Michaela Meserve Jester AP Literature 16 October 2023 Claudius’s Changing Perspective of Death Throughout Hamlet Out of the hundreds of plays and sonnets William Shakespeare has written, there are complicated and complex characters and themes in every single one of them. For example, in Othello, Othello is a complex character who battles himself in the aspects of his marriage and his jealousy similarly to how he grew up in war. Another example would be Hamlet from Hamlet. Hamlet is consistently battling with anger and the need for revenge against his uncle, Claudius. Claudius can easily be brushed into the background of Shakespeare because he is marked as a villain and therefore is not talked about a lot except in a sense of being a foil for Hamlet as an antagonist to a …show more content…
There are many logical answers to this, such as the potential power he would get if he took the throne. The marriage between Claudius and Gerturde, although unexpected, is smart politically because it ensured Claudius’s rise to the throne, instead of Hamlet’s, the rightful heir. Claudius is technically Gertrude’s killer because he poisons the drink that kills her. He warned her about the cup, but he only yelled at her to not drink it. He did nothing to run and stop her from drinking it, or sacrificed himself to avoid her drinking it. This would further prove the theory that Claudius married Gertrude for political gain and not because he had always been in love with her or something to that extent. Claudius’s guilt for killing his brother became unbearable, which is why he ends up repenting his sins at a private altar. The guilt previously tormenting him must have left his body after repenting because he did not seem to react with much remorse when Gertrude was killed. In fact, Hamlet kills Claudius shortly after Gertrude