. He can no longer trust society, which is full of hypocrisy and violence, nor love, which has been poisoned by his mother’s betrayal of his father’s memory. And, finally, he cannot turn to philosophy, which cannot explain ghosts or answer his moral questions and lead him to action.

With this much discord in his mind, and already under the extraordinary pressure of grief from his father’s death, his mother’s marriage, and the responsibility bequeathed to him by the ghost, Hamlet is understandably distraught. He may not be mad, but he likely is close to the edge of sanity during many of the most intense moments in the play, such as during the performance of the play-within-a-play (III.ii), his confrontation with Ophelia (III.i), and his long confrontation with his mother (III.iv).

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Hamlet: Analysis of Shakespeare's Main Character

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Published: Jun 29, 2018

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Works Cited

  • Hazlitt, William. Hamlet Character Analysis. Internet. AbsoluteShakespeare. 2002. www.absoluteshakespeare.com/guides/hamlet/hamlet.htm.
  • Magill, Frank N., ed. Masterplots: Digests of World Literature. Vol. 6. New York: Salem Press, Inc., 1964.
  • McConnell, Heron. Hamlet and Revenge. Internet. March 2001. http://www.english-literature.org/essays/hamlet_revenge.html.
  • Moore, R. Hamlet: Character Analysis. Internet. All Shakespeare. 2003. www.allshakespeare.com/plays/hamlet.

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Hamlet Research Paper & Essay Examples

claudius hamlet character analysis essay

When you have to write an essay on Hamlet by Shakespeare, you may need an example to follow. In this article, our team collected numerous samples for this exact purpose. Here you’ll see Hamlet essay and research paper examples that can inspire you and show how to structure your writing.

