Humanities Literature Hamlet Character Analysis Discover 'Hamlet' with Our Hamlet Character Analysis Share Flipboard Email Print Vladimir Vysotsky, a Russian anti-establishment actor, poet, songwriter and singer in the Soviet Union, rehearses Shakespeare's Hamlet, directed by Russian stage director Yuri Lyubimov, at the Palais de Chaillot Theater in Paris, 1977. Sygma via Getty Images / Getty Images Literature Shakespeare Tragedies Shakespeare's Life Studying & Teaching Comedies Sonnets Best Sellers Classic Literature Contemporary Literature Plays & Drama Poetry Quotations Short Stories Children's & Young Adult Books View More by Lee Jamieson Lee Jamieson has a M.A. in theater studies and is the author of numerous books. He lectured for six years on theater studies at Stratford-upon-Avon College in the U.K. Updated March 06, 2017 Hamlet is the melancholy Prince of Denmark and grieving son to the recently deceased King. Thanks to Shakespeare’s skillful and psychologically-astute characterization, Hamlet is now considered to be the greatest dramatic character ever created. Hamlet’s Grief From our very first encounter with Hamlet, he is consumed by grief and obsessed by death. Although he is dressed in black to signify his mourning, his emotions run deeper than his appearance or words can convey. In Act 1, Scene 2, he says to his mother: ‘Tis not alone my inky cloak, good-mother,Nor customary suits of solemn black ...Together with all forms, moods, shows of griefThat can denote me truly. These indeed ‘seem’,For they are actions that a man might play;But I have that within which passeth show –These but the trappings and the suits of woe. The depth of Hamlet’s emotional turmoil can be measured against the high spirits displayed by the rest of the court. Hamlet is pained to think that everyone has managed to forget his father so quickly – especially his mother, Gertrude. Within a month of her husband’s death, Gertrude has married her brother-in-law. Hamlet cannot comprehend his mother’s actions and considers them to be an act of treachery. Hamlet and Claudius Hamlet idealizes his father in death and describes him as “so excellent a king” in his “O that this too too solid flesh would melt” speech in Act 1, Scene 2. It is, therefore, impossible for the new king, Claudius, to live up to Hamlet’s expectations. In the same scene, he pleads with Hamlet to think upon him as a father – an idea that furthers Hamlet’s contempt: We pray you to throw to earthThis unprevailing woe, and think of usAs of a father When the ghost reveals that Claudius killed the king to take the throne, Hamlet vows to avenge his father’s murder. However, Hamlet is emotionally disorientated and finds it difficult to take action. He cannot balance his overwhelming hatred for Claudius, his all-encompassing grief and the evil required to carry out his revenge. Hamlet’s desperate philosophizing leads him into a moral paradox: that he must commit murder to avenge murder. Hamlet’s act of revenge is inevitably delayed amid his emotional turmoil. Hamlet After Exile We see a different Hamlet return from exile in Act 5: his emotional turmoil has been replaced by perspective, and his anxiety replaced by cool rationality. By the final scene, Hamlet has come to the realization that killing Claudius is his destiny: There's a divinity that shapes our ends,Rough-hew them how we will. Perhaps Hamlet’s new-found confidence in fate is little more than a form of self-justification; a way to rationally and morally distance himself from the murder he is about to commit. It is the complexity of Hamlet’s characterization that has made him so enduring. Today, it is difficult to appreciate how revolutionary Shakespeare’s approach to Hamlet was because his contemporaries were still penning two-dimensional characters. Hamlet’s psychological subtlety emerged in a time before the concept of psychology had been invented – a truly remarkable feat. Continue Reading