Purposes of Hamlet's Interactions With Other Characters

Hamlet's interactions with the other characters in Shakespeare's play not only move the action forward but display the many aspects of his character and the reasoning behind his actions. In his initial scene with his mother, for example, Hamlet shows that he is aware that there is a degree of guilt on Gertrude's part, but he reacts with extreme caution and resorts to irony rather than to confrontation.

The relationship with his mother is set up as being somewhat off-center. In Gertrude's first words to Hamlet she asks him to give up his dark clothing and to "let [his] eye look like a friend on Denmark" (1,ii,69). Though she does not explicitly mention that she is asking him to give up the signs of his mourning, she continues by assuring him that death comes to everyone and that his father's passing is a natural event. There is, however, a trace of Gertrude's guilt showing through her anxiousness to have her son surrender his grief. She had, of course, given up mourning through her quick marriage to Claudius and by talking to Hamlet as though he was a child--telling him to change his clothes, be nice to his step-father, and that death is inevitable--she is trying to explain his symptoms of grief by some flaw in him rather than in the situation.

But Hamlet's answers are ironic. He says, "Ay, madam, it is common" in regard to death and, in response to her request to know "why seems it so particular with you," lectures her on the nature of genuine grief (1,ii,74; 1,ii,7

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interaction with Ophelia in the next act. He is strikingly brutal to her and displays his disordered mind's reaction to the problem of his mother's infidelity by attacking Ophelia's chastity. He looks on her as just another woman and, because of his mother's behavior, he refuses to see good in any woman. As he asks her questions about her "honesty," to which he knows the answers, she enters into the conversation as though it made sense. She answers his ranting talk of honesty and beauty with a similar riddling tone, "Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty" and their next exchange establishes what their relationship was, and might have continued to be if circumstances had not changed everything (3,i,110). Ophelia displays amazing control in her response to his ranting. The calm replies that she makes to his vile insinuations and his claims that he loved her and that he did not love her, show the extent to which his behavior disturbs and frightens her. But the whole interaction makes it plain how bitter Hamlet is. His obsession with women's supposed impurity is based on his horror at his mother's behavior, but the horror he feels also comes from how irrevocably the actions of Gertrude and Claudius ha

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