✍ Hamlet: Essay Samples

  • What Makes Hamlet such a Complex Character? Genre: Essay Words: 560 Focused on: Hamlet’s insanity and changes in the character Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Claudius, Ophelia
  • Shakespeare versus Olivier: A Depiction of ‘Hamlet’ Genre: Essay Words: 2683 Focused on: Comparison of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Laurence Olivier’s adaptation Characters mentioned: Hamlet, the Ghost, Claudius, Ophelia, Gertrude
  • Drama Analysis of Hamlet by Shakespeare Genre: Essay Words: 1635 Focused on: Literary devices used in Hamlet Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude, Ophelia
  • Hamlet’s Renaissance Culture Conflict Genre: Critical Essay Words: 1459 Focused on: Hamlet’s and Renaissance perspective on death Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Claudius, Ophelia, Horatio
  • Father-Son Relationships in Hamlet – Hamlet’s Loyalty to His Father Genre: Explicatory Essay Words: 1137 Focused on: Obedience in the relationship between fathers and sons in Hamlet Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Laertes, Ophelia, Polonius, Fortinbras, Polonius, the Ghost, Claudius
  • A Play “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare Genre: Essay Words: 1026 Focused on: Hamlet’s personality and themes of the play Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Claudius, Ophelia, Gertrude, Polonius
  • Characterization of Hamlet Genre: Analytical Essay Words: 876 Focused on: Hamlet’s indecision and other faults Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Ophelia, Claudius, the Ghost, Gertrude
  • Hamlet’s Relationship with His Mother Gertrude Genre: Research Paper Words: 1383 Focused on: Hamlet’s relationship with Gertrude and Ophelia Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Gertrude, Ophelia, Claudius, Polonius
  • The Theme of Revenge in Shakespeare’s Hamlet Genre: Research Paper Words: 1081 Focused on: Revenge in Hamlet and how it affects characters Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude, the Ghost
  • Canonical Status of Hamlet by William Shakespeare Genre: Essay Words: 1972 Focused on: Literary Canon and interpretations of Hamlet Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Horatio, Claudius
  • A Critical Analysis of Hamlet’s Constant Procrastination in Shakespeare’s Hamlet Genre: Essay Words: 1141 Focused on: Reasons for Hamlet’s procrastination and its consequences Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude, Ophelia, Polonius
  • Role of Women in Twelfth Night and Hamlet by Shakespeare Genre: Research Paper Words: 2527 Focused on: Women in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and Hamlet Characters mentioned: Ophelia, Gertrude, Hamlet, Claudius, Laertes, Polonius
  • William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Prince of Denmark Genre: Essay Words: 849 Focused on: Key ideas and themes of Hamlet Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Ophelia, Laertes
  • Shakespeare: Hamlet Genre: Essay Words: 1446 Focused on: The graveyard scene analysis Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Ophelia, Laertes, Claudius, Gertrude, Polonius
  • Oedipus Rex and Hamlet Compare and Contrast Genre: Term Paper Words: 998 Focused on: Comparison of King Oedipus and Hamlet from Sophocles’ Oedipus the King and William Shakespeare’s Hamlet . Characters mentioned: Hamlet
  • The Play “Hamlet Prince of Denmark” by W.Shakespeare Genre: Essay Words: 824 Focused on: How Hamlet treats Ophelia and the consequences of his behavior Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Ophelia, Claudius, Gertrude, Polonius, Laertes
  • Hamlet by William Shakespeare Genre: Explicatory Essay Words: 635 Focused on: Key themes of Hamlet Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude, Fortinbras
  • Hamlet’s Choice of Fortinbras as His Successor Genre: Essay Words: 948 Focused on: Why Hamlet chose Fortinbras as his successor Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Fortinbras, Claudius
  • Hamlet, Laertes, Fortinbras: Avenging the Death of their Father Compare and Contrast Genre: Compare and Contrast Essay Words: 759 Focused on: Paths and revenge of Hamlet, Laertes, and Fortinbras Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Laertes, Fortinbras, Claudius
  • Oedipus the King and Hamlet Genre: Essay Words: 920 Focused on: Comparison of Oedipus and King Claudius Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude
  • Hamlet Genre: Term Paper Words: 1905 Focused on: Character of Gertrude and her transformation Characters mentioned: Gertrude, Hamlet, Claudius, the Ghost, Polonius
  • Compare Laertes and Hamlet: Both React to their Fathers’ Killing/Murder Compare and Contrast Genre: Compare and Contrast Essay Words: 1188 Focused on: Tension between Hamlet and Laertes and their revenge Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Laertes, Ophelia, Polonius, Claudius, Gertrude
  • Recurring Theme of Revenge in Hamlet Genre: Essay Words: 1123 Focused on: The theme of revenge in Hamlet Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Laertes, Ophelia
  • The Function of the Soliloquies in Hamlet Genre: Research Paper Words: 2055 Focused on: Why Shakespeare incorporated soliloquies in the play Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude
  • The Hamlet’s Emotional Feelings in the Shakespearean Tragedy Genre: Essay Words: 813 Focused on: What Hamlet feels and why Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Gertrude, Claudius
  • Blindness in Oedipus Rex & Hamlet Genre: Research Paper Words: 2476 Focused on: How blindness reveals itself in Oedipus Rex and Hamlet Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Claudius, Horatio, the Ghost
  • “Hamlet” and “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” Genre: Essay Words: 550 Focused on: Comparison of Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern
  • The Role of Queen Gertrude in Play “Hamlet” Genre: Essay Words: 886 Focused on: Gertrude’s role in Hamlet and her involvement in King Hamlet’s murder Characters mentioned: Gertrude, Hamlet, the Ghost, Claudius, Polonius
  • Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Genre: Explicatory Essay Words: 276 Focused on: The role and destiny of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Hamlet Characters mentioned: Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Hamlet, Claudius
  • Passing through nature into eternity Genre: Term Paper Words: 2900 Focused on: Comparison of Because I Could Not Stop for Death, and I Died for Beauty, but was Scarce by Emily Dickinson with Shakespeare’s Hamlet Characters mentioned: Hamlet, the Ghost, Claudius, Gertrude
  • When the Truth Comes into the Open: Claudius’s Revelation Genre: Essay Words: 801 Focused on: Claudius’ confession and secret Characters mentioned: Claudius, Hamlet
  • Shakespeare Authorship Question: Thorough Analysis of Style, Context, and Violence in the Plays Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Twelfth Night Genre: Term Paper Words: 1326 Focused on: Whether Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Twelfth Night Characters mentioned: Hamlet
  • Measuring the Depth of Despair: When There Is no Point in Living Genre: Essay Words: 1165 Focused on: Despair in Hamlet and Macbeth Characters mentioned: Hamlet
  • Violence of Shakespeare Genre: Term Paper Words: 1701 Focused on: Violence in different Shakespeare’s plays Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Horatio, Claudius, Gertrude, Palonius, Laertes,
  • Act II of Hamlet by William Shakespeare Genre: Report Words: 1129 Focused on: Analysis of Act 2 of Hamlet Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Polonius, Ronaldo, Laertes, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, First Player, Claudius
  • The Value of Source Study of Hamlet by Shakespeare Genre: Explicatory Essay Words: 4187 Focused on: How Shakespeare adapted Saxo Grammaticus’s Danish legend on Amleth and altered the key characters Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Ophelia, Gertrude, Claudius, the Ghost, Fortinbras, Horatio, Laertes, Polonius
  • Ophelia and Hamlet’s Dialogue in Shakespeare’s Play Genre: Essay Words: 210 Focused on: What the dialogue in Act 3 Scene 1 reveals about Hamlet and Ophelia Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Ophelia
  • Lying, Acting, Hypocrisy in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” Genre: Essay Words: 1313 Focused on: The theme of deception in Hamlet Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Gertrude, Claudius, Ophelia
  • Shakespeare’s Hamlet’s Behavior in Act III Genre: Report Words: 1554 Focused on: Behavior of different characters in Act 3 of Hamlet Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Polonius
  • The Masks of William Shakespeare’s Play “Hamlet” Genre: Research Paper Words: 1827 Focused on: Hamlet’s attitude towards death and revenge Characters mentioned: Hamlet, the Ghost
  • Ghosts and Revenge in Shakespeare’s Hamlet Genre: Essay Words: 895 Focused on: The figure of the Ghost and his relationship with Hamlet Characters mentioned: Hamlet, the Ghost, Gertrude, Claudius
  • Macbeth and Hamlet Characters Comparison Genre: Essay Words: 1791 Focused on: Comparison of Gertrude in Hamlet and Lady Macbeth in Macbeth Characters mentioned: Gertrude, Claudius, Hamlet
  • Depression and Melancholia Expressed by Hamlet Genre: Essay Words: 3319 Focused on: Hamlet’s mental issues and his symptoms Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Claudius, Ophelia, Laertes, the Ghost, Polonius
  • Meditative and Passionate Responses in the Play “Hamlet” Genre: Essay Words: 1377 Focused on: Character of Hamlet in Shakespeare’s play and Zaffirelli’s adaptation Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude, Ophelia, Polonius
  • Portrayal of Hamlet in Shakespeare’s Play and Zaffirelli’s Film Genre: Essay Words: 554 Focused on: Character of Hamlet in Shakespeare’s play and Zaffirelli’s adaptation Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Ophelia
  • Hamlet in the Film and the Play: Comparing and Contrasting Genre: Essay Words: 562 Focused on: Comparison of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Zeffirelli’s version of the character Characters mentioned: Hamlet
  • Literary Analysis of “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare Genre: Essay Words: 837 Focused on: Symbols, images, and characters of the play Characters mentioned: Hamlet, the Ghost, Claudius, Gertrude, Ophelia
  • Psychiatric Analysis of Hamlet Genre: Essay Words: 1899 Focused on: Hamlet’s mental state and sanity in particular Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Claudius, Ophelia, Laertes, Polonius
  • Hamlet and King Oedipus Literature Comparison Genre: Essay Words: 587 Focused on: Comparison of Hamlet and Oedipus Characters mentioned: Hamlet

