Hamlet

Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius, murders his own brother in order to claim the throne and marry his brother’s widow, Gertrude. Although Hamlet presents his murderous uncle as a loathsome villain through and through, Claudius is not so far gone as to be without guilt. He is himself in agony, tormented by guilt yet incapable of truly repenting for what he’s done. 

Like another of Shakespeare’s tragic characters, Macbeth, Claudius does not believe he can pray; like Macbeth, he finds himself wading into more and more violence in order to preserve his own security. He makes several attempts to engineer Hamlet’s death, and while he at last succeeds, he and everyone around him are also killed by the plot.

Hamlet’s mother and the Queen of Denmark, Gertrude’s choice to marry her brother-in-law after her husband’s death is a driving factor in the play’s plot. Her feelings and motives remain veiled. We know that she feels guilty for her speedy remarriage, initially suspecting that this is the cause of Hamlet’s madness, but she allies herself firmly with Claudius until the end. Her accidental death by poisoning, which Claudius could have prevented, reveals the depth of his treachery.

Hamlet’s intense fascination with Gertrude’s remarriage—and his vivid disgust with her sexual life—has been a subject of much study. Gertrude, like Ophelia, is trapped by the male-dominated society around her; her sexuality is powerful and dangerous to herself and others.

Hamlet’s father appears as a ghost at the beginning of the play, and returns at intervals throughout. Most often dressed in his armor, the ghost brings tales of the horrors of Purgatory and exhorts Hamlet to take revenge on Claudius, his murderer. 

The ghost is only sometimes visible to others. While he first appears to sentinels on the battlements of Elsinore Castle, he later is visible only to Hamlet, raising genuine questions about Hamlet’s sanity. The ghost and his references to Purgatorial fires is often discussed as evidence that Shakespeare might have had (at the least) Catholic sympathies because Protestant theology denied the existence of ghosts.

Horatio is a loyal friend to Hamlet, the only person Hamlet can bring himself to trust. Stalwart and rational, he is the lone Dane left standing at the end of the play. His final resolution to tell the story of the of plots and counterplots that have brought Denmark to its knees suggests that it is possible to tell the truth.

Ophelia’s brother’s fiery temper stands in contrast with Hamlet’s indecision. When Hamlet kills his father Polonius, Laertes returns home from France to take his revenge, and he falls into Claudius’s manipulative clutches. Where Hamlet is paralyzed by doubt, Laertes demonstrates the insufficiency of action without thought.

Young, sweet tempered, and perhaps too trusting, Ophelia is Laertes’s sister, Polonius’ daughter, and Hamlet’s sometime beloved. Her brother and father are intensely protective of her, to the point of being controlling. Concerned for her honor, they discourage her from accepting Hamlet’s attentions. 

Ophelia, who begins the play as a lively, innocent young woman, is quickly disillusioned by Hamlet’s decline and his cruelty toward her. His accusations of inconstancy and faithlessness are unfounded: Ophelia’s withdrawal from him is driven by social fear and daughterly obedience, not by a lack of love. 

When she is at last driven to madness by her father’s murder, Ophelia becomes a truth speaker, singing of betrayal and death. Her eventual death by drowning sets in motion the final tragedies of the play.