King Claudius: Not Your Arche-Typical Villain

1340 Words6 Pages
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is arguably the most famous play ever written, replete with sex and violence, revenge and insanity, comedy and tragedy. Almost everyone, even those who have never read or seen the play itself, know the plot of William Shakespeare’s most iconic masterpiece. The evil King Claudius, through treachery and murder, has obtained the throne of Denmark and its Queen’s hand in marriage, and the only person left to stand up to him and his heinous crimes is the noble Prince Hamlet. And yet, what if King Claudius is not the purely evil man he is often portrayed to be? Because this interpretation of Hamlet has been hammered so deeply into our collective conscious over the course of the hundreds of years that the play has been in theaters, we rarely, if ever, notice the complexities that Shakespeare has incorporated into Claudius' character. Before the curtain has even risen at the beginning of the play, they have already condemned Claudius to fulfilling the archetypal role of The Villain. However, there is much in Shakespeare’s writing to suggest that he has been unfairly judged. Ultimately, King Claudius is not a despicable, corrupt man who will stop at nothing to gain power; he is a complex character embodying elements of both good and evil who decides he must do what believes is best for his country even at the detriment of his own family. Throughout this play, various characters claim that Old Hamlet was a superior king to Claudius in almost every way; however, Claudius soon depicts his remarkable facilities as a monarch and diplomat, discrediting these assertions. When the ghost of Old Hamlet begins to tell his son the tale of his downfall, he refers to Claudius as “a wretch whose natural gifts were poor/ To those of mine” (I.i.58-59). Yet, in the first scene of the play, Horatio mentions to Marcellus and Barnardo that Old Hamlet
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