Thanks for checking the samples! Don’t forget to open the pages with Hamlet essays that you’ve found interesting. For more information about the play, consider the articles below.

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The character of Claudius

The character of Claudius can be recognized as the major antagonist in the play. Traits such as being cleverly evil, lustful, and conniving were the factors that won him the crown as the King of Denmark.

As a king, Claudius focused on protecting his throne from being relinquished from him. He was a smooth talker and had the ability to manipulate others as a façade of his corrupt nature as a politician.

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There is great question when it comes for his love for Gertrude as it is seen to be a political move to gain power. Although, even if he did remotely cared about Gertrude, he still allowed her to drink from the poisonous goblet knowing that she would die so he would not be implicated in an attempted murder (Hylton 2000, Act V). His craftiness and love for power prevented him from showing that he sincerely cared for the people around him.

The random times that he had shown genuine emotions for other people than himself was when Polonius died and the kindness he had shown for Ophelia. He could not bring himself to kill Hamlet himself because of his feelings for Gertrude. He cannot resist worldly desires and choose them over his soul. He was not a monster with absolutely no moral fiber instead he was morally weak and unable to choose good over evil.

Q)2 Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother was a beautiful queen of Denmark who remarried her late husband’s brother Claudius shortly after her husband’s murder. There are significant questions to her character in terms of the purity of her intentions in remarrying as well as her involvement in Claudius’ murder of the king.

She was a woman with much love for her status in society, much like her new husband, and for affection and sexual attention. Hamlet was disgusted with her inability to exist without a man by her side and how she uses them for her own self-preservation and called his mother frail (Hylton 2000, Act I).

Hamlet was greatly distraught with how morally frail his mother was and was even in agony because of it. He was affected by his mother’s lack of morality and suffered because of it. There was nothing exaggerated with how Hamlet felt about his mother. It would be disheartening for anyone who would see his mother be so sickening, what more to see a queen of a nation act in such a manner.

He was depressed because he had deep and genuine affections for his parents. He felt significantly associated to his mother because they were related and her corruption is directly his corruptions as well as they are family. He felt defiled by his mother’s inability to uphold moral strength that he himself exhibited such weakness in his own relationship with Ophelia. Hamlet’s focus on his mother’s morality was aligned with a son’s nature that cared about his mother’s wellbeing.

Q3) There were so many similarities in the character of Hamlet and Laertes as men, although Hamlet holds some qualities that make him somewhat better than Laertes.  They were both impulsive at different degrees when they are angered. They both sought revenge for revenge for the death of their fathers.

