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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.
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.
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 play opens with Hamlet deeply depressed over the recent death of his father, King Hamlet, and his uncle Claudius' ascension to the throne and hasty marriage to Hamlet's mother Gertrude. One night, his father's ghost appears to him and tells him that Claudius murdered him in order to usurp the throne, and commands his son to avenge his death.
In Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern always appear as a pair, except in editions following the First Folio text, where Guildenstern enters four lines after Rosencrantz in Act IV, Scene 3. [ 1 ] The two courtiers first appear in Act II , Scene 2, where they attempt to place themselves in the confidence of Prince Hamlet , their childhood friend.
Hamlet's statement that his dark clothes are the outer sign of his inner grief demonstrates strong rhetorical skill (artist: Eugène Delacroix 1834). Much of Hamlet ' s language is courtly: elaborate, witty discourse, as recommended by Baldassare Castiglione's 1528 etiquette guide, The Courtier. This work specifically advises royal retainers to ...
Attention has also been drawn to the similarity of Amleth to the Irish name Amhladh (variously Amhlaidh, Amhlaigh, Amhlaide), itself a Gaelic adaptation of the Norse name Olaf. [ 12 ] In a controversial suggestion going back to 1937, the sequence æmluþ contained in the 8th-century Old Frisian runic inscription on the Westeremden yew-stick has ...
Hebenon is the agent of death in Hamlet's father's murder; it sets in motion the events of the play. It is spelled hebona in the Quartos and hebenon in the Folios. This is the only mention of hebona or hebenon in any of Shakespeare’s plays. Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole, With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial, And in the porches of my ...