hi everyone welcome back to five quote shakespeare hamlet for better arguments and essays today we're going to take a deep dive into character analysis very briefly some background the play is set in denmark in the late middle ages prince hamlet is a way studying in wittenberg when he hears the news that his father king hamlet has recently died more shockingly perhaps is that his mother gertrude has married his uncle claudius who is the dead king's brother hamlet's dealing with a lot he returns to denmark for one wedding and a sad funeral okay of course hamlet hamlet hamlet he's one of the most complex most talked about figures in all of literature and for very good reason he he he's almost impossible to nail down as soon as you think you understand him you you look at an another side of the story and you see the exact opposite about him of what you believe to be true that makes him fascinating if you've read catcher in the rye by the way um they're very very similar characters um as you will see i strongly recommend you read catcher on the right as you're studying hamlet it it'll really help you understand both anyway the most the most common uh um the most common characteristic that that we talk about when we talk about hamlet is that he's a thinker not a doer and that's at the core of the play it's a it's a revenge plot uh wherein the guy who's supposed to take revenge can't decide to take revenge he thinks too much he thinks too much he sees all sides of an issue and that leads to paralysis and hamlet is paralyzed throughout the whole play he can't shut off the part of his mind that that that second guesses uh his his original impulse okay um and that's that's actually a product of of being really smart i think um well not not only that being smart and together with these other qualities which is com compassion and sensitivity and things like that but anyway if you're really smart you can see these complexities and if you're not hard-hearted enough those complexities can make it impossible for you to do the sometimes the nasty things that are required to get ahead in life for example to become king of a country he's very clever he's very witty uh he's impatient with the stupidity of the court and that bleeds also into his arrogance which which we'll talk about in a second but he is very very clever and witty and shakespeare's kind of showing off uh a bit when he's writing uh hamlet's lines because they're they're really funny they're they're they're really funny darkly funny but funny uh he is very smart as i said uh and that does you know we could admire him for this perhaps not the dithering but we can admire him for his intelligence uh and his and the sensitive side and his compassion uh but that does there is the danger of high intelligence that he becomes uh arrogant and he is and he is and as soon as you feel again you you turn a page and you feel compassion for for hamlet's plight surrounded by these jerks and surrounded by these these foolish uh uh courtiers like polonius uh but then he does something that's that's really arrogant and you want to slap him down and say dude what are you doing uh he is dreamy and introspective uh he's better suited for the theater there's there's a long scene actually kind of a weird long scene in the middle of the play where the the traveling actors come and he's enthralled it's the first time we see him really excited to be alive and that's when the players come because he can engage his imagination he can engage his artistic side i think he's he is very much more suited to the arts than to politics which means we now have a recipe for tragedy tragedy can be loosely defined as a bad situation for the wrong guy he is the wrong man for this job he has to take revenge he has to murder someone and he's not a murderer he's too sensitive for that um i think he is compassionate and sensitive um there is evidence uh he he for example he does he's he's easily wounded but that that might also you know suggest his narcissism um but he for example he kills polonius indirectly he he kills him through a curtain uh but he cries over the dead polonius now there's an argument to be made here that he that he's faking those tears because he's he's putting on a show for everybody and that's that there's a decent argument to be made there however other evidence throughout the play as i'll mention suggest that no he really is kind of sensitive he doesn't he doesn't like this killing stuff and if he's too close to it he can't handle it he's kind of a walter white character in in that sense passive aggressive maybe um yeah he's cruel he's tyrannical and he's unforgiving uh his behavior of his mother gertrude comes from a weird place of sexual repression um and and and and and narcissism and an egotism and a a tyrannical streak he rails against the tyrannies of the world and yet he himself has this in him as well and he treats ophelia equally as horribly as as you will see again it's a complex scene and it's not 100 hamlet's fault he's he's he's in a really bad situation but the way he treats him uh ophelia is not gentlemanly and not honorably at all okay character trait number seven uh he is honest and naive at the same time that he's cunning and scheming there you go you can't nail him down he's honest and naive and that he he he is a good person who expects to see good in others there are there are several moments in the play where he he he's thinking aloud about his