Claudius Change In Hamlet

Claudius is revealed as a cunning and clever character in Hamlet. He managed to kill King Hamlet and marry his wife, which also happened to be his sister-in-law, and would have gotten away with it had it not been for the ghost. From the description of Prince Hamlet, he appears to be the complete opposite of a charming person because he is “no more like [his] father than [he]to Hercules” and throughout that soliloquy Hamlet praises his father immensely but turns the words to his uncle with spite (I.ii.152). Furthermore, his cunning nature is exemplified in Act 4 where he uses the excuse of ties with England to secretly execute his nephew. After that, he also uses Laertes to plan a way to make sure Hamlet dies while also avoiding being killed himself because his initial plan did not work. He happens to be a major character in the play for various reasons. First of …show more content…
When Claudius is first presented in the play he’s shown as kind of egoistic and inconsiderate because he tells Hamlet that he should stop mourning his dad because “‘tis unmanly grief” (I. ii.95). That gave me a really bad image about him and it remained for the rest of the play, which helped set the ground for the conflict and foreshadowed that there would be a conflict between them. In Act 3 Scene 3 the readers witness Claudius’s guilt and it made me feel like he was changing but then he decides not to do what is right and keep his crown so it just outlined his bad character even more. That decision continued the conflict and made the plot even more intense because now I had confirmation that he did kill his brother. At the end a final change is shown where Claudius’s cunning character plots to kill his nephew and is willing to go through everyone just to keep himself happy and all of these changes further exemplify the bad nature in him and it’s simply astonishing to see how far he goes and affects everyone else because they all