Laertes wanted to kill Claudius when he suspected him for killing his father, Polonius (Hylton 2000, Act IV).  However, Hamlet could not bring himself to kill Claudius to avenge his father without evidence sufficient for his intellect. He was always drawn to answering philosophical and difficult questions.  He contemplated about a lot of things before acting on them while Laertes was impulsive and quick to act.

Although, there had been times when both acted spontaneously because of rage, like when Hamlet killed Polonius instead of Claudius. Both men shared great love for their families and exhibited domineering qualities in the women in their clans. Laertes warned Ophelia about Hamlet’s intentions and Hamlet was troubled by his mother’s marriage. However, it is still Hamlet’s completative nature that wins out because it is always wiser to think before one act.

Hylton, J. (2000). The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. From The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Retrieved on August 23, 2007 from http://shakespeare.mit.edu/hamlet/full.html.

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The Indecision of Hamlet - Essay Example

The Indecision of Hamlet

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Review of shakespeares hamlet on the stage, soliloquies in hamlet, hamlet is a philospher and therefore could neve be a solid leader, behavior of hamlet, to be or not to be, unlocking shakespeares language: hamlets madness, the tragedy of the revenge- oriented prince of denmark, hamlet: a guide to the play.

claudius hamlet character analysis essay

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Hamlet Claudius Character Analysis

The world is full of leaders who prove to be vital in developing the world around us. Leaders encompass the unique ability to provide inspiration, organization and guidance for individuals to achieve specific goals that otherwise would be approached with chaos and disorganization. A leader must have substantial management abilities, which are evident in people such as Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Winston Churchill, and Gloria Steinem. They were all able to draw on cognitive, social and psychological resources within themselves during their various quests for success. However, leadership is not limited only to reality, but is also present throughout fictional literature. Shakespeare incorporated many strong and intriguing characters, especially in one of his most legendary plays, “ Hamlet ”, which …show more content…

However, his true sanity is questioned by his actions that contradict what he believes to be calculated madness, by impulsively and not premeditatedly, lashing out. Hamlet, himself, admits that he is ashamed of his impulsive behavior while conversing with Horatio, stating, “But I am very sorry, good Horatio / That to Laertes I forgot myself (V.ii.79). His lack of self-control is the reason he decided to feign insanity. Hamlet is contemplative and wise and knows himself well enough to acknowledge the instincts that urge him to speak whatever comes to mind, would reveal his true intentions of wanting to kill the King. Claudius undoubtedly has continual composure with his emotional responses and instincts which only enhances his considerable leadership

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The Character of Claudius in Shakespeare's Hamlet Essay

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     Shakespeare presents Claudius as a character with many faces yet the audience can clearly understand his motives and ambition throughout the play. His character does however change and we clearly see how his evilness and weakness increases as his need to escape discovery and his clandestine nature in doing so, is revealed.

Insanity And Insanity In Hamlet

As well as that, Hamlet’s madness is used as an excuse. He does not have to answer any questions people may have about why he is acting weird which gives him more time to continue plotting to hurt Claudius. His objective was to appear crazy and make it believable, and in doing so it makes him appear even smarter. Hamlet acts like himself and only acts insane when it is necessary. When he talks to Horatio about watching Claudius for signs of guilt he says “Give him heedful note, for I mine eyes will rivet his face, and, after, we will both our judgments join in censure of his seeming (3.2.87)”. The way he speaks makes it clear that he is perfectly fine. Horatio is one of the only people he does not need to feine insanity to. As well as that,when he is explaining to the players how to act, he asks “You could, for a need, study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines, which I would

Hamlet Character Analysis

The final way that Laertes acts as a foil to Hamlet occurs once again when Claudius and Laertes are discussing Laertes’ actions to achieve his vengeance. Claudius gives Laertes advice saying, “That we would do/ we should do when we would; for this ‘would’/ changes” (4.7.134-136). Claudius is warning Laertes that if he waits long enough, he will probably end up not doing anything at all and will not achieve his goal of vengeance. This quote spoken by Claudius is quite similar to when King Hamlet’s ghost meets with Hamlet earlier in the play to warn him about how he was killed by Claudius and that he must get revenge. King Hamlet’s ghost also warns Hamlet saying, “Taint not thy mind” (1.5.92), telling him to not over think his plan because otherwise he will not pursue his vengeance. After Claudius warns Laertes to not get side tracked, the audience is reminded of King Hamlet’s ghost telling Hamlet to not over think because then their plans will not be pursued. This scene acts as a foil towards Hamlet because soon after the conversation, Laertes does pursue his plan of seeking vengeance, whereas Hamlet has been working on his plan the whole play, and has still not started to execute it.

“To be, or not to be, that is the question,” (3.1.64). This famous line in William Shakespeare's Hamlet perfectly encapsulates Hamlet’s internal struggle throughout the play. Hamlet tells the story of the young prince of Denmark and his desire for revenge on the uncle, Claudius, who murdered his father. As is the case in many works of literature, Hamlet changes greatly throughout the play. However, because of his attempts to act insane, it can be difficult to precisely map the changes in Hamlet’s character. By carefully investigating his seven soliloquies, where he is alone and has no need to “put on an antic disposition,” one can understand and interpret how Hamlet’s character develops throughout the play.

