Hamlet characters
The character of Hamlet is one of the most vivid ones among those created by Shakespeare. Prince of Denmark represents a type of a thoughtful young man in a dire situation, anxious, angry and troubled by his inner conflicts and doubts. After his father’s ghost reveals to him all...
Horatio, Hamlet’s best and only friend, was the first to deal with the old king’s ghost. He is brave enough to face it and even tries to talk to it while others are merely staring and shivering. Later he accompanies Hamlet in his encounter with the ghost. Horatio represents good sense...
Ridiculous and instinctively smart, Polonius is a kind of comic relief in the play. A caring and protective father of Laertes and Ophelia is a little too protective and does a little too much conclusions and schemes plotting. One can only imagine how and why such a person became a counselor of the...
The son of Polonius and a little too loving elder brother of Ophelia, Laertes undergoes an impressive evolution in course of the play. At the beginning, he is just another young courtier, studying (and debauching, for sure) in France. He arrives to Denmark only to attend the coronation of the new...
The queen of Denmark mostly stays passive, as a woman of that period should. She is the prize, the symbol of the kingdom in the hands of her new husband, and she is the mother loathed by her son. Hamlet, deeply sunk in his mourning, considers her to be a sinful and filthy woman, incapable to mourn...
Two Hamlet’s schoolmates from Wittenberg appear in the play as a seemingly cheerful pair a-la Tweedledum and Tweedledee. They arrive to Elsinor at Claudius’s command, and their purpose is spying on Hamlet and finding out the causes of his supposed madness. These two simpletons fail...
The young prince of Norway is an overachiever, because gathering a huge army just to claim a little piece of land is an overachievement indeed. One can suggest that this action would improve his reputation as a decent king and a valiant war chief. Claudius’s diplomatic skill causes the...
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...
At the beginning of the play, poor Ophelia, the maiden fair, possesses everything necessary to obtain the condition that passed for a happy marriage at that times. She is young, innocent, beautiful and completely obedient. Both Polonius and Laertes warn her not to get into a too intimate...