The Minor Characters of Hamlet Two Works Cited It is reasonable to wonder what Shakespeare had in mind when writing Hamlet. After all, Shakespeare was neither a philosopher, nor a historian, nor even a literary critic. He was a playwright. He did not leave us any critical essays on his work. It is up to us to examine his work and decide for ourselves, if we wish, what Shakespeare thought. Did he know that he was writing a drama of deep psychological significance, a play that would eventually be seen and read around the world, performed repeatedly for hundreds of years, taught in schools and regarded as the one of the greatest pieces in the world? For my part, I imagine him crossing the final “t” of the last word of the piece, putting down his pen and saying “I hope it lasts a year.” Yet Hamlet is an extremely complex play. To appreciate the imagination that went into creating this tragedy, let us first look at what is allegedly Shakespeare's most complex tragedy, King Lear. Lear has three daughters: Cordelia, who is faithful and little appreciated by Lear, and Regan and Goneril who receive everything from his hands and betray him. These themes of misplaced love and filial betrayal are reflected in the play's subplot, the relationship between the Earl of Gloster and his two sons, Edmund, who is supported and approved by Gloster and betrays him, and Edgar, who unjustly becomes a fugitive. of his father's anger. The mirror is whole. In it we see the reflection of Cordelia and see Edgar, while the reflections of Regan and Goneril, who form one face, show us Edmund. In the main plot of Hamlet, Hamlet's father has been murdered. Hamlet swears revenge, but feigns madness and delay. In the subplot, the chamberlain Polonius is murdered by Hamlet. One of Polonius' children, Laertes, swears revenge, while the other, his daughter Ophelia, goes mad. Here the mirror is cracked. Hamlet's reflection is fragmented. We see a part of him, his motive for revenge, in Laertes' action, and we see his supposed madness in Ophelia's pitiful state. What's more, Hamlet's image is tarnished compared to that of his counterparts. Hamlet talks of revenge, but procrastinates; Laertes instantly raises an army and attacks the kingdom, but he must be satisfied with his father's murder. Hamlet only acts like a madman; Ophélie's madness is too real. Besides production, sell-out ticket sales and royalties – the playwright's typical goals, what was Shakespeare seeking? He presents us with a play dealing with striking human similarities and differences and a protagonist who is more than a character, but a compendium of the qualities of the minor characters. Hamlet's unrealized potential highlights the fully realized actions of Laertes and Ophelia. If the play was about Laertes and Ophelia, Hamlet would be the perfect foil. In Hamlet's thrilling performance, we appreciate Laertes' audacity. Compared to Hamlet's affected loss of mind, Ophelia's true madness is the most pitiful. But to consider Hamlet as a foil for Laertes and Ophelia is to miss the point. After all, Hamlet is the hero. The play speaks, more than anyone, about him. Mirrors can be deceiving. We can lose sight of what is real and what is just an image. Claude is a good example. We could never mistake Claudius for the protagonist of the play. Could we? He is the antagonist of Hamlet. But, in fact, Claudius exhibits several characteristics common to Shakespeare's tragic heroes. Using *AC Bradley's definition, let's examine Claudius's qualifications to be the protagonist ofHamlet. The tragic hero is a character of high degree or great importance: Claudius nuances here. He is the king. As his fortune grows, so does that of everyone around him. As he is cheerful, the court is cheerful. As its face is contracted by misfortune, the Danish court suffers. The tragic hero has a predisposition in a particular direction, accompanied by an inability to resist the force that drives him: Claudius is ambitious. His ambition pushes him to assassinate his brother, the former king. The tragic hero doesn't have to be good. Consider Macbeth and Richard III: Claudius is evil in his intentions and actions. Through their actions, Shakespeare's tragic heroes hope to achieve the desired results. But what they achieve is not what they wanted; this is terribly no different: Claude's murderous act only brings him fleeting happiness. At the beginning of the play, Claudius' situation is secure. He does not fear any upheaval until the unfolding of act 3. From that moment on, he no longer knows peace. He is threatened from within by pangs of conscience and from without by Hamlet's knowledge of his crime. Ultimately, he pays for his crime with his life. The play also depicts the troubled part of the hero's life: starting with the death of Polonius, Claudius must plot to kill Hamlet. In addition, he must face Gertrude's rejection, Ophelia's madness and an insurrection provoked by Laertes. At the end of act 5, he dies. In the end, there is a feeling of waste. Our reaction to the death of the protagonist can be expressed with the words If only. . .: We feel no regret, no sense of tragic waste following Claude's death. All of the above characterizes Shakespeare's tragic heroes. What is missing in Claudius's case is a tragic effect. There is no sense of waste in the death of Claudius, no sense that this death could have been avoided, no awakening of "pity and fear" as there is in the deaths of Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Lear and Romeo and Juliet. If only Macbeth had been less ambitious, Hamlet more energetic, Othello less passionate, Lear wiser, and Romeo and Juliet less impetuous, their untimely deaths would not have occurred. We feel sympathy for these tragic heroes. We react to their deaths with a feeling of regret. No one regrets Claudius' death enough to even say it... . . . Thus, Claudius' reflection, although almost that of a protagonist, lacks proper form. Gertrude, Hamlet's mother, is both a cause of Hamlet's pathos through her marriage to Hamlet's uncle and a lens through which we see a little of Hamlet's family. We only see the family reunited once, with the ghost appearing to remind Hamlet of his vow of revenge, perhaps also to reunite the family. The moment in Act 3 when he appears, when Hamlet and his mother are together, suggests such a motif. Additionally, he appears in his nightgown rather than armor, as in his first appearance. Acting like a husband, he saves his ex-wife from Hamlet's wrath. However, the ghost's efforts to reunite fail. Gertrude's guilt - marriage to her husband's brother was considered incest - prevents her from seeing the ghost.** Reflectively, we see Polonius's family, all members destroyed by their involvement with Hamlet. We also see them together, just once, at the beginning of the play, as Laertes prepares to set sail. Ophélie is innocent. Laertes is guilty only of seeking revenge for the murder of his father. Polonius is guilty of being a snoop, a dangerous implication in the tragedy of Hamlet. The more Hamlet procrastinates, the more the corpses pile up, and the more the question of. 2.