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Character Analysis of Claudius in Hamlet

FREE SAMPLE CRITICAL ESSAY

King Claudius is the crown-stealing and family-dividing villain who is the “something rotten” (1.4) in the state of Denmark. In the end, he is “justly served” by “a poison tempered by himself” (5.2).

Critical Character Analysis of King Claudius in Hamlet: Free Sample Student Essay

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Essay introduction / 
Thesis statement

“One may smile … and be a villain”

Claudius’ secret “brother’s murder” (3.3) of Prince Hamlet’s father, his within “a little month” marriage to his “sometime sister” (1.2) Queen Gertrude and his election shortly afterward as Denmark’s king provide the starting points to the storyline of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Both literally and metaphorically, Claudius is a poisoner. Old King Hamlet, Queen Gertrude and ultimately Claudius himself all fall victim to his “juice of cursed hebenon” (1.5).

Moreover, his corrupting reign contaminates with deception and distrust the natural human bonds of friendship and romantic love.

The two “Good lads” (2.2) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are executed in England. And in Claudius’ “unweeded garden” (1.2), the unwed couple of Hamlet and Ophelia end the play not together on Denmark’s throne but united only in death in Elsinore’s graveyard.

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Claudius in #Hamlet - Can a bad man be a good king and loving husband? Answer: 'No.'

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  • Claudius is the crown and queen-stealing villain whose corrupt ambition is the “something rotten” (1.4) in the state of Denmark.
  • Appropriately for the villain of the play, Claudius’ name is never spoken aloud by any other character.
  • Does he really love Queen Gertrude as much as he loves the throne? And can a bad man be a good king?
  • The motifs of the antagonist as a snake and Denmark as a once idyllic but now fallen kingdom recur throughout the play.
  • For example, Claudius will later attempt to execute Hamlet using the “adders fanged” (3.4) of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Key Supporting Quotes

6
quotations from the play to support your statements.

1

Claudius’ kingship

“Witchcraft of his wit”

King Claudius may well have an exceptionally strategic mind. But the political gifts are dissipated in attempting to cover up his regicide. His criminal past forever clouds his kingly future.

Claudius is compelled to expend almost all his mental energy grappling with the events that flow from his pre-play murder of Old King Hamlet—recruiting courtiers as spies, calling in a political favor from the English king, arranging the “hugger-mugger” (4.5) burial of Polonius and manipulating Laertes into a rigged fencing match.

Old King Hamlet ruled Denmark successfully for at least three decades. His brother lasted only about six months. Claudius, who set out to rule a country, ended up losing it to a foreign power.

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SOME KEY ESSAY TOPICS

  • Claudius is a manipulative and ruthless figure who seems to come directly from Machiavelli’s book, The Prince.
  • His conversation with Polonius in 2.2 suggests he is less focused on the Norwegian danger than the threat posed by his nephew.
  • Even at the point of Laertes’ sword and with an angry mob outside the castle, Claudius cunningly turns the situation to his advantage.

Key Supporting Quotes

14
quotations from the play to support your statements.

2

Claudius and Queen Gertrude

“Our sometime sister”

Despite Prince Hamlet’s accusation towards his mother of fickle disloyalty (“Frailty thy name is woman”, 1.2), Gertrude remains steadfastly at the side of her second husband.

Claudius’ dark secrets mean he can never fully open his heart to her. But his comments about Gertrude—“I could not but by her” (4.7)—reveal another side of an otherwise cold and calculating man.

The on-stage royal relationship is far removed from the unrestrained sensuality which Old King Hamlet’s Ghost luridly imagines. It more resembles that of a middle-aged, married couple which, of course, Claudius and Gertrude actually are.

It is not that Claudius is incapable of love; rather he is incapable of placing love—anything else—above his passion for kingly power.

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#Hamlet - King Claudius' sentimental descriptions of Gertrude reveal another side of his character.

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SOME KEY ESSAY TOPICS

  • Both on the first and the final occasions we see King Claudius on stage he is accompanied by his wife, Queen Gertrude.
  • His sentimental descriptions of Gertrude reveal another side of Claudius’ character.
  • Gertrude defends her husband from an enraged, sword-wielding Laertes.
  • The final bloodbath scene reveals Claudius will sacrifice his wife’s life to retain his throne.

