In the play Hamlet, King Claudius is Hamlet’s uncle , but gets married to Hamlet’s mother, Queen Gertrude, making him king of Denmark after the death of his brother, King Hamlet, who was Hamlet’s father and later Claudius becomes Hamlet’s stepfather. In the play, Claudius does manage to get what he wants by being cautious and calculative of his actions, but at the same time he does show guilt for killing his brother and shows love to Queen Gertrude. This sudden marriage between Claudius and Gertrude happened in less than two months after Hamlet’s father’s death. A downfall that King Claudius has is that he gets driven by his certain appetites for all the power he can get. King Claudius is important to this play because not only does he play is the antagonist of Hamlet, but we also get to see how Claudius manipulates people to join his side and do the dirty work for him, which would be to kill Hamlet. As he makes his manipulative actions, Claudius tries to hide Hamlet from the truth of the murder so that he can remain in power for as long as possible, at any costs possible. This is important to the play because we get to see how Claudius proves his intentions …show more content…
This change in character occurs because as Hamlet begins to reveal hints about him knowing about the murder of his father, Claudius seems to be in more pressure due to the possibility that he would get caught in front of the people of Denmark. This creates a problem for Claudius because since he would get an idea that Hamlet knows already of the situation that Claudius created, Hamlet would end up killing him or hurt him in any way, which would ruin the reputation for both Hamlet and Claudius himself if they were to go to extreme measures. Although he is aware of the consequences, Claudius manages to get Laertes on his side to fulfill his desire to get Hamlet out of the way so that he could remain as King of