Characters in Hamlet Characters in Hamlet What follows is an overview of the main characters in William Shakespeare's "Hamlet", followed by a list and summary of the minor characters from the play. Three different early versions of the play survive: known as the First Quarto ("Q1"), Second Quarto ("Q2"), and First Folio ("F1"), each has lines—and even scenes—missing in the others, and some character names vary. Marcellus, Bernardo (or Barnardo) and Francisco are sentries at Elsinore. Francisco gives up his watch to Bernardo in the opening of the play, and it is Bernardo and Marcellus, who first alert Horatio to the appearance of
Characters of Shakespear's Plays is the predominant feeling of the mind." A focal point of Hazlitt's account of "Troilus and Cressida" is a comparison of the characterisation in this play and that in Chaucer's poem "Troilus and Criseyde" (one of Shakespeare's sources). Chaucer's characters are full and well developed; but Chaucer unfolded each character in itself, one at a time. Shakespeare displayed characters as they see themselves as well as how others see them, and showed the effects each has on the others. Shakespeare's characters were so distinctive that it is as if each were expressed by a distinct "faculty" of his mind; and,