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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.
Hamlet and Ophelia, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. From its premiere at the turn of the 17th century, Hamlet has remained Shakespeare's best-known, most-imitated, and most-analyzed play. The character of Hamlet played a critical role in Sigmund Freud's explanation of the Oedipus complex. [1]
In this analysis, the essence of Hamlet is the central character's changed perception of his mother as a whore because of her failure to remain faithful to Old Hamlet. In consequence, Hamlet loses his faith in all women, treating Ophelia as if she too were a whore and dishonest with Hamlet.
[265] Commenting on "the character of Hamlet", he in effect joins a discussion among his contemporaries, adding to the mix of similar assessments by Goethe, [266] Schlegel, [267] and Coleridge [268] his observation that Hamlet "is not a character marked by strength of will or even of passion, but by refinement of thought and sentiment." [80]
The majority of characters in Hamlet have classical names, in contrast to the "particularly Danish" ones of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The names were common in the court of Frederick II and Christian IV , and also at the University of Wittenberg , an institution where Hamlet is mentioned as having studied (he refers to them as "my two ...
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 ...
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.
Hamlet and Oedipus is a study of William Shakespeare's Hamlet in which the title character's inexplicable behaviours are subjected to investigation along psychoanalytic lines. [ 1 ]