What do you think about Claudius in Hamlet?

Answer 1

Like so many of Shakespeare's characters, Claudius is a one dimensional character who keeps revealing other dimensions: the villainous villain, the shrewd usurper, the proud manipulator who can't quite stay that way.

I think you see him clearly only when you see him from several different perspectives:

(1) The court. He unifies the kingdom in grief for the elder Hamlet, and wisely sends courtiers to negotiate with Norway. He has the potential to be a strong ruler.

(2) The inner circle. Gertrude and her intimates would see him as a loving husband, truly grieving upon the death of Polonius, caring for the suffering Ophelia, wanting the best for his mentally disturbed stepson, the young Hamlet.

(3) The vision of the Ghost. Of course, behind this righteous visage, Claudius is guilty of fratricide, regicide, treason, an "adulterous" relationship with Gertrude. He is the "something rotten" in the state of Denmark. But can the evidence of a preternatural being be trusted? Is the Ghost really real? Even the irate young Hamlet is indecisive and feigns madness in order to collect confirming evidence of his own.

(4) The bumbler of Hamlet's jokes. How wise a king would depend upon a wordy caricature of wisdom like Polonius? Would allow himself to become the butt of the mad Hamlet's jokes and the subject of the pantomime and the play-within-a-play that demonstrates his guilt to the courtiers? At the very least, Claudius is the schemer out-schemed.

(5) But he definitely is the schemer and manipulator who uses the innocent Ophelia and her obsequious father to trick Hamlet into revealing his motives: who sends Hamlet to his death in England, his fate sealed in a letter borne by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern though they aren't even aware of their true mission; who uses the grieving, irate Laertes to wield a poisoned weapon in the fencing scene at the end.

(6) And then, behind the scenes, known only to the audience through an aside and soliloquy, Claudius is also the penitent sinner, aware of his criminality and trying to confess his guilt to his god.

To our great surprise, in Act III, scene 1, while he is setting Ophelia up as a spy, he reveals this inner nature. Polonius has admitted that what they are doing is "with pious action" to "sugar o'er / The devil himself." Claudius is immediately smitten with guilt, which he reveals in an aside:

O, 'tis too true!
How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!
The harlot's cheek, beautied with plastering art,
Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it
Than is my deed to my most painted word:
O heavy burthen!

Again in Act III, sc 3, having sent Polonius to spy further on Hamlet, he speaks his one soul-searching soliloquy, which begins,

O, my offence is rank it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon't,
A brother's murder. Pray can I not,
Though inclination be as sharp as will . . . .

Hamlet finds him kneeling, attempting a confessional prayer. He has his chance to effect his vengeance and rid Denmark of the "something rotten."

Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;
And now I'll do't. And so he goes to heaven;
And so am I revenged.

But ironically, Hamlet is unwilling to take the action that would cleanse the state (and, in effect, achieve a "Christian humanist" vengeance) because he doesn't want Claudius to die while confessing and, hence, escape punishment in hellfire. So Hamlet himself becomes, for the moment, the more villainous one, seeking to kill not only the body but also the immortal soul of the usurper.

But the deepest irony of all, of course, is that Hamlet is mistaken. Claudius has been unable to bring himself to pray, to confess, and would still have been an impenitent soul destined for hell. Claudius admits to himself,

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

This last irony of course focuses our attention on the heart of Hamlet's "tragic flaw" (his seeking personal revenge and Claudius's damnation rather than ridding the state of "something rotten"). This failure, of course, leads into the further complications of Acts III and IV and to Hamlet's own tragic death.

Only at the end does Hamlet see clearly as a Christian humanist, "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, / Rough-hew them how we will . . . ."

So Claudius is villainous, but not an Iago or Edmund (Shakespeare's outright villains in Othello and King Lear). He is a scheming, manipulative, wicked villain, but a soft-hearted, bumbling one with a awareness of his need to repent though not the will.

Answer 2

Claudius - The King of Denmark, Hamlet’s uncle, and the play’s antagonist. The villain of the play, Claudius is a calculating, ambitious politician, driven by his sexual appetites and his lust for power, but he occasionally shows signs of guilt and human feeling—his love for Gertrude, for instance, seems sincere.

Answer 3

claudius is the reason why hamlet was such a tragedy. claudius, in some way or another, was the only character behind every death in the play, including his own. he was not the only one who deceived however, gertrude remarried to him very shortly after king hamlet's death. my rating: scumball!

Answer 4

Killed his brother and then married his wife
Hes a pimp lol

Answer 5

Homework question, that is what I think.

Answer 6

ooooo.....he diserved what happened to him...death...the best thing....imagine...to his own brother...with his wife..