122. Claudius is such a manipulate jerk.

This essay by Nicholas J. Bonnet is a pretty good breakdown of Claudius…he is one of my favorite characters. Not because he isn’t (basically) an evil person – and generally I am not really a fan of the evil characters – but because there are just so many ways to play him. Adam and I spent a long time just talking about him, because, in our opinions, the way that Claudius is played is possibly even more important than how Hamlet is played. Is Claudius a simply evil man with no conscious? Or is he a guy who starts out that way and ends up with his guilt starting to get the better of him? Is he power-thirsty and views Gertrude as an added bonus, or was she a big target all along? There are dozens of ways to play Claudius, just as there are dozens of ways to play almost all of Shakespeare’s characters. That’s the beauty of it all.