Critical approaches to Hamlet amuse their rulers with their inventive language. Osric and Polonius seem to especially respect this suggestion. Claudius' speech is full of rhetorical figures, as is Hamlet's and, at times, Ophelia's, while Horatio, the guards, and the gravediggers use simpler methods of speech. Claudius demonstrates an authoritative control over the language of a King, referring to himself in the first person plural, and using anaphora mixed with metaphor that hearkens back to Greek political speeches. Hamlet seems the most educated in rhetoric of all the characters, using anaphora, as the king does, but also asyndeton and highly developed metaphors, while at
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