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 points to the identity of Shakespeare's dead son Hamnet and the name 'Hamlet'. "Just as "Hamlet" deals with the relation of a son to his parents", Freud concludes, "so "Macbeth" (written at approximately the same period) is concerned with the subject of childlessness". Having made these suggestions, however, Freud offers a caveat: he has unpacked only "one" of the many motives and impulses operating in the author's mind, albeit, Freud claims, one that operates from "the deepest layer". Later in the same book, having used psychoanalysis to explain "Hamlet", Freud uses Hamlet to explain the nature of dreams: in disguising