Osric
Osric is the play's final comic figure and a precise satirical portrait of the hollow courtier — a man of pure form without substance, whose verbal compliance with everything Hamlet says reveals the court's essential emptiness. He also carries the plot function of delivering the fencing match invitation that will precipitate the catastrophe of Act V.
Appears In
Biography
Osric is a young courtier who arrives in Act V Scene 2 as Claudius's messenger, tasked with conveying to Hamlet the elaborate terms of the fencing match with Laertes. He is precisely the kind of courtier that the previous four acts of corruption have been breeding: all surface, no substance, a man whose vocabulary inflates in proportion to his lack of content.
Hamlet disposes of him with devastating ease — forcing Osric to agree that it is hot, then cold, then temperate, within three exchanges — and what emerges is both a comic routine and something sharper: the demonstration that this is the court's current product, the man who will thrive when everyone who thinks and feels has been destroyed. Horatio's comment — 'He did comply, sir, with his dug before he sucked it' — places Osric in a long tradition of men born courtiers, without any other formation.
Osric is a small character who carries a large function: he is the court's final face, the last representative of Elsinore's values before the bloodbath that follows. His obsequious pliability is the play's last joke on the world Claudius built — a world that survives its destruction only in Osric, who will very likely attach himself to Fortinbras with the same devoted agreeableness he brought to the Danish court.
Motivation
Osric is motivated entirely by the need to please whoever is currently in authority. He has no private views on anything, which is why Hamlet can make him agree that the weather is simultaneously hot, cold, and mild. His service to Claudius is not loyalty but professional habit.
Personality
Osric is the play's fop — a man of elaborate language and zero conviction, whose pliability is so total that it becomes its own comedy. His role is not to be taken seriously but to be seen through, which Hamlet does instantly and with visible pleasure. He is the world of Elsinore reduced to its most decorative and most hollow form.