Key Supporting Quotes

9
quotations from the play to support your statements.

3

Claudius and Prince Hamlet

“Mighty opposites”

For three decades, Old King Hamlet stood between Claudius and the throne he jealously coveted. Now, his son Prince Hamlet threatens Claudius’ hold on it.

Even the wily Claudius could not have foreseen that his spying efforts through Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and Ophelia would be so transparent to the prince. Or that his nephew would respond with a display of feigned insanity and the psychological masterstroke of The Murder of Gonzago.

Claudius describes Hamlet as “like the hectic in my blood” (4.3); to the prince, his uncle is the man who “killed my king and whored my mother” (5.2). Hamlet is Claudius’ nemesis, the character he can never fully control and through whom he meets his ultimate comeuppance.

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Old King Hamlet stood between Claudius and throne and queen. Prince #Hamlet threatens his hold on each.

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SOME KEY ESSAY TOPICS

  • A suspicious Hamlet is unswayed by Claudius request “to think of us / As of a father” (1.2).
  • A battle of wits between two very different types of intelligence: the political and the artistic.
  • After the ‘play-within-a-play’, Claudius knows that Hamlet knows. Their conflict now becomes a battle to the death.
  • In the end, Hamlet the intellectual scholar triumphs over Claudius the worldly, power-hungry politician.

Key Supporting Quotes

9
quotations from the play to support your statements.

4

Claudius as a tragic hero

“Some vicious mole of nature”

Of all the characters in the play, Claudius most resembles a ‘tragic hero’: an otherwise noble figure who dooms himself and everyone around him because of a fatal flaw—“some vicious mole of nature” (1.4)—in his character.

His lust for political power leads him to commit one murder only to find that he must plot a second to cover up the first. When this plan fails, his next scheme leads to the death of the woman he loves, followed quickly by his own.

How smart a last that speech doth give my conscience!”, Claudius declares in an aside after hearing Polonius’ remark to Ophelia about how with “pious action we do sugar o’er / The devil himself” (3.1). But Claudius will not give up the rewards of his crime: “My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen” (3.3).

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#Hamlet - "When sorrows come, they come not single spies / But in battalions."

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SOME KEY ESSAY TOPICS

  • Claudius’ moment of triumph begins and ends with the court scene of 1.2.
  • His secret crime sets in motion unanticipated events that bring calamity to everyone around him.
  • The family of Polonius and ultimately Denmark itself fall victim to his unrestrained ambition.
  • A deceitful manipulator of others, he is undeniably honest with himself.

Key Supporting Quotes

6
quotations from the play to support your statements.

5

Essay conclusion / Summary

“He is justly served”

Claudius dies as he lived. His final action in 5.2 is an attempt to portray Gertrude’s fainting as a reaction to the fencing duel between Hamlet and Laertes: “She swoons to see them bleed.

But Claudius has spoken his last lie. Queen Gertrude dies knowing the true character of the man she married (“O my dear Hamlet—The drink, the drink! I am poison’d”).

Hamlet is at last able to bring himself to murder his usurping uncle. As he does, he bids farewell to Claudius with the words: “Follow my mother.” And so, just like his brother, and by the same means of his own poison, Claudius is “Of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatched” (1.5).

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Like his brother, Claudius in #Hamlet is "Of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatched."

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SOME KEY ESSAY TOPICS

  • A hugely gifted man who traded everything for his brother’s throne and wife.
  • A measure of his cunning is how he contrives a fencing match between two characters who earlier were on the brink of killing him
  • Gertrude’s poignant elegy for Ophelia offers a glimpse of what has been lost in the unfolding tragedy.
  • Finally exposed: the false king, false husband, and false uncle.

Key Supporting Quotes

8
quotations from the play to support your statements.

6

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42 x 1,500-word model essays

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Chapter-by-chapter guide to Hamlet Model Essays

IN THIS BOOK ARE THREE 1,500-WORD SAMPLE ESSAYS ON EACH ONE OF THE FOLLOWING 14 CHARACTERS, RELATIONSHIPS, AND THEMES. THAT’S 42 SAMPLE ESSAYS IN TOTAL.