Hamlet proves himself a temperamental, twisted character in William Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet. The Prince of Denmark conveys his facetious demeanor with his behavior and sharp tongue, especially in scenes with Ophelia and Gertrude. Although Hamlet’s situation is difficult and easily sympathized by viewers, his aggression should ultimately be focused on his murderous uncle.

Essay On Hamlet And Claudius

Throughout the play Hamlet, many different opportunities arise for individuals to take responsibility for themselves or others, but it is what motivates them to take that responsibility that can influence their outcome in life. From the beginning of the play, Claudius’ selfish desire when seeking responsibility inevitably leads to his death, as it causes him to take the life of his innocent brother, as well as trying to cover his tracks by acting like a father figure for Hamlet. While Hamlet’s motivation to take responsibility for his father’s death was with the safety of the people in mind, Hamlet’s personal desire to kill the king as soon as possible overcomes him, causing the lack of sorrow for killing innocent people in his path.

In the conclusion of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the audience gains an understanding of the importance of Justice to each character. In the final act both Hamlet and Laertes seek to find justice for the wrongs committed against them and their families. This leaves both men trying to identify how to right these misdeeds

Analysis Of HamletBy King Claudius

King Claudius's contribution to the conversation exacerbates the tension in the scene. When he refers to Hamlet as “my son “ Hamlet immediately rebuffs him, saying that he is “a little more kin and a little less kind”. The young prince feels aversion towards his malevolent stepfather who has taken over the role of the king and has also married his mother. Claudius does not try to console Hamlet or offer him any support. Instead he criticises behaviour and treats him like a stubborn ignorant child. In Claudius's long speech, refers to Hamlet’s grief as “unmanly“ suggestion that his actions are and fitting for a man. He also declares that his step-sons behaviour is “It shows a will most incorrect to heaven”. This is very offensive as he is saying that Hamlet is going against God's wishes. The sentences Claudius use in his speech clearly imply that his relationship with Hamlet is very distorted.The antagonist continues by adding “why should we in our peevish opposition/ Take it to heart?”. Claudius is acting in a very philosophical and inhuman as if his brother has not died recently. He sees death as a meaningless phase in life and that Hamlet should move on like he did. Two bold words jump out of his speech “unprevailing well“. He can’t feel the pain Hamlet is enduring and that’s why he thinks Hamlet is overreacting. Shakespeare has successfully sent us the message that Claudius is a very insensitive man and that Hamlet is feeling great aversion towards him and this is a reason why their relationship is very weak.

How Does Hamlet Accept The New Changes In His Life

Will Hamlet accept the new changes in his life? What is he capable of to be happy? After his father’s death, Hamlet will have to face the new changes in his hometown, Denmark. Shakespeare develops Hamlet’s character in relation to other characters in these soliloquies.

In the tragedy play Hamlet written by Shakespeare, Hamlet’s character and emotions changed various times. In Act 1 Hamlet was portrayed as weak and in a deep grief about his father’s death. In lines 78-86 as a response to his mother unsympathetic comment, Hamlets states, “Seems madam? Nay it is. I know not ‘seems.’ Tis not alone my inky cloak, good-mother, Nor customary suits of solemn black, Nor windy suspiration of forced breath, No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, Nor the dejected haviour of the visage, Together with all the forms, moods, shows of grief  That can denote me truly. These indeed ‘seem’, For they are actions that a man might play; But I have that within which passeth slowly-these but the trappings and the suits of woe.” In these lines, Hamlet explains that his visible signs of grief are nothing compared to how he feels inside. Hamlet not only offers the first illustration of the anguish and emotions of his character, but encompasses much of the universal experience of grieving. He doesn’t show it externally, but he was struggling with painful emotions internally. Act 2 Hamlet was seen as a very vengeful person due to the fact that his uncle murder his father just to be king. In line 611-616 Hamlet states,” Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave, That I, the son of a dear father murdered, Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,

Hamlet And Claudius Leadership Analysis

An effective leader is a person with a vision to change various aspects for the better of society and is dedicated to do anything. In the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare there are numerous individuals showing leadership qualities, but are the qualities enough for a successful leader? Even though Hamlet and Claudius both represent leaders, Claudius reveals that even with facing difficulty he is able to manage. In contrast, Hamlet is driven by his ambitions for revenge. Three fundamental components that should be a part of a good leader include, an individual who is able to, draw on resources, adjust to change, and able to manage emotions.

“Mad as the sea and wind when both contend. Which is the mightier. In his lawless fit, Behind the arras hearing something stir, whips out his rapier, cries “A rat, a rat,” And in this brainiac apprehension kills The unseen good old man.”

