What's Up with Hamlet?Hamlet is a teenager... right? After all, he sure acts like one. He's a moody and smart-alecky young kid with suicidal tendencies, a penchant for wearing black mou...
Ghosts are a common element in revenge tragedy (which you can read more about by going to "Genre") so it's not terribly surprising that the specter shows up in the play. What is surprising is the w...
Claudius is the current king of Denmark. He's married to his dead brother's wife, Gertrude, which makes him Hamlet's uncle and stepfather. Claudius becomes the object of Hamlet's quest for revenge...
Queen Gertrude is Hamlet's mother and the wife of her dead husband's brother, King Claudius. Gertrude and AmbiguityGertrude is most definitely a central figure in the play – Hamlet spends a w...
A Danish lord, Polonius is the father of Laertes and Ophelia. Audiences tend to remember him for the way he dies – Polonius is stabbed in the guts by Hamlet as he hides behind a screen while...
Ophelia, a beautiful young woman, is the young daughter of Polonius, the sister of Laertes, and Hamlet's love interest. In the play, Ophelia is caught between her obedience to her father and her lo...
Laertes, a young Danish lord, is the son of Polonius and brother of Ophelia. He spends most of his time abroad at college (which means we don't see much of him) but he's a significant figure in the...
Horatio is Hamlet's closest friend. Unlike Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (also Hamlet's old chums), Horatio's loyalty and common sense are rock-steady throughout the play – so much so that he...
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern seem incapable of functioning independently, so they're basically one character. The technical term to describe the two of them would be "sleaze-balls," or the ever-pop...
Fortinbras is a Norwegian prince who seeks revenge for his father's death. (Old Fortinbras, former King of Norway, made a bet with Old Hamlet and wound up losing his life and some important Norwegi...
