Claudius's Dishonesty In Oedipus The King

Therefore, when dealing with Claudius, Hamlet's attitude is extremely complex and intricate. The concepts of death and sexuality are interchangeable in this play (Adelman 271). To the reader, it is evident that Hamlet hates his uncle, but his despise of Claudius comes more from his jealousy than from anything else. The more Hamlet criticizes Claudius, the more his

In Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, Hamlet, a studious young man and Prince of Denmark, struggles to face the death of his father and the task to kill his father’s murderer, Claudius. He was once known as a charming, smart young man before his father’s death. However, Hamlet experiences depression and anger at the world, causing him to look outwardly on society but failing to look inwardly on himself. The death of his father and the task for vengeance leads him to question whether or not he should follow through in killing Claudius. He becomes a man of thought rather than a man of action. In addition, the delay of King Claudius’ murder leads the readers to believe that he wishes not to kill him; he

Shakespeare's drama Hamlet has become a central piece of literature of Western culture. It is the story of a prince named Hamlet, who lost his father. Soon after that he has to confront multiple obstacles and devises a series of situations to defend the new king's royalty. Furthermore, he had to prove that King Claudius, who was the prince's uncle, had killed Hamlet's father. This story has remained among the most popular and the most controversial plays around the world. It generates controversy for all the doubts that this play leaves with the readers. One of the most questioning situations in the play is the delay of Hamlet in avenging Claudius' for his father's death. As a reader this

Beyond Claudius’ need for admiration, he also tends to disregard the feelings of people around him. This is shown in a similar way as his need for admiration, being that he kills his brother to gain power. Such a selfish action will obviously impact those around King Hamlet, but Claudius disregard that and simply does it for his own gain. He doesn’t think about how Hamlet’s death will affect Gertrude, young Hamlet, Polonius, or anyone else close to him. In the aftermath of this, instead of helping Hamlet through the hard time following his fathers sudden death, he tells Hamlet he’s not a man for mourning for such a long time. Staying on the topic of the death of a father, Claudius uses Polonius’ death to get Laertes to want to avenge his

In Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, various characters manipulate others in order to gain power and fulfill their personal desires. The character who portrays the most immense manipulation is King Claudius, the brother of the late King Hamlet. Thus far, Claudius advertises himself as a sensible, honorable man who lives to serve the greater good, yet his manipulation exposes his dubious intentions, leaving him with an unfortunate fate.

Hamlet is as much a story of emotional conflict, paranoia, and self-doubt as it is one of revenge and tragedy. The protagonist, Prince Hamlet of Denmark, is instructed by his slain father’s ghost to enact vengeance upon his uncle Claudius, whose treacherous murder of Hamlet’s father gave way to his rise to power. Overcome by anguish and obligation to avenge his father’s death, Hamlet ultimately commits a number of killings throughout the story. However, we are not to view the character Hamlet as a sick individual, but rather one who has been victimized by his own circumstances.

An act as appalling as this would never cross the mind of a person with a healthy sense of sanity. Although he committed this dreadful crime, Claudius was good at keeping secrets; nobody ever knew of his sins. “Claudius is socially adept, and his charm is genuine. He can exhibit deep distress over his ‘dear brother’s death’ and admiration for his wife, ‘Th’imperial jointress to this warlike state.’ He knows the value of a great funeral, but quickly turns mourning into celebration and moves on ‘With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage’ to whatever lies ahead” (Claudius). This narcissistic king only cared to bring attention to himself when his kingdom chose to mourn the death of Hamlet. Claudius mourns his brother’s death in public but he only pretends to grieve so that his crime will not seem conspicuous. “Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death the memory be green, and that it us befitted to bear our hearts in grief , and our whole kingdom to be contracted in one brow of woe, yet so far hath discretion fought with nature that we with wisest sorrow think on him together with remembrance of ourselves” (Shakespeare 10,11). Claudius explains that although it is necessary to mourn, life still goes on. He points out the importance of realizing the health and prosperity of himself as the new king, only to take the attention off of the abhorrent tragedy he caused to the kingdom for the sake of gaining power and a

In the play Hamlet, Claudius is known as the villain of the play. He is the lead antagonist who is characterized as a cunning, incestuous, and vile, usurper. Many readers and critics of the play do not dispute this perception, especially after reading how Claudius became the King of Denmark; He steals the throne by poisoning his brother, the previous king, and quickly marrying Queen Gertrude his widowed sister in law (1.5.42, 60-74). The general reading of Claudius’s character paints him to be a corrupt, cowardly politician, in addition to being Hamlet’s (the protagonist) foe. This portrait engages first-time readers to judge Claudius immediately and although this perspective of his personality is proven to be true, it is limited. Claudius

