William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a play full of sorrow and excitement, its full
of gore and incest. The play has a large amount of betrayal and the person
supplying most of that is Claudius, the king and Hamlets uncle. Claudius is
cold-hearted, full of hate, and a coward. He is the king but, the ironic thing
about that is he should not be and as Hamlet is the prince, the death of his
father should put him at the throne. The play starts off with a tense setting,
as the guards have seen a ghost that looks like the old king or Hamlets father
who they believed had died of a snake bite. This is the showing of the first
cruel deed Claudius has done, the reader does not know yet but Claudius is the
reason that King Hamlet dies. The reader knows that it is Claudius when Hamlet
encounters the ghost and the ghost tells Hamlet, “Thus I was sleeping, by a
brothers hand, of life, at crown, of queen, at once dispatch’d.” The meaning
of the ghost’s quote is that he is telling Hamlet that Claudius killed him
when he was asleep and that he took his crown and his queen. This is the first
time the reader really knows that Claudius is cold-hearted and ruthless. After
Hamlet heard this, he held a play where the murder of his father is reacted in a
scene, that Hamlet himself designed. The purpose of this was to see Claudius’s
reaction to the scene to prove if Claudius is the real murderer or not. After
Claudius sees the play he storms out of the stage scared and surprised. Claudius
then prays to heaven for forgiveness of his sins since he knows that Hamlet has
figured out what he has done, he does this so he will not get sent to hell.
Claudius says, “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without
thoughts never to heaven go.” He is praying for forgiveness but he is not
sorry, he just doesn’t want to get sent to hell and that is what the quote is
saying, since he is not sorry his words remain below, or on Earth. This further
proves how cold-hearted Claudius is, he has killed his brother, taken his crown,
taken his wife, has been discovered, and he still does not feel guilty at all
about what he has done. Claudius now knows that Hamlet has figured him out and
what he has done, so Claudius plans to send Hamlet away to England with a note
for the king of England to have Hamlet killed. Hamlet on the way to England also
figures out this plan of Claudius’s and he returns to Holland on a pirate ship
and Rosencratz and Guilldenstern are the ones that are killed in England.
Claudius again showing his hatred wants Hamlet dead badly and he tells Laertes,
the son of Polonius a man that Hamlet killed earlier in the play, that he and
Hamlet will have a jousting match. He then said, “When in your motion you are
hot and dry, -As make your bouts more violent to have prepar’d him a chalice
fort the nonce, escape your venom’d struck, our purpose may hold there” Here
there is more of Claudius’s ruthless personality, he is going to have Laertes
venom his sword and if by any chance he does not get Hamlet Claudius will have a
cup with poison for Hamlet to drink. The end is the tragedy of the play, after
Gertrude, Hamlets mother, drinks the poison instead of Hamlet she dies. Then
Laertes hits Hamlet with the poisoned swords, both of their swords fall and
Hamlet picks up Laertes’s sword and he hits Laertes with it. Laertes the dies,
but before he dies he tells Hamlet that Claudius is the one behind all this. So
in the end it is Claudius’s fault that everyone is dead and he gets what he
richly deserved, a sword in the stomach.