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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.
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 it must be executed. They obtain the manuscript and convince Hamlet to perform it. When he does, Claudius decrees that he must die, but is eventually persuaded to banish him to England.
They fight, and Hamlet is wounded, but Ophélie's funeral procession interrupts the duel. Hamlet finally realizes she is dead. The Ghost appears again and exhorts Hamlet to kill Claudius, which Hamlet does, avenging his father's death. The Ghost affirms Claudius' guilt and Hamlet's innocence.
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.
Laertes / l eɪ ˈ ɜːr t iː z / is a character in William Shakespeare's play Hamlet. Laertes is Polonius' son and Ophelia's brother. 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.
Gertrude reveals no guilt in her marriage with Claudius after the recent murder of her husband, and Hamlet begins to show signs of jealousy towards Claudius. According to Hamlet, she scarcely mourned her husband's death before marrying Claudius. Her name may derive from Gertrude of Bavaria, who was Queen of Denmark in the late 12th century.
In an earlier scene, Prince Hamlet has been exiled to England by the treacherous King of Denmark (his uncle Claudius, who has murdered Hamlet's father to obtain the throne). En route to England, Hamlet discovers a letter from King Claudius which is being carried to England by Hamlet's old but now untrusted friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern ...
Set to duel Hamlet, Laertes accidentally kills himself taking his "practice stab", and Hamlet proceeds to murder Claudius. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (Carl and Lenny), meanwhile, have been covered in poison and kill each other with a high five. Hamlet walks away to celebrate, but he slips on some blood and dies.