Claudius
The primary antagonist of the play and the source of its central crime. Claudius's murder of his brother is the act from which everything else follows. He represents corrupted authority — the king who holds power through violence rather than right — and the moral rot that always spreads outward from a usurped throne.
Appears In
Biography
Claudius is the King of Denmark, having seized the throne after secretly poisoning his own brother — the late King Hamlet — and swiftly marrying the widowed queen, Gertrude. He is an adroit politician and a persuasive orator: the court of Elsinore has accepted his succession without visible resistance.
Behind the composed, magnanimous exterior lies a man corroded by guilt. He knows what he has done, and the knowledge sits in him like a splinter he cannot reach. His prayer scene in Act III is one of the play's most startling confessions: the villain alone with a conscience he cannot silence.
In Act III Scene I, it is Claudius who has arranged the covert observation of Hamlet's meeting with Ophelia. His response reveals the calculating intelligence that keeps him one step ahead of everyone except, eventually, Hamlet himself.
Motivation
Claudius is driven by the desire to keep what he has taken: the crown, the queen, and his life. His tragedy is a man who committed a crime of passion and now must live as a cold-blooded politician to protect it.
Personality
Claudius is a consummate courtier: persuasive, measured, and politically astute. His charm is entirely real, which makes his villainy more unsettling than simple cruelty would be. Unlike Shakespeare's more theatrical villains, Claudius does not revel in evil — he is a man who wanted something badly enough to commit a terrible act, and now lives with the consequence.