Comparison of Hamlet and Claudius Essay

Claudius and Hamlet are both very selfish men. Claudius wants to be the king of

In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Hamlet went through a series of events causing him to be what he is in the play. The character traits are significant to help readers understand who the character is and what that person serves throughout the book. Throughout the play, Hamlet is the protagonist who is trying to get the job done. Readers believe that the qualities of a King are shown in the protagonist of Hamlet. Furthermore, the qualities that Hamlet possesses shows loyalty to all the characters, he is ambitious towards his goals, and he is intelligent.

For many of us, our parents are our role models and the people we look up to. They take care of us and know what is best for us. For that reason, we should obey them and listen to their advice. We all have heard that before, but what if that is not true? What if our parent's decisions are not for the best of us? That is what Shakespeare proposes in the play Hamlet. In Shakespeare's Hamlet, parents' flaws lead to the destruction of their loyal children. Ophelia, Laertes, and Hamlet's lives are hijacked by their filial piety.

Related Topics

  • Characters in Hamlet

Hamlet: Character Analysis

Shakespeare is a household name; he was a creative genius and produced more masterpieces than one. His popularity knows no bounds, even to date people hold the highest regard for his work. His work constitutes a part of the syllabus in major Universities and colleges. Hamlet is one of his masterpieces, Hamlet is a tragedy and in a tragedy, the tragic hero suffers from a tragic flaw. The tragic flaw in Hamlet is the impulsive nature of Hamlet. Hamlet fails to act when he thinks, the whole process of acting upon a decision never happens in Hamlet and the same is the tragic flaw in Hamlet. One thing which stands out in the play is the ability of Shakespeare to manipulate the language; this has been very effectively done in the play. The play is based upon revenge; Hamlet takes revenge for his father’s death in the play. Revenge is a very dangerous motive but a very powerful one. This paper will throw light upon the fates of the characters of Hamlet, did they deserve what they got. A comprehensive analysis will be provided on the same.

Let’s now take into consideration the character of Hamlet, as discussed earlier, it can be easily made out that Hamlet was an impulsive person. His father was the king of Denmark and he was killed by Claudius, who has now become the king by marrying Hamlet’s mother. A ghost tells Hamlet that his father was murdered by King Claudius and this allegation was later proved. Based on this assumption that Claudius killed his father, Hamlet decides to take revenge for the death of his father. Hamlet’s rash actions go on to decide his fate. In the sense that he succeeds in killing King Claudius but before this Hamlet ends up killing the innocent old man by the name Polonius. Hamlet decides not to kill Claudius while he was praying; this causes an unnecessary delay and only goes on to make the readers believe that the actions of Hamlet were very Impulsive. To conclude with the character of Hamlet it can be said that since revenge was his sole aim, no one could have predicted the future and there are risks involved when a person seeks revenge, so it is fair to say that the death of Hamlet was not surprising as a reader and he pretty much deserved it. This is purely based on the fact that anything can happen when one seeks revenge.

Let’s now take into consideration the character of Claudius, the villain in Hamlet. He is a very lustful and shrewd character in the play; the same also makes him different from all the other male characters in the play. He is a different male character in the play because all the other male characters in the play strive for justice and moral balance. The readers get a very positive opinion about Claudius initially; he gives a very impressive speech addressing some of the most important issues like the death of his brother (Hamlet’s Father) and the tense situation with Norway. Claudius is seen to be putting his mind to good use in the play, he makes the people comfortable because he knew that failing to do so may lead to a rebellion as there was a change in the government and this was because he took over the throne, so to safeguard his interest he cleverly makes the people comfortable to make sure that no conflict at a later stage arises. “His speech juxtaposes the people’s loss with the new beginning they will have under his care, and he uses the death of Hamlet’s father to create a sense of national solidarity, “the whole kingdom/to be contracted in one brow of woe” (Claudius,  2008). Claudius should be looked at as a multi-faced villain who lets his desires get the better of him. Because he kills Hamlet’s father, the ex-king of Denmark. He deserves what he gets in the play. He deserved to be killed for the murder of Hamlet’s father, so it is very fair to say that he got what he deserved.

Polonius is a very corrupt character in Hamlet, he betrays people to whom he should be loyal. He is a hypocrite, his sole aim was to make sure that the safeguards his interests; he had nothing to do with other people. One example of Polonius’s hypocrisy is as follows, he served king Hamlet with dedication but he also supported King Claudius, who had killed king Hamlet. This is a classic example that goes to show that Polonius was a hypocrite. Looking at the fact that he was a dishonest man and indulged in corruption, it can be said that he certainly deserved to be stabbed by Hamlet even though it was again the impulsive nature of Hamlet which gets highlighted in his murder. Without making sure who is on the other side of the curtain Hamlet decides to kill the person only to find out that it was Polonius.