behavior towards other people and he wants to see the good in other people he can't he doesn't instantly think of he's not cynical a cynic is like claudius who instantly imagines that the person you're talking to is in it for themselves and out to get a a a cruel advantage he doesn't that's not his impulse his impulse is to see the best in others claudius exploits exploits this generous and open nature again there's tragedy you want to be king you want to be king you're going to have to toughen yourself up and do some pretty nasty things and and hamlet doesn't really have it in him claudius actually says in one of his soliloquies is that hamlet's good nature will allow me an in i can get him through that yeah it's quite sad but at the very same time right at the beginning of the play hamlet says i'm going to try to trick everyone into thinking that i'm insane so the whole play he's play acting and we don't sometimes when he says something we don't know if he's pretending to be insane or if he's really in a depressive state and having a really hard time mentally um so at the same time just like holding caulfield and catcher in the rye he he hates he hates qualities in other people that he deems to be ignoble and yet he has them in himself um he's an idealist and that makes him a hero the hero is supposed to be the idealist but it also it has tremendous risks um he idealizes love in women so for example he can't accept any flaws in women and and there's something about sexuality that he can't accept either that we'll talk about it on the next page but he he puts he puts his mother and he puts ophelia in this in this domed glass as if they're these pure dolls that shouldn't be solid that should be absolutely pure um it's not it's not it's not healthy his father too he he compares to the sun god apollo and apollo his father is safely dead he's up there in heaven and so he's pure now he you can't he's not walking around the kitchen in his underwear so you don't see the man's faults and so hamlet i can is safe to idealize his father which is not healthy because his father is a real complex human being he does uh um everybody around him as i mentioned my last video is is somehow corrupt and he's very very isolated but he does have one friend who of course he idealizes beyond what horatio probably deserves uh there's ample evidence that horatio is a decent guy horatio is the benvolio of hamlet if you've watched romeo and juliet benvolio was the level-headed good friend okay and horatio is that but he's not a perfect man but but hamlet of course idealizes him as such uh all of this idealism makes him uncomfortable in the messy real world he's not pragmatic in stark contrast to claudius whom we'll talk about who is very very comfortable in the messy real pragmatic world and willing to get his hands dirty to get what he wants hamlet has a hard time with that related to that is his moralism this is the side maybe we can admire him for his idealism the world the hero should look at the world and say no the world is wrong the world should be behaving like this that's that's a heroic stance we tend to hate heroes for that reason you know because they're they're they're looking at our way of looking at the world and saying you're wrong man you have to you have to make adjustments the world should be like this so let's make it like this and you're living your life and you're saying well dude you know just leave me alone i'm having fun but that makes me feel ashamed of myself because i'm not you know living up to the ideals of the hero um so that's maybe the positive side of being a hero it isolates the person but it's also something to strive for it's the ideal we strive for the ideal and all of our great religions and myths and and superheroes you know the marvel universe is all about those those idealistic characters the dark side of that is a kind of moralism um uh an absolutism okay so where there's all or nothing if you don't do it the way i believe it should be done then you are corrupt and you're going to the devil or you're or you're you're worthy of being burned at the stake or whatever it is you see um it's an an all or nothing thinking is dangerous he cannot accept the world as it is he demands proper behavior and he cannot accept weakness in anyone he rails at his mother for her weakness against connected to the sexuality same thing with ophelia um okay feel it twice himself he's filled with self-hate look at his soliloquies he can't stand the hypocrisy of the of the court and he can't stand his own weaknesses as well and and he sees in himself um weakness more than anything more than hypocrisy he sees a weakness he's kind of blind to his hypocrisy i'd say again both of these things together do make him the hero he's the one chosen to heal the corrupt wasteland go back to my previous video on theme and you'll you'll hear me talk about the wasteland extensively but again there's a dark side the hero has a dark side in the marvel universe and things like that maybe we don't see it so much in our religions we kind of project the ideal and we keep the ideal and ideal but in a complex work like um like like macbeth um we see we see the dark side of of that heroic impulse as well number eleven uh we've already talked about this a little bit uh the the puritanical streak in him uh of of the non the the you know the the all or nothing thinker that that's related to the to the to puritanism uh he's conflicted about