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Prince Hamlet, the title character, is the son of the late King of Denmark, who was also named Hamlet. He is charged by the ghost of his father to avenge his murder, which he finally succeeds in doing, but only after the rest of the royal house has been wiped out and he himself has been mortally wounded with a poisoned rapier by Laertes.
Claudius is the current King of Denmark, Hamlet's uncle, who succeeded to the throne upon the death of his brother. The ghost of King Hamlet tells Prince Hamlet that he was murdered by brother Claudius, who poured hemlock in his ear while he was asleep. Claudius is killed with a poisoned rapier by Hamlet who, for good measure, also forces him to drink the wine with which he had intended to poison Hamlet.
King Hamlet (Ghost) was Hamlet's father. At the start of the play, he is not long dead. He appears to Hamlet as a ghost and urges him to avenge his murder. He is referred to in the stage direction as Ghost. King Hamlet was killed by poison emptied into one of his ears.
Gertrude is Hamlet's mother, the widow of King Hamlet who became the wife of Claudius, a relationship considered incestuous in Shakespeare's time. She dies by drinking poisoned wine intended for Hamlet.
Polonius is Claudius's chief councillor, who is distrustful of Hamlet's relationship with Ophelia. He is a fatuous bore, and Hamlet frequently teases him while pretending to be mentally unbalanced. He is fatally stabbed by Hamlet while hidden behind an arras while trying to eavesdrop upon a conversation between Hamlet and his mother.
Laertes is Polonius' son, who kills Hamlet with a poisoned rapier to avenge the deaths of Polonius and Ophelia. He is killed by Hamlet with the same rapier, although at the time Hamlet did not realise it was poisoned.
Ophelia is Polonius' daughter. She and Hamlet have had romantic feelings for each other, although she and Hamlet (at least implicitly) have been warned that it would be politically inexpedient for them to marry. Jilted by Hamlet as part of his insanity ruse, her father's death causes her to actually go insane, and she drowns herself, possibly accidentally.
Horatio is a friend of Hamlet's from university. He is not directly involved in the intrigue among the royals, which enables the author to use him as a foil or sounding board for Hamlet. He is the only main character who is alive at the end of the play, although he threatens to commit suicide.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are old school-fellows of Hamlet, who were summoned to the castle by Claudius to keep a watch on Hamlet. Hamlet soon suspects that they are spies. Though their roles in the play are relatively minor, Tom StoppardSir Tom Stoppard OM is a British playwright, famous for plays such as The Real Thing and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and for the screenplay for Shakespeare in Love''. Stoppard was born TomaS Straussler in Zlin, Czechoslovakia on July 3, 1937. created a popular play and movie Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead in which the two title characters contemplate their roles as minor players in a bigger drama. They die off-stage in England, executed by the King's warrant for Hamlet's death, altered by Hamlet to name them.
Fortinbras is the Norwegian crown prince who has only a couple of brief scenes in the play, but who delivers its final lines and appears to represent the hope for a better future for the Danish monarchy and its subjects.
Hamlet, or Amleth, was a legendary Danish prince (see: Hamlet (legend)Hamlet is a striking figure in Scandinavian romance and the hero of Shakespeare's tragedy, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark''. The chief authority for the legend of Hamlet is Saxo Grammaticus, who devotes to it parts of the third and fourth books of his Historia) whose exploits were recorded by Saxo GrammaticusSaxo Grammaticus ca. 1150 ca. 1220) was a Danish medieval historian of whose life little is known. It is thought that his life was spent during the latter half of the 12th century and that he was born in Zealand. The sixteen books of Danish history of thi in his Gesta DanorumThe Gesta Danorum is a work of Danish history, by one Saxo Grammaticus (Saxo the Learned) of whom not a great deal is known other than his name. It was written in Latin at some time towards the end of the 12th century although possibly early in the 13th c around 1200 AD; Francois de Belleforest adapted Saxo's story in his Histoires tragiques (1570). Shakespeare's main source, however, is believed to be an earlier play about Hamlet (the Ur-HamletUr-Hamlet was the name given by nineteenth century German scholars to a pre- Shakespearean Hamlet written before 1589. In that year Thomas Nashe implies the existence of such a play in his introduction to Robert Greene's Menaphon :English Seneca read by C), which is attributed to Thomas KydThomas Kyd ( 1558 1594) was an English dramatist, the author of The Spanish Tragedy and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama. Kyd languished in obscurity until 1773 when Thomas Hawkins, an early editor of the play, dis and is known to have introduced a ghost to the story. Shakespeare may also have taken some elements from Kyd's other play, The Spanish Tragedy, especially the hero's procrastinationProcrastination is the deferment or putting-off of an action which requires immediate attention, usually by focusing on some other distraction. It derives from the Latin words pro (a prefix meaning "for") and cras (meaning "tomorrow"). Recently, the subje.
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