Characters in Hamlet He is the courtier sent by Claudius to invite Hamlet to participate in the duel with Laertes. (This character is called "Ostricke" in the Second Quarto.) Osric, as well as Polonius, attempts to engage with Hamlet in the elaborate, witty discourse, fully consistent with Baldassare Castiglione's 1528 work, "The Courtier". This work outlines several courtly rules, specifically advising royal retainers to amuse their masters with inventive language. The Players are a company of actors who arrive at Elsinore Castle. Friends of Hamlet, they had earlier performed in "the city" (presumably Copenhagen), but faced stiff competition from boy performers, so they
Critical approaches to Hamlet questions, which guided the audience to ponder and grow intellectually. At around the turn of the 20th century, two writers, A. C. Bradley and Sigmund Freud, developed ideas which built on the past and greatly affected the future of "Hamlet" criticism. Bradley held the view that Hamlet should be studied as one would study a real person: piecing together his consciousness from the clues given in the play. His explanation of Hamlet's delay was one of a deep "melancholy" which grew from a growing disappointment in his mother. Freud also viewed Hamlet as a real person: one whose psyche could