and disgusted by low activities such as sex he is sexually repressed there's lots of evidence uh to suggest that and he can't stand claudius's drinking parties now there's the the ancient greeks personified uh the lower the lower activities of the body uh in the god bacchus dionysus the god of wine and revels and all of the wild stuff of the of the wild lower energies um the higher energies the intellect and the moral sense and the artistic sense uh the greeks personified in the god apollo whom uh hamlet compares his father to the god apollo he hamlet compares his uncle claudius to the lower gods the satyrs you know pan the god who is the friend of dionysus bacchus so the higher powers the lower powers the higher energies the lower energies hamlet has no time for the lower energies he's disgusted by all of that low stuff drinking parties reveling uh sex he can't stand it and when he sees it in other people uh he he condemns it but of course that calls him that that causes him a schizophrenic crack up because he can't we have to live within our bodies and the ancient greeks knew that as well read some of the old myths pentheus and bacchus is a great or a myth from the metamorphosis that you should read in this regard um we yeah we have to hamlet's psychological problem is is very much connected to his inability to to to live within himself as a full human that contains both the high and the low um he is the failed hero he he is the one that's chosen to stand up to a corrupt society he's but he's chosen when when he's unfit the hero can only achieve the hero's task by slaying the dragons and and releasing the society's energies if they're prepared for it and and if you have something some quality in you that that makes you worthy of being that hero hamlet doesn't have that he he's the failed hero he's the tragedy is the story of a failed hero that's what tragedy is you're chosen to to to correct things and you can't because you don't have it in you he's the wrong man for the job the same kind of thing that equals the tragedy i think his father demands maybe too much of him um i think he is a sensitive artsy kind of guy and he's not cut out at all for the for the realm of politics and hard-nosed cutthroat politics are you i mean really how many people are cut out for that a small percentage of the population and the more sociopathic you are the better you are cut out for that and hamlet's not that he's narcissistic and histrionic and he's a lot of other things but he's not sociopathic i don't think the father ever understood or accepted hamlet's sensitive nature artistic nature hamlet is not a killer he's not a politician he tries to play that game and he plays it passive aggressively which may suggest that he's simply a coward and that is that's true too i think he's cowardly in many ways and it's not just his sensitive nature and his his his nobler nature that makes him in unable to kill maybe it's just that he's a coward there's a good argument to be made there too you see you can't nail him down uh passive aggressive yes i've just talked about that he does kill indirectly he kills lots of people he wants to be the king but he can't stand up and declare his right to be king why doesn't he stand up at the beginning of the play why doesn't he stand up and say claudius no no no no i'm next in line he can't do that he doesn't have it in him there might be other political reasons for that but i i can't um i can't comment on that right now but it's curious that he doesn't stand up more forthrightly and say no i i deserve to be king because i'm the son uh he can't declare his right by standing up to claudius this results in if you can't voice what you truly believe to be your rights then it just sours within you it becomes it turns into resentment bitterness and then this passive aggressive snakey sneaky weaselly kind of hypocrisy okay and that's very unattractive in in hamlet and we do see that okay as we've suggested he is self-hating he does have an inferiority complex and i think this comes from two places i think it comes from an overly critical domineering father as i said for hamlet his father is this god-like figure this perfect being in the sky looking down and judging him okay and when you can't live up to that ideal that he set for him that hamlet has now set for himself through the father's expectations uh he he turns into self-hate i'm not like my father i'm nev i'll never be this good and i think it it it's it really it's real it comes from that influence it never comes only from that influence because if you had a different character if if someone with different genetics had been born in hamlet's situation he might have stood up and said okay dad yeah i'll do it i'll go kill claudius and i'll become a king boom boom boom it's done hamlet's now king but but hamlet's genetics hammer's personality we do have biological personalities they were born into us and and i think he is he he's this artsy quiet kind of you know he should have been he should have been a great actor he should have been a playwright he should have been like shakespeare himself instead of this cut throat politician so so that wrong fit he's a square peg trying to fit himself into a round hole his father initiated that and he's internalized that and he's trying to do it and that leads to the self-hate um yeah this is really interesting stuff shakespeare was a genius psychologist he really really was um he is alienated