How Does Shakespeare Present The Facade Of Claudius

Claudius is a manipulative and spiteful character in Hamlet that plays a large role throughout the play as the central antagonist. Claudius is the current King of Denmark and only achieved this title by murdering his brother, the former king. As the new ruler, Claudius leads as a cunning politician and grows his power while hiding his secrets. Claudius often uses this new power and manipulation skills to will others to do his dirty work and avoid blame or danger. As seen in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Claudius is a character that demonstrates a facade as he, a truly ruthless king with dark secrets, hides himself behind a charming façade in order to conceal his goals throughout the play. Claudius demonstrates this facade through his speeches, where

The words Claudius uses within his speech at the end of the act reflect his inner darkness as they depict his hidden emotions. These emotions are shown in Clausius’ lines of “O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven; It hath the primal eldest curse upon ’t, A brother’s murder.” ( Act III Scene III Lines 37-39). In the quote Claudius describes his actions as outrageous and disgusting, showing his true guilt for what he had done. We see this through his loaded phrases of “smells to Heaven” and “My offense is rank” which Shakespeare uses to open up Claudius as a character and give the audience insight on the thoughts of the villain of the play, even building sympathy for him. These loaded phrases are then expanded on by the allusion later in the quote which draws attention to how dark of a sin Claudius has committed, bringing the audience back into the reality that Claudius is a wicked person. These newfound qualities of Claudius that the audience now sees are also built upon by the rhetorical questions we see him use later on in the soliloquy. This is demonstrated by the lines “My fault is past. But, O, what form of prayer Can serve my turn? Forgive me my foul murder?” (Act III Scene III Lines 51-52) . Shakespeare's use of rhetorical questions help to greatly develop Claudius’ character, as we now see the great and mighty King

At the start of the scene, Claudius uses his politician facade to convince Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to do his will and help him figure out Hamlet. Then, later on he uses this again to help convince Ophelia to spy on Hamlet and report back to him and Polonius. After all this Claudius is able to rule out Ophelia for the reason of Hamlet’s madness and leading to him saying the lines “It shall be so. Madness in great ones must not unwatched go” (Act III Scene I Lines 187-188). This quote is a perfect example of Claudius and his facade as the tone of it is kingly and ends the scene where Claudius uses his facade to dig for evidence on Hamlet. Also, this quote uses irony to especially point out to the audience that hey, this is all an act being put on as a part of the villain’s facade. This irony is seen as Claudius describes Hamlet as a great one who’s madness must be monitored so nothing bad happens. However this is majorly ironic since Claudius himself is a great one gone mad as well and by being unwatched has led to so much damage and wrong-doing through the