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Polonius. 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 ...
Hamlet. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, usually shortened to Hamlet (/ ˈhæmlɪt /), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play. Set in Denmark, the play depicts Prince Hamlet and his attempts to exact revenge against his uncle, Claudius, who has murdered Hamlet's ...
Critical approaches to Hamlet. Critical approaches to. Hamlet. 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 ...
Hoist with his own petard. A petard from a 17th-century manuscript of military designs. " Hoist with his own petard " is a phrase from a speech in William Shakespeare 's play Hamlet that has become proverbial. The phrase's meaning is that a bomb-maker is blown ("hoist", the past tense of "hoise") off the ground by his own bomb ("petard"), and ...
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.
To be, or not to be. " To be, or not to be " is a speech given by Prince Hamlet in the so-called "nunnery scene" of William Shakespeare 's play Hamlet (Act 3, Scene 1). The speech is named for the opening phrase, itself among the most widely known and quoted lines in modern English literature, and has been referenced in many works of theatre ...
Laertes / leɪˈɜːrtiːz / is a character in William Shakespeare 's play Hamlet. Laertes is the son of Polonius and the brother of Ophelia. In the final scene, he mortally stabs Hamlet with a poison-tipped sword to avenge the deaths of his father and sister, for which he blamed Hamlet. While dying of the same poison, he implicates King Claudius.
Gilbert's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. W. S. Gilbert 's play (1874) is a comedy in which Rosencrantz plots with his friend Guildenstern to get rid of Hamlet, so that Rosencrantz can marry Ophelia. They discover that Claudius has written a play. The king's literary work is so embarrassingly bad that Claudius has decreed that anyone who mentions ...