he i think i mentioned this before in my previous video as well he has no peers at all uh nobody at court he's completely alone and that exacerbates all of the other mental problems that he has if if you've got mental issues if you've got depression which he does he's clinically depressed obviously uh he's bipolar manic depressive probably obviously yes he's got he's got narcissistic personality disorder he's got histrionic personality disorder and borderline personality disorder look these up i can't go into detail with these but he does have a fragile sense of self he's indecisive that's that's another uh uh symptom of of of clinical depression and anxiety you can't you can't make decisions well that whole play is built around his inability to make a decision strong mood swings he's a drama queen that's the histrionic and narcissism um he creates constant attention there's the ophelia's grave scene when everyone's mourning the death of ophelia and uh laertes the brother of ophelia is mourning his sister's death and hamlet kind of muscles elbows his way into the scene and says who are you to mourn ophelia i'm the one who loved her i mean what is that it's absolute it's absolute insanity it's absolute uh narcissism and histrionic personality disorder so have a look at that stuff it's almost a clinical case study for a lot of these problems um and again i think a lot of this is caused by the overly critical father and and the genetics don't leave out the genetics as well it's not all the father's fault um yeah so if you are if you do suffer from all of these mental problems and you are alienated it just exacerbates it and exacerbates it and and leaves no root out dc and that's part of the tragedy of this is that he is so isolated he has no fear no peers except for horatio as i've talked about but that's only that's only one guy he's intellectually he's not surrounded by his intellectual peers so he doesn't have stimulating conversations he's not intellect he's not intellectually stimulated by the theater crowd which is what he really really wants to be involved in the arts he wants to be involved in this but he's surrounded by all these politician guys who are thinking of politics all the time did you see it it's a strain it's a constant strain that adds to his problems which allows us forces us as viewers to have sympathy form even though all of these other things are driving us crazy it's like hamlet come on smarten up man we still have to have sympathy for him that's what shakespeare does we have sympathy for macbeth a mass murderer we have sympathy for both romeo and juliet who are really irritating characters well romeo is more irritated than juliet but we there's you can never nail them down they're always a mix they provoke a mixture of of of responses in the audience because they're real humans that's how real humans behave we're complex crazy creatures he's morally isolated he's the only one that sees uh or in his mind this is kind of twisted he's the only but in his own mind he's the only one that has moral answers and a moral way of living a properly moral way of living he is the hero in the wasteland the wasteland is the wasteland there's nothing there's no sustenance at all all energies are being sucked out of all individuals in a wasteland and hamlets alone with no mentors no mentors no mentors go find a hero's quest somewhere go find a marvel movie where there's zero mentors what happened to the hero if there's no mentors it's not good it's not good claudius is a little less complex than hamlet just simply because he's not he's he's not the protagonist he's the antagonist uh but shakespeare does built build into his character uh some complexity as well as we've mentioned he is the realist he's the staunch realist he looks at the world and he says this is how it works okay fine i'm up to the game let's do this and he rises to the top he's the king that's what it takes he's a good political thinker very very self-serving he's comfortable in the real world he's pragmatic and he's ruthless all the things that hamlet is not or is but passively aggressively because he's too cowardly to be these things i don't know you could make you could build a case for for for that as well as i mentioned he is the cynic he understands and he benefits from the corrupt corruption of the world he accepts it okay he sees in hamlet a weakness and he goes and he exploits it uh he's the exact opposite he's the doer not the thinker hamlet is the thinker not the doer he sees one side of an issue issue mostly and he takes action he sees he murders his brother he murders he sees his brother he sees his brother sleeping in the garden he says oh here's an opportunity boom he takes the opportunity the brother's dead and he's the king and he's married to the brother's wife wow there's a guy who can get things done he's a monster psychopath sociopath but he gets things done the exact opposite of of hamlet now there is a moment there's there's the famous scene where he's actually repenting he's praying to god in his own thoughts there's a soliloquy of his where he is repenting um uh but so we so we shakespeare builds some sympathy into the character uh um but but and at the end of the day he still comes out and he says no no i'm still in this real world and i'm gonna still keep playing the game he's the ultimate survivor he's very selfish he's willing to harm others to preserve himself he's like the trapped rat and he'll