ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on dramatic literature and theatrical performance of Shakespearian play. King Claudius is a superb figure almost as great a dramatic creation as Hamlet himself. His intellectual powers are of the highest order. He is eloquent formal when formality is appropriate, graciously familiar when famliarity is in place, persuasive to an almost superhuman degree always and everywhere a model of royal dignity. Claudius is often regarded as a moral monster selfish, calculating, passionless subtle and cold as a serpent. To neglect or undervalue Claudius destroys the balance of the tragedy. On the stage, for generations, his lines were cut unmercifully, and his rle was assigned to an inferior actor, so that he became the typical melodramatic villain, who frowns and mouths and struts and beats the air. Hamlet understands; and he expresses the truth in his words to Horatio, which might well be a summarizing motto for the play: The pass and fell incensed points of mighty opposites.