Guildenstern & Rosencrantz are not the main characters of the play Hamlet. Guildenstern & Rosencrantz are very good friends in the play. Guildenstern is a little more pessimistic when compared to Rosencrantz. Rosencrantz. Is a very optimistic person in the play, there is one noticeable thing about him in the play, which is that he gets easily distracted the play. Considering all the above facts and also keeping in mind that these characters did not do anything intolerable, they certainly did not deserve to be killed.

Gertrude is the mother of Prince Hamlet in the play. Sex played a major role in her life and the same instills a feeling of disgust in the mind of price Hamlet towards her. Within a very few days of her husband’s death, she decides to marry Claudius. This goes to show that her desires were out of her control and she did not care about anyone else other than her. The play also suggests that she was in love with Claudius even before the death of King Hamlet; this goes to show how lustful she was. Considering all these details she certainly deserved to die.

Laertes is the son of Polonius in the play. There is very little data available about Laertes. “Laertes is Polonius’s son and Ophelia’s brother. He has come to Denmark for King Claudius’s coronation. In his first appearance in I.ii, he seeks permission to return to France. When he appears again in I.iii, Laertes bids his sister Ophelia farewell and warns her about Hamlet. He advises her that Hamlet can’t choose a mate for himself alone, but, being the prince, must think of the state. Thus, he cautions Ophelia to protect her virtue. Polonius then enters and advises his son on how to conduct himself while in France. When his father is finished, Laertes leaves for France.” (Hamlet, 11 October 2008). There cannot be anything said about the fate of Laertes because there is very little information available about him.

Orphelia plays the love interest of Prince Hamlet in the play. She is the daughter of Polonius. Polonius makes full use of Orphelia in the play, he turns her into a whore for his benefit and her character displays a lot of originality and simplicity. She lost her mother at a very young age and her father and her brother took care of her. She showers unconditional love on them. She also loves prince Hamlet unconditionally in the play, despite his impulsive nature; she also completely ignores his brutal nature. She faces a lot of mental trauma in the play because of Prince Hamlet, he kills her father and she goes insane. Considering all these events she certainly did not deserve to go insane, she deserved much better than what she got.

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  1. Claudius Character Analysis in Hamlet

    Claudius Character Analysis Previous Next Hamlet's major antagonist is a shrewd, lustful, conniving king who contrasts sharply with the other male characters in the play. Whereas most of the other important men in Hamlet are preoccupied with ideas of justice, revenge, and moral balance, Claudius is bent upon maintaining his own power.

  2. Claudius Character Analysis in Hamlet

    Summary & Analysis Themes Quotes Characters Symbols Lit Devices Quizzes Theme Viz Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on Hamlet makes teaching easy. Everything you need for every book you read. "Sooo much more helpful than SparkNotes. The way the content is organized and presented is seamlessly smooth, innovative, and comprehensive."

  3. Claudius Character Analysis: In-depth Guide (Hamlet)

    He is bloated by excessive drinking. He had a small nature. On the other hand He wasn't stupid, but quick-witted and adroit. He won the Queen with the "witchcraft of his wit" or intellect. Claudius seems to have been soft-spoken, ingratiating in manner. He used to smile on the person he addresses ("that one may smile and smile, and be a villain").

  4. Claudius Character Analysis

    Claudius is the newly crowned King of Denmark whose ascent to the throne follows the death of his brother, King Hamlet. He enters into an "o'erhasty" marriage with his former sister-in-law,...

  5. An analysis of Claudius, Hamlet's Uncle

    An analysis of Claudius, Hamlet's Uncle welcome sonnets analysis quotations biography theatres key dates plots faq books glossary scholars quiz search Introduction to Claudius in Hamlet As with all the supporting characters in Hamlet, Claudius is not developed to his full potential.

  6. Claudius, Hamlet: Overview Of Shakespeare Character Claudius

    Claudius is a character in Shakespeare's play, Hamlet. He is one of Shakespeare's most manipulative characters. We tend to think that Hamlet, is all about the prince. But it's a play with a full cast of characters all interacting intricately with each other. Claudius is without doubt the second character in Hamlet .

  7. Hamlet Character Analysis

    Plot Summary & Analysis Themes Quotes Characters Symbols Lit Devices Quizzes Theme Viz Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on Hamlet makes teaching easy. Everything you need for every book you read. "Sooo much more helpful than SparkNotes. The way the content is organized and presented is seamlessly smooth, innovative, and comprehensive."

  8. Claudius in Hamlet by William Shakespeare

    Lesson Summary Frequently Asked Questions Who was Claudius to Hamlet? Claudius is Hamlet's paternal uncle, meaning that he is the younger brother of Prince Hamlet's father (also named...

