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Polonius is a character in William Shakespeare's play Hamlet. He is the chief counsellor of the play's ultimate villain, Claudius , and the father of Laertes and Ophelia . Generally regarded as wrong in every judgment he makes over the course of the play, [ 1 ] Polonius is described by William Hazlitt as a "sincere" father, but also "a busy ...
What follows is an overview of the main characters in William Shakespeare's Hamlet, followed by a list and summary of the minor characters from the play. [1] Three different early versions of the play survive: known as the First Quarto ("Q1"), Second Quarto ("Q2"), and First Folio ("F1"), each has lines—and even scenes—missing in the others, and some character names vary.
Polonius forces Ophelia to return Hamlet's love letters to the prince while he and Claudius secretly watch in order to evaluate Hamlet's reaction. Hamlet is walking alone in the hall as the King and Polonius await Ophelia's entrance. Hamlet muses on thoughts of life versus death. When Ophelia enters and tries to return Hamlet's things, Hamlet ...
A stained glass representation of Polonius from Shakespeare's Hamlet It is possible that the character Polonius from Shakespeare's Hamlet was inspired by the Działyński affair, as a play on the name of his home country.
The name Hamlet occurs in the form Amleth in a 13th-century book of Danish History written by Saxo Grammaticus, popularised by François de Belleforest as L'histoire tragique d'Hamlet, and appearing in the English translation as "Hamblet". The story of Amleth is assumed to originate in Old Norse or Icelandic poetry from several centuries earlier.
Online film critic James Berardinelli gave the film a four-star review and declared that the Branagh Hamlet is the finest Shakespeare adaptation, rating it as the best film of 1996, the fourth best film of the 1990s, and one of his top 101 favourite films of all time, saying, "From the moment it was first announced that Branagh would attempt an ...
Laertes is the son of Polonius and the brother of Ophelia in Hamlet. He fights with Hamlet in the famous fencing scene in the final act. Lafew is a French lord in All's Well That Ends Well. Lancaster: John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster is uncle to King Richard and father to Bolingbroke in Richard II.
The character Claudius is both the major antagonist of the piece and a complex individual. He is the villain of the piece, as he admits to himself: "O, my offence is rank it smells to heaven" (Act III, Scene 3, Line 40), yet his remarkable self-awareness and remorse complicates Claudius's villain status, much like Macbeth.