do whatever it takes and hamlet is starting to close in on him and he senses that and he takes a vicious attack at hamlet and and you'll see what happens or you have seen what happens um i think now now the question is again shakespeare being the great psychologist that he is we can ask ourselves where does this come from uh i as and as i mentioned before i'm convinced there's a lot of genetics involved he's he's he's got a toughness that he's born with that's not not that sensitive nature but on top of that there's probably the environment that he was raised in i think uh that he kills his other older brother out of jealousy out of an inferiority complex out of emotional pain at being the lesser of the two sons he's the second son and the first son as we will see here maybe i should talk about him first he is portrayed by everyone as a pretty decent king i think he's overbearing at the same time so if you're raised if your older brother is this guy do you see what i'm saying and you're the junior younger brother you you can very easily if you have a weak if you have well whatever personality type you are i don't know you can very easily become a cane and murder your brother abel out of jealousy loki you might know the loki and thor story the same thing i think he's loki and i think he's thor thor is too perfect in in in the earlier marvel comics he's he's got everything and so the younger the second son becomes jealous i think i think that's part of it um now we don't quite know sorry i didn't mean to highlight that one i don't quite know if he's the hedonist the sensualist um there's there's reports that uh hamlet reports that there's a lot of drinking and partying and and this debauchery going on in denmark uh initiated by this guy now but that's hamlet and hamlet as we've seen is puritanical and he's kind of he's kind of he's a stuffed she's a bit of a stuffed shirt right so we're not quite sure if this this guy just likes to have a good time and why the hell not right or whether indeed denmark has become debauched that's not quite clear okay king hamlet by all accounts he's a loving husband but that's according to hamlet and that's according to himself so that's those are unrel unreliable reports we do not hear really from gertrude at all she she's a very weak character we're going to talk about her in a second uh she's she's a weakly portrayed woman um which doesn't make shakespeare misogynistic there's lots of other plays that demonstrate shakespeare's admiration for very strong women so it but in this play the women are pretty pathetic to be totally honest um so we don't know we don't know if again hamlet idealizes the father as the sun god so we don't quite know whether to believe that or not but we do have accounts that he was a decent ruler horatio agrees with hamlet uh regarding his his his decency as a king that might be true um puritanical we don't quite know uh does hamlet inherit his puritanism from from the father uh is gertrude unhappy with her sex life with the with her husband and therefore she very willingly goes to you know uh to to the to the maybe the the raunchier the the sexier younger brother i we don't we don't we don't quite know but there there's he he's pretty disgusted by the fact that his brother's sleeping with his wife as well but but at the same time who wouldn't be do you see it it's when he speaks from beyond the grave it's kind of expected as i mentioned before i think he's overbearing i think he's too perfect i think he's too arrogant and expects too much of the sun he expects too much from the sun doesn't understand his son he casts a long shadow like thor and maybe that's a fault in him maybe it's not all poor old claudius the murderer's fault maybe he is overbearing his forcefulness makes younger brother jealous perhaps so anyway that's that's kind of what we know about king hamlet as i've mentioned we don't we don't learn much from gertrude she doesn't speak very much at all in the play and when she does she's she's she comes across as kind of stupid um she she and passive she seems to agree with both hamlet and claudius as soon as when hamlet's yelling at her she agrees okay yeah fine fine i won't go to bed with claudius anymore because it is disgusting you're right and then in the very next scene she's chatting with claudius about you know normal kind of things as if nothing ever happened so so she's i don't know if she's a poorly drawn character maybe shakespeare spends too much time on hamlet's soliloquies there's four really long ones that could have been probably cut back there's a lot of flaws with the play and a lot of critics have pointed it out and and one of the one of the i would i would like to get more into gertrude's head to be honest and ophelia's as well but you know it's a four-hour play and shakespeare in in hamlet there's such a rich character in the character of hamlet that there's not much time for development of other characters perhaps um if you want strong women look at lady macbeth if you want strong women look at julia juliet just go watch my other videos on on on romeo and juliet juliet is a really tough tough cookie smart tube is she stupid she doesn't say very much maybe she is uh is she the edible mother is she this consuming edible mother the filmmakers of the david tennant version seem to think so there's this hint in this screenshot here that she's yeah she's gotta hold maybe an unhealthy hold over her son um is she