The Characters Around Hamlet Essay

Theodore Roehtke once said that In a dark time, the eye begins to see. This statement means that often times when terrible things happen to you, it affects others around you and sometimes you see them for who they really are. In the playwright Hamlet by William Shakespeare, a number of characters prove this statement to be true.

Hamlets father is the king of Denmark, until one night he is murdered in his sleep. No one knows that he was murdered, but one night the kings ghost appears to Hamlet and shows him that King Hamlets brother, Claudius, was the one who walked into his room at night and poured poison into his ear. Now Claudius is king. Hamlet now sees that Claudius did not love his father like a brother and murdered him just to take the throne. Hamlet now wants to avenge his fathers death by killing Claudius.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are good friends of Hamlet. It wasnt until Hamlets father died that he realized they werent friends at all. After King Hamlet dies, Hamlet decides to act like a crazy person to fool people into believing Claudius feels that Hamlet is acting weird and sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy on him and report back their findings. Hamlet can tell by the way they are acting and asking him questions that they want to get something out of him. He now knows that Claudius is worried that hamlet might have some knowledge of his fathers death.

Within two months of King Hamlets death, Gertrude (the queen) marries Claudius. Hamlet did not think that his mother was capable of showing such disrespect towards his father and that she is not the mother and wife he thought she was. Hamlet starts to think that maybe his mother knew Claudius was going to kill his father. This angers Hamlet and makes him want to seek revenge on Claudius even more.

After the death of his father, Hamlet learned a lot about those around him. This is a perfect example of what Theodore Roehtke meant when he said In a dark time, the eye begins to see. He learned that his mother and uncle never loved his father and that his best friend, Horatio, was the only person he can trust