Character Analysis of Hamlet: Free Sample Essays

#1: The Character of Hamlet

Born a prince, parented by a jester, haunted by a ghost, destined to be killed for killing a king, and remembered as the title character of a play he did not want to be in. If at the cost of his life, Hamlet does in the end “win at the odds.

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Character Analysis of Claudius in Hamlet: Free Sample Essays

#2: The Character of Claudius

His “ambition” for Denmark’s crown leads him to commit one murder only to find that he must plot a second to cover up the first. When this plan fails, his next scheme leads to the death of the woman he loves followed by his own.

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Character Analysis of Gertrude in Hamlet: Free Sample Essays

#3: The Character of Gertrude

“Have you eyes?”, Prince Hamlet demands of his mother. Gertrude‘s “o’erhasty marriage” dooms her life and the lives of everyone around her when her wished-for, happy-ever-after fairytale ends in a bloodbath.

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Character Analysis of Ophelia in Hamlet: Free Sample Essays

#4: The Character of Ophelia

As she struggles to respond to the self-serving purposes of others, Ophelia’s sanity collapses in Elsinore’s “unweeded garden” of falsity and betrayal. Her “self-slaughter” is her revenge for her silencing and humiliation.

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Relationship of Hamlet and the Ghost: Free Sample Essays

#5: Relationship of Hamlet and the Ghost

Hamlet grants the Ghost the atonement his suffering soul needed more than the revenge he demanded: he surrenders Denmark to the son of the man murdered by his father on the day of the prince’s birth.

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Relationship of Hamlet and Claudius: Free Sample Essays

#6: Relationship of Hamlet and Claudius

Uncle and nephew are two men at war with each other—and themselves. Claudius is haunted by the murder he has committed (“O heavy burden!”); Hamlet by the one he hasn’t yet (“Am I a coward?”).

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Relationship of Hamlet and Gertude: Free Sample Essays

#7: Relationship of Hamlet and Gertrude

A haunted-by-the-past Hamlet seeks the truth about his father’s death (“Do you see nothing there?”). A live-in-the-present Gertrude seeks to protect her second husband and crown (“No, nothing but ourselves”).

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Relationship of Hamlet and Ophelia: Free Sample Essays

#8: Relationship of Hamlet and Ophelia

Their relationship begins in uncertainty, descends into mutual deceit and rejection, and ends with their double surrender to death: Ophelia, to the water; Hamlet, to Claudius’ rigged fencing duel.

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Relationship of Hamlet and Horatio: Free Sample Essays

#9: Relationship of Hamlet and Horatio

“Those friends thou hast … Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel.” Horatio is Hamlet’s trusted confidant in life and vows to remain the keeper of his memory after the prince’s death.

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Relationship of Claudius and Gertrude in Hamlet: Free Sample Essays

#10: Relationship of Claudius and Gertrude

A marriage of mutual self-interest: Claudius wanted to become king; Gertrude wanted to remain queen. In the end, both die by the same poison her second husband used to murder her first.

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Main Themes of Hamlet: Read Free Sample Essays

#11: Main Themes of Hamlet

A king murdered, an inheritance stolen, a family divided: Elsinore’s older generation destroys its younger when two brothers—one living, one undead—battle in a “cursed spite” over a crown and a queen.

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Theme of Revenge in Hamlet: Read Free Sample Essays

#12: The Theme of Revenge

Hamlet and Laertes journey from revenge, through obsession and anger, to forgiveness. And the revenge sought by the Ghost on King Claudius becomes the revenge of Old King Fortinbras on Old King Hamlet.

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Themes of Deception and Appearance versus Reality in Hamlet: Free Sample Essays

#13: Deception and Appearance versus Reality

“Who’s there?” The characters struggle to distinguish between truth and falsehood in a play-long triple pun on the verb ‘to act’: to take action, to behave deceitfully, and to perform in theater.

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Theme of Madness in Hamlet: Read Free Sample Essays

#14: The Theme of Madness

“Your noble son is mad”, Polonius tells Denmark’s king and queen. But is Hamlet ever really insane? If not, why is he pretending to be? And is the prince’s “antic disposition” the cause of Ophelia’s traumatic breakdown?

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