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The duo are upset that they have become the pawns of the royal couple. Claudius enters again and tells them to find where Hamlet has hidden Polonius's corpse. After many false starts, they eventually find Hamlet, who leaves with Claudius. Rosencrantz is delighted to find that his mission is complete, but Guildenstern knows it has not ended.
Polonius echoes the request for help and is heard by Hamlet, who then mistakes the voice for Claudius' and stabs through the arras and kills him. Polonius's death at the hands of Hamlet causes Claudius to fear for his own life, Ophelia to go mad, and Laertes to seek revenge, which leads to the duel in the final act.
When Hamlet kills Polonius, Claudius recruits Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to escort Hamlet to England, providing them with a letter for the King of England instructing him to have Hamlet killed. (They are apparently unaware of what is in the letter, though Shakespeare never explicitly says so.)
In the discussion of Macbeth, it is Macbeth's unity of character that is significant. [302] In many chapters, he emphasises the dominant mood, a unifying theme, the "character" of the play as a whole. [303] In, again, Macbeth, the entire play "is done upon a stronger and more systematic principle of contrast than any other of Shakespear's plays."
Alone, Claudius discloses that he is actually sending Hamlet to his death. Prior to embarking for England, Hamlet hides Polonius' body, ultimately revealing its location to the King. Meanwhile, the death of Ophelia's father has driven her insane with grief, and Claudius convinces Ophelia's brother Laertes that Hamlet is to blame. Claudius ...
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.
Macbeth was a favourite of the seventeenth-century diarist Samuel Pepys, who saw the play on 5 November 1664 ("admirably acted"), 28 December 1666 ("most excellently acted"), ten days later on 7 January 1667 ("though I saw it lately, yet [it] appears a most excellent play in all respects"), on 19 April 1667 ("one of the best plays for a stage ...
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.