Character Analysis of Hamlet Anonymous

William Shakespeare's Hamlet (1600-01), regarded by many scholars and critics as his finest play, is based on the story of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, which first appeared in the Historia Danica, a Latin text by the twelfth-century historian Saxo Grammaticus. The main protagonist, being Hamlet, the so-called "Dark Prince" of Shakespearean tragedy, is an extremely complex man with a great depth of personality who "suffers from insecurity and a sense of the absurd. . . and as a man and a revenger, shifts from an external struggle for vengeance to an internal one" (McConnell, Internet).

As a person, Hamlet experiences a wide range of emotions linked with specific events, such as being betrayed by his friends and family which causes him much grief and despair that eventually leads to a state of utter melancholy. As an emotional young man, Hamlet becomes greatly disillusioned by the incestuous marriage of his mother Gertrude to Claudius, the present king of Denmark, and grieves over his father's untimely death. He also views his own life with much disgust and disappointment and likens it to an "unweeded garden" full of pitfalls and weariness. Upon the realization that his father was murdered by...