Laertes (Hamlet) match begins, Hamlet apologises publicly to Laertes for the wrongs he has dealt him. Laertes accepts the apology, so he says, but he proceeds with the scheme to kill Hamlet (though after Gertrude drinks the poisoned drink he expresses having an attack of conscience). Hamlet is eventually wounded with the poisoned sword. Then, in a scuffle, the swords are switched. Hamlet wounds Laertes with his own poisoned blade, and Laertes then falls as well. Only then does he truly seem to feel guilty, for he tells Osric he has been "justly killed" with his own treachery. As he lies dying,
Critical approaches to Hamlet Hamlet is a "pathologically irresolute character". He rejects both, citing the evidence that the play presents of Hamlet's ability to take action: his impulsive murder of Polonius and his Machiavellian murder of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Instead, Freud argues, Hamlet's inhibition against taking vengeance on Claudius has an unconscious origin. In an anticipation of his later theories of the Oedipus complex, Freud suggests that Claudius has shown Hamlet "the repressed wishes of his own childhood realized" (his desire to kill his father and take his father's place with his mother). Confronted with this image of his own repressed desires, Hamlet responds