  9. Hamlet's Claudius: Villain analysis

    Claudius is undoubtedly considered the main villain in Hamlet, due to the murder of the King. However, Shakespeare has made his character a lot more nuanced. His actions after his initial villainous crime are representations of his ability to manipulate, showing his intelligence rather than his villainy.

  10. Hamlet: Full Play Analysis

    By killing Claudius, Hamlet could in one stroke remove a weak and immoral king, extract his mother from what he sees as a bad marriage, and make himself king of Denmark. Throughout the inciting incident, however, there are hints that Hamlet's revenge will be derailed by an internal struggle. The Ghost warns him: "Taint not thy mind nor let ...

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    Analysis. Inside the walls of Elsinore, Claudius —the new king of Denmark—is holding court. With him are his new wife Gertrude, Hamlet's mother and the queen; Hamlet himself; Claudius's councilor Polonius; Polonius's children Laertes and Ophelia; and several members of court. Claudius delivers a long monologue in which he laments the ...

  12. The Character of Claudius in Shakespeare's Hamlet Essay

    The Character of Claudius in Shakespeare's Hamlet Essay Better Essays 2062 Words 9 Pages 7 Works Cited Open Document The Character of Claudius in Hamlet Shakespeare presents Claudius as a character with many faces yet the audience can clearly understand his motives and ambition throughout the play.

  13. Claudius Character Analysis in Hamlet

    Claudius Character Analysis in Hamlet. There are plenty of characters in the play of Hamlet that affect Hamlet and the play as a whole. I chose King Claudius for this research project as he was the center of most if not all problems in the play. From this I was able to decipher the 3 main points. These points are what is Claudius's ...

  14. Claudius Character Analysis Essay

    Claudius is a manipulative and spiteful major character (and antagonist) in the play "Hamlet". Claudius is the new king of Elsinore after he kills the previous king, who was also his brother, king Hamlet, by pouring poison in his ear during his nap time.

  15. Claudius Character Analysis

    Study Guides Claudius Claudius The present king of Denmark, Claudius, had gained his crown and wife by murdering his own brother. Worse still, it was poisoning, a cowardly and treacherous way of dealing somebody out. Thus, the method itself characterizes Claudius as a craven villain, good at plotting and scheming.

  16. Essays on Hamlet

    Essays on Hamlet | Jeffrey R. Wilson Essays on Hamlet Written as the author taught Hamlet every semester for a decade, these lightning essays ask big conceptual questions about the play with the urgency of a Shakespeare lover, and answer them with the rigor of a Shakespeare scholar.

  17. Hamlet: Mini Essays

    Protagonist Antagonist Setting Genre Allusions Style Point of View Tone Foreshadowing Metaphors and Similes Questions & Answers Is the Ghost real? Did Hamlet and Ophelia have sex? Did Gertrude have an affair with Claudius before he killed Hamlet's father? Who is Fortinbras? Why doesn't Hamlet kill Claudius right away?

  18. Hamlet: Analysis of Shakespeare's Main Character

    Published: Jun 29, 2018. William Shakespeare's Hamlet (1600-01), regarded by many scholars and critics as his finest play, is based on the story of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, which first appeared in the Historia Danica, a Latin text by the twelfth-century historian Saxo Grammaticus. The main protagonist, being Hamlet, the so-called "Dark Prince ...

  19. Hamlet Research Paper & Essay Examples

    Focused on: Reasons for Hamlet's procrastination and its consequences. Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude, Ophelia, Polonius. Role of Women in Twelfth Night and Hamlet by Shakespeare. Genre: Research Paper. Words: 2527. Focused on: Women in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and Hamlet.

  20. The Character Of Claudius Character Analysis Example

    The character of Claudius can be recognized as the major antagonist in the play. Traits such as being cleverly evil, lustful, and conniving were the factors that won him the crown as the King of Denmark. As a king, Claudius focused on protecting his throne from being relinquished from him.

  21. Claudius: Character Analysis

    Claudius: Character Analysis Date: Nov 21, 2019 Category: Hamlet Topic: Hamlet Characters Page: 1 Words: 733 Downloads: 19 Disclaimer: This work has been donated by a student. This is not an example of the work produced by our Essay Writing Service .

  22. Hamlet Claudius Character Analysis

    Hamlet Character Analysis. "To be, or not to be, that is the question," (3.1.64). This famous line in William Shakespeare's Hamlet perfectly encapsulates Hamlet's internal struggle throughout the play. Hamlet tells the story of the young prince of Denmark and his desire for revenge on the uncle, Claudius, who murdered his father.

  23. Hamlet: Character Analysis

    only 3 hourscustom Hamlet: Character Analysis. Let's now take into consideration the character of Hamlet, as discussed earlier, it can be easily made out that Hamlet was an impulsive person. His father was the king of Denmark and he was killed by Claudius, who has now become the king by marrying Hamlet's mother.

  24. Summary: Difference Between Macbeth and Claudius

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