Claudius is the other major example of ambition in the story, as shown through his drastic measures taken to assure that no one discovers that he killed the King and used his death as an opportunity to take up the crown. It is revealed to Hamlet by his father’s ghost that Claudius killed the former ruler in his own garden by pouring poison into his ear. This is very characteristic of Shakespeare’s tragedies, characters will kill each other off for their own ambitious agendas without hesitation for morals or law and Claudius fits into this trend perfectly. To further ensure that his status as king is not compromised, he seduces the King’s wife, Gertrude, and attempts to get Hamlet to forget his father by calling his grief childish and a hindrance to his role as the prince (365). The King’s ghost informs Hamlet that Gertrude was one of the most virtuous women alive and wouldn’t have taken lightly to his sudden death, so it is apparent that Claudius took extreme measures to get Gertrude on his side. To go through all this work to ensure that he remained in power proves that Claudius was just as ambitious to achieve power as Hamlet was to remove him from it.

As Shakespeare slowly reveals, every character is a victim as well as a perpetrator of deception and it ultimately leads to their treacherous demise. When we are introduced to Claudius at the beginning of the play, he seems to be a good man and thus, a good king; an intelligent and capable ruler. He gives a speech to his royal court and country, addressing his brother's death and the potential conflict with Norway. This speech juxtaposes the people's loss with the new beginning they will have under his care, and he uses the death of Hamlet's father to create a sense of national solidarity. However,

Fortunately, in present time, everyone has a choice in which religion they want to follow. Nonetheless, today’s target audience of Hamlet must have a lucid understanding of Christianity to comprehend Claudius’ confession. Claudius begins his confession by admitting how shameful his crime is and that it has “the primal eldest curse upon ’t” (3.3.38). The curse refers to the Bible’s story of the first murderer, Cain. In the story, Cain murders his younger brother Abel because God favoured him more. In the end, God curses Cain and forces him to wander the Earth (Ashliman). Claudius compares his crime to Cain’s which shows that he is confessing to his brother’s murder. This is the first piece of solid evidence that proves that Claudius is guilty. Thus, without knowing the curse of Cain as well as the Elizabethans did, today’s audience will not have understood how serious Claudius takes his guilt and crime. Secondly, those who do not know the Christian religion very

     Claudius’ lies are effective enough to persistently deceive to play’s antagonist, Hamlet. Despite Hamlet’s disgust with Claudius for marrying Gertrude, and his view of Claudius as “a king of shreds and patches” (III.iv.104), Hamlet suspicion of Claudius as a murderer is preliminarily nonexistent. The appearance of a spirit claiming to be Hamlet’s dead father first alerts Hamlet to the actions of “that incestuous, that adulterate beast, /With witchcraft of his with, with traitorous gifts” (I.v.42-3). And yet still, Hamlet remains hesitant to believe that Claudius was the murderer, searching for complementary evidence. The play that Hamlet enacts -- designed to “catch the conscience of the king” (II.ii.562) --succeeds in revealing Claudius’ guilt, but does not provoke instant action on Hamlet’s part. So effective is Claudius’ manipulation of the royal circle that he manages to almost permanently stay the revelation of his guilt, and if it weren’t for supernatural intervention against an injustice, he may never have been exposed.

describes who his murderer was by saying, “The serpent that did sting thy father’s life / Now wears his crown” (I.v. 44-45). He wanted Hamlet to realize just how careful Claudius was in planning out his act by likening him to a serpent, a creature that moves noiselessly, and strikes with little warning. However, instead of rallying his supporters and attempting to try his uncle in a court of law, he plots his death. While this is happening, Claudius marries Gertrude in a bid to consolidate his power and have his reign seem more legitimate. However, he lacks the administrative knowledge to rule his kingdom, and he relies heavily on his advisors to tend to the daily problems of the realm.

In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Claudius’s soliloquy in Act 3, Scene 3, demonstrates that he is a very ambitious, selfish and sorrow individual with a sense of guilt. Claudius is very ambitious to where his lust for power often drives his actions. His desire for power will often lead to horrible consequences. For instance, it was revealed in Claudius’s soliloquy that he did in fact murder King Hamlet, his own brother. There are no limits to what Claudius will surpass in order to achieve what he wants since killing his own brother was not crossing over the line and he saw King Hamlet as nothing but a barrier standing in his way of gaining power. For example, Claudius expresses that “My guilt is stronger than my intentions. And like a person with two opposite things to do at once, I stand paralyzed and neglect them both”, meaning that

William Shakespeare’s dramatic presentation of disillusionment within Hamlet, to a great measure presents the notion that the quality of a leader is derived from one’s possession of integrity. Hamlet’s disillusionment which emerges from the discovery of Claudius’ regicide and the usurpation of his father’s divine position, produces a plethora of human dilemmas, such as the moral struggle between renaissance and medieval ideologies, the paralysing effect of uncertainty and the defining nature of mortality. Thus by exploring the universal complexity of human condition and its ability withhold integrity, Shakespeare connects to audiences of various historical contexts.