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 be analyzed through the text. He took the view that Hamlet's madness merely disguised the truth in the same way dreams disguise unconscious realities. He also famously saw Hamlet's struggles as a representation of the Oedipus complex. In Freud's view, Hamlet is torn largely because he has repressed sexual desire for his mother, which is being acted out by and challenged by Claudius. Later critics of the century, such as T. S. Eliot in his noted essay "Hamlet and His Problems", downplayed such psychological emphasis of the play, and instead used other methods to read characters in the play, focusing