unfaithful to king hamlet were was she having an affair with with claudius before claudius murdered king hamlet maybe there's no real evidence for it but i mean human nature we can kind of put two and two together and maybe that's the case she marries the brother two months i didn't mention that yet two months two months after her husband dies she marries the husband's brother kind of weird and that by the way i should have mentioned in relation to hamlet's psychological problems that's part of his problem as well that's part of why he's disgusted with his mother is because only two months after uh her husband dies she's married the brother is she now this is interesting is she in fact a lady macbeth character is she cunning and pragmatic and ambitious can is she able to love whoever's going to make her queen she's determined to get to the top and so okay if king hamlet was the way to the top she'll take it if the brother is the way to the top i'll take that too do you see what i mean she very well may be polonius is a bit of a one-dimensional character he's kind of easy to understand he's the the chief chief advisor to the kings of denmark he's a family friend of the hamlets he's the father of ophelia and laertes in that regard he's he's the bully father he's pompous self-important egotistical he's a caricature of all the worst aspects of a courtyard courtier's the guy who hangs around the king and he's supposed to be an advisor but he's all puffed puffed up with himself loves the sound of his own voice and won't shut up and incredibly hypocritical all of the advice that he spews he spews some wonderful advice beautiful poetry wonderful advice from from the father to the son advice which is one of the major themes of the whole play the father-son relationships wonderful advice and he follows none of his own advice absolutely none of it so so this this this blowhard who doesn't who loves the sound of his own voice but doesn't even listen to his own voice he's autocratic and dictatorial he bullies mercilessly his children micromanaging is what we would say today if shakespeare didn't have that word but he would he might tries to micromanage his children's lives right down to the their love lives as you'll see what he does to poor ophelia um he's foolish uh he's he's made to he's made to be the fool hamlet's definitely the superior intellect and hamlet is teasing him and mocking him and doing all these uh all this shenanigans to make a fool of them and and polonius is absolutely oblivious to it and this particular version the david tennant version uh draws that out more than some other versions the other version this version was a 1996 kenneth branic's version and in this version polonius is more sinister than he is foolish in this version he's more foolish than he is sinister although again there's a at least a 70 40 30 70 whatever ratio between sinister sinisterism sincereness and uh and and foolishness he's a cynic he does he projects onto other people he he assumes the worst in other people he sees his daughter and assumes the worst that she's going to make that she's stupid and is going to make a bad choice in hamlet uh he he he assumes that the brother that his that his son is not going to know how to handle himself when he's away in paris studying so and and and uh yeah so he's that kind of cynical person uh and he he is he is i guess yeah okay there is the complexity that we see in him is in that great advice he has tremendous insights but as soon as he has those insights he undercuts himself by not following through with his own advice do you see what i'm saying um so so maybe there's the complexity we don't know how to handle him is he smarter or is he wise a lot of the famous quotes like clothes the clothes make the man that's a paraphrase of something that polonius says and there's a there's a bit of truth to that you know there's there's neither a a lender nor a borrower b okay there's that's polonius's truths but again he doesn't he doesn't follow that advice in himself so yeah okay he is he is a complex character as i mentioned ophelia is is a fairly i'm not i'm not sure it's safe to say that she's a poorly drawn character she she's maybe a well-drawn character of a weak type of person a weak a weak type of woman she's the daughter of polonius and as i mentioned she's bullied mercilessly she's micromanaged by polonius she's hamlet's hamlet's girlfriend obviously she is passive she's very meek she obeys the father in everything absolutely everything she's the exact opposite of the strong-willed juliet you want a strong character go look at juliet go look at lady macbeth they're wonderfully wonderful portraits of of certain types of women she's another type of woman who is meek and passive so it's not evidence that shakespeare's misogynist it's just that shakespeare has a keen eye for certain types of people and ophelia happens to be this type of woman do you see a young young young woman she sensitive naive and sheltered i think so i think she's she's kind of like she was raised in a bubble in the aristocracy and she's very naive about the world she's very easily upset she's incapable of repel repelling manipulations from the father unlike juliet uh or from or from hamlet i should say she unlike juliet who can who can take it who can take it and see and see manipulations for what they are and she takes action not so not so ophelia do you see if if hamlet if we compare hamlet to romeo