The essay above is In Defense of Hamlet's King Claudius, a breakdown of the allegations made by Hamlet against his uncle and a critical perspective on the amount of credence that can be given to them in the context of the play. The cumulative point of the writing is that the grand majority of Hamlet's grievances against Claudius are either totally unsupported by the rest of the text or rendered irrelevant by the politics / customs of the time. The only acts he committed that were truly wrong were fratricide and the attempted assassination of prince Hamlet, the motives behind the latter being even more tangled than those behind the former -- if Claudius had had his way, Hamlet would have been an opportunity for redemption rather than an opportunity for further malevolence. I felt this essay was valuable because it gave an objective perspective on Claudius as a full character, rather than a flat villain, and also illuminated the motives behind many of Claudius' actions; the expedited marriage to Gertrude was in the interest of maintaining the political stability of Denmark more so than indulgent sexuality, and after the murder of King Hamlet he does nothing untoward with his new position of power -- even the stalking of prince Hamlet is a far more benevolent act than that of most any other one of Shakespeare's true villains.
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