Characterization in HamletThis essay will inform the reader about the characterization found in Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet - whether the dramatis characters are three-dimensional or two-dimensional, dynamic or static, and other aspects of the representation of the character.John Dover Wilson in What makes in Hamlet tells how the Bard is even capable of bringing realism to a ghost:Shakespeare's Ghost is both a revenge-ghost and a prologue-ghost, that is- that is to say from the technical point of view it corresponds to its Senecan prototype. But there the resemblance ends; for it is one of the glories of Shakespeare to have taken the conventional puppet, to have humanized it, to have Christianized it and to have made of it a figure which its spectators would recognize as real, as something that the 'one might encounter in any solitary cemetery at midnight. . .] The ghost of Hamlet does not come from a mythical Tartarus, but from the place of vanished spirits in which post-medieval England, despite a veneer of Protestantism, still believed at the end of the 16th century. And in doing so, by making the horror more frightening by giving it a contemporary spiritual background, Shakespeare succeeded at the same time in raising the whole business of ghosts to a higher level, in transforming a declaimed and noisy abstraction into something both tender and majestic. (56-57) The genius of the Bard is revealed in his characterization. Brian Wilkie and James Hurt in Literature of the Western World examine Shakespeare's universal appeal resulting from his "sharply etched characters": Every age, from Shakespeare's time to the present, has found in him something different to admire. All ages, however, have recognized his supreme competence in inv...... middle of paper ......tts ​​​​Institute of Technology. 1995. http://www.chemicool.com/Shakespeare/hamlet/full.htmlWest, Rebecca. “A Court and a world infected by the disease of corruption.” Readings on Hamlet. Ed. Don Nardo. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1999. Rpt. of The Court and the Castle. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1957. Wilkie, Brian and James Hurt. “Shakespeare.” Literature of the Western world. Ed. Brian Wilkie and James Hurt. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1992. Wilson, John Dover. What happens in Hamlet. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1959. Wright, Louis B. and Virginia A. LaMar. “Hamlet: a man who thinks before he acts.” Readings on Hamlet. Ed. Don Nardo. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1999. Rpt. from The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Ed. Louis B. Wright and Virginia A. LaMar. N.p. : Paperbacks, 1958.