um and and ophelia to to juliet they're almost the exact opposites and romeo and juliet they're very tough young people these people are not they're they're they're it's on it's you see there's there's two versions of of of of of of young people of personalities he's a great psychologist he really is i like this so this is this is quite interesting and this is where we can find hope she's quietly spirited um she's and she's not stupid when when her brother is lecturing her you know the brother's going away to back to paris and she's he's lecturing his younger daughter sister about you know make sure you do this make sure you do that and don't don't don't get too close to hamlet and giving her all this advice don't have sex with hamlet is what she's what what laerte says she calls him out she calls him says okay fine well you give me that advice but don't you follow your own advice when you're in paris don't be a libertine and and and have your dalliances and and get into trouble in paris and and it's kind of it's kind of a joke but it's that it's a quiet spiritedness she's not stupid and there's a bit of spirit that wants to make itself felt and that makes it all the more pathetic all the sadder when that spirit gets crushed when she allows herself to get crushed do you see what i mean because ultimately comes it comes down to her in the same way that we can fault hamlet for being unheroic we can fault her for not being heroic either do you see although both of them are up against overwhelming odds and their genetics perhaps and their environment are all conspiring against them she eventually does go insane of course she cracks to the pressure and we can say it's caused by her father's death so her father dies and she feels grief for that but probably also conflicting emotions her boyfriend's madness and rejection so hamlet pretends to be insane and rails at her and calls her you know a basically and rejects her and therefore she goes insane well the question is is that a lame reason to go insane is she just a pathetic weak character that shakespeare and shakespeare doesn't understand women at all i don't i don't think so i think again her genetics are probably quite sensitive she might be born with a very sensitive nervous system and the accumulated anxiety stress and depression caused by the overwhelming tricks of the world that's a quote in there it's a it's a nasty world that these people are born into and and if you're if you're surrounded by this stuff day after day after day after day and it goes on for your whole life she can very easily slip into a depression and compress a depression can lead to um to to to a psychosis as well extreme depression and anxiety can morph into a psychosis where you can start you know you lose touch of reality which is what happens to her so i think there's some basis in reality and it's not understandable and she's not just a lame character she i think there is more to her than simply oh she's just this wilting flower that shakespeare conveniently stuck into the plot um i don't think so i think i think i think there's there's a there's a reality behind what happens to her it's exaggerated and it's speed it's too speedy it happens too quickly uh but that's because it's drama and drama has to be an exaggerated form of things that happen in real life laertes as i said is the son of polonius and um the the brother of ophelia and he's a student in paris and he disappears for most of the play at the beginning we see him a bit when he's when he's didactically bossing around his sister and telling her how to behave in relation to hamlet which is actually kind of excusable because he is warning his his sister he knows his sister loves hamlet but he knows also that her heart's going to get broken because hamlet can't marry her because she's not the proper s you know she's not the noble class that she has to be in order to marry a king who's going to be hamlet in the future so at the same time he's bossy and irritating and if you're a woman watching hamlet you say dude shut up it's none of your business at the same time it's a loving brother warning her daughter about getting her heart broken so again there's a complexity as well but he is he set up mostly as a foil for for hamlet hamlet is the thinker not the doer laertes is the doer not the thinker now so is claudius but he's not as odious as claudius by by by any stretch there's a lot more there's a lot more of a moral sense that we get with with laertes we actually like him he's more or less a likable character except perhaps about that bossiness he's kind of a stuffed shirt in that regard he himself is totally dominated by his father very much like ophelia very much like ophelia he he can't say no to his father and and this actor does a great job of of portraying how look at look at the deer in the headlights all of these characters all of these characters all the young people in this play are deer caught in the headlights look at them the forces rail ranged against them are two are too great for them to handle and i think laertes is part of that as well he's the opposite of counterpart of hamlet as i said he he he is the doer though he is the doer when he's put to the challenge he says okay i'm going to get my revenge i'm going to do it now. so that's what he says and then he carries it through and at the last moment he has a hamlet-esque kind of pullback it says i almost regret doing this as if he's as if he