Hamlet

Hamlet’s uncle and stepfather, and the new King of Denmark. After the death of Hamlet’s father and Claudius’s brother, the former king, Claudius married his brother’s wife, Gertrude, and assumed the throne of Denmark—much to Hamlet’s chagrin and suspicion. Early on in the play, the ghost of Hamlet’s father appears to Hamlet and tells him that Claudius murdered him for the throne, then charges Hamlet with avenging the murder. Hamlet’s hatred of Claudius intensifies after speaking with the ghost—but still, Hamlet is unable to take the action needed to get revenge for his father. Claudius, meanwhile, interprets Hamlet’s suspicion and anger as madness, and endeavors to find out the cause by recruiting Hamlet’s friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Claudius fears that Hamlet is onto him, and when Hamlet arranges a performance of a play whose events mirror the manner of King Hamlet’s murder, Claudius at last confesses, in a lengthy soliloquy, to his dark, dastardly deeds. Alone on stage, Claudius tries to pray for forgiveness for his actions—but admits that he knows that without truly repenting in deed as well as in word, he will never be saved or absolved. Claudius, for all his words of regret, doesn’t actually feel regret about what he’s done—he’s happy to be on the throne, to be married to Gertrude, and to have power over Denmark. However, Claudius’s illegitimate rule is the “rotten” core of the country, and as relationships within Elsinore splinter and fall apart, Claudius’s bogus claim to the throne begins to threaten Denmark’s political viability against its rivals in Norway. Self-serving, cool, and relentlessly ambitious, Claudius’s arc ties in with several of the play’s major themes, including action and inaction, appearance versus reality, and poison, corruption, and death.