senses that what he's doing is is simply out of rage and i don't know if he senses that he's being manipulated by claudia by claudius he is being manipulated by claudius claudius sees a way to manipulate him because he's had his father killed and claudius comes in and says hamlet killed your father get revenge and that's claudius claudius's way of getting hamlet out of his way so he he's manipulated by by forces greater than him as well and i don't think he's i don't think he i don't i think he believes how claudius to the end but he has a little pang of regret when he's about to kill um hamlet again a somewhat complex character the easiest way to think of him is as a foil for hamlet he is more of a doer than hamlet is but he again he's a young person caught in the headlights caught the deer the young deer caught in the headlights now of all the characters i think horatio is indeed quite quite flat he's quite one-dimensional all we know about him he's certainly not he's a human being so that he has a backstory but he just all he in the play he's just depicted as a good bro that's it he's hamlet's school friend from wittenberg he's the character for he is the benvolio he's the rational calm mind he's not passion slave that's what hamlet says and that that is the exact opposite because hamlet is indeed passion slave he's as i mentioned he's got these terrible mood swings um due to his his personality and and mental illness um he's quite respected the guards calling him to explain the ghost when there's when the ghost appears on the on the battlements uh the guards say oh there's a smart guy there's a scholar around we can ask him what's going on he's he's he's depicted as loyal he's he's hamlet's only trusted confidant he tells uh hamlet tells her horatio everything i call him benvolio because they're kind of the same character he's the ideal man again but that's an exaggerated view we get hamlet's view of him he's the ideal man um but he is he's set up as as as the character foil um for for for hamlet's passionate um he's just basically a good guy pearl guildenstern and rosin krantz or rozenkrantz and guildenstern again two more young deer in the headlights um they're trapped they're hamlet school childhood friends and they're called back to court by claudius and gertrude to try to uh comfort ostensibly to comfort hamlet but it turns out to be a spy mission and and hamlet figures that out their reluctant spies they're caught in in an impossible situation can you imagine being summoned to court by the king no less and ask to spy on your on your buddy and report back to the king what are you going to do say no it's really really tough perhaps they should have if the if they had if they were truly heroic characters and nobody in this play is heroic nobody if they were truly heroic characters they might have said no no we're not going to spy on our friend hamlet but they do they're summoned by claudius to watch hamlet they are disloyal they are deceptive again i we do have to have sympathy for them because they're in a possible situation this is a good picture like they're looking at each other and saying dude what what what what do we do here what do we do hamlet's acting crazy we have to somehow kind of make them feel better but at the same time spy on them it's a terrible terrible situation it's the fault of the parents parental interference go back to my theme video it's parental interference theme the no mentors for these young people the exact opposite of mentors their their self the adults the the people who should be mentors in this play are self-serving creeps is what they are and they're you they're tyrants they're using the young people for their own for their own benefit um he's a character for all kind these guys are character falls perhaps for horatio but horatio wasn't asked to spy so horatio's kind of got he got off easy because he wasn't they he wasn't put in the same situation that these guys were put in it'd be interesting to see how horatio would behave i suspect he would behave nobly i suspect maybe he would just leave court instead of instead of instead of that now would claudia say will kill you if you don't spy i don't know um character devices they're used to intensify hamlets isolation depression and paranoia yeah you really feel it you really feel it uh through shakespeare has to make us feel sympathy for hamlet's isolation and and and that loneliness and his paranoia and these are it's a brilliant plot technique you really feel it you right from the beginning you feel it with the family and all that stuff and then the bros come in and he has he's excited to see his friends at first he's legitimately excited to see his friends but he suspects why they've come back and then that creeps in and that creeps in and then you see his his bitterness and his anger when he he he he calls these guys out in a really brutal emotionally brutal scene um yeah it it's a great technique to show us how how isolated hamlet is so rosencrantz and guildenstern okay that was five quote shakespeare hamlet character analysis come back for my next video when we get into the scene by scene breakdown where i'll take each scene and pull out five important quotes that i think will be very useful for you um to make your own arguments about the play and to find evidence for things we've been talking about in these last two videos and and uh yeah and to use them in your essays so come back thanks for watching