3rd Dimensional

Although the other characters in Hamlet are less important to the story, Shakespeare still fleshes them out into real people. There is a huge focus on Hamlet throughout the play, but that is to be expected and in no way means that the other characters are any less developed than he is.

Let's start with Ophelia. Not many people really like her; the most of what you see is her submission to her father's will and her longing for Hamlet. But the very fact that she goes crazy and kills herself illustrates how three-dimensional she is. Shakespeare is an expert in human psychology, anchoring Ophelia to reality with her caring father against the raging tempest of Hamlet's mixed messages and insults. But once her anchor has lost his grip and been swept away in the wake of the storm, there is nothing tying Ophelia down. Consumed by both grief and her mixed feelings for Hamlet, she loses it. But really, Ophelia is constantly tempering her inner desires with morality and social customs; she is a prime example of Freud's theory of mind, her id demanding that she satisfy her drive to love Hamlet in conflict with her virtuous superego fueled by her father and brother's warnings to keep her chastity. On the surface, she is frail and weak, letting her father make her decisions for her, but underneath she is the model of inner turmoil.

Next, Polonius. In a lot of ways, Polonius is the comic relief of the play, the bumbling fool. Yet as much as Hamlet would like to simply file him under "idiot" and pay him no more mind, he can be considered fairly deep, possibly even as the wise man in the play. If nothing else, he certainly has an understanding of human behavior, even if he doesn't have all the answers. We see him in the first scene of act two, explaining to his servant how to find news of his son. He counsels to, instead of straight out asking whether Laertes is misbehaving, to speak as if he knows he is misbehaving. Laertes' friends would lie, deny his immorality if questioned directly. However, if the fault is stated as a fact, they will only deny it if it is not true. We also know that Polonius attended a university and played the part of Julius Caesar when he was younger, indicating intelligence and theatrical knowledge. It is more than possible that Polonius behaves like a bumbling old man because that is how he wishes to be perceived.

Then there's Claudius, possibly the easiest character to find depth in. He is, above all, the villain, the antagonist, the man for Hamlet to pit himself against. Yet we don't even quite know why he killed his brother. The obvious answer is for the power. But it is more than possible that Claudius' motivation for murder sprung from his desire for Gertrude. When old king Hamelt tells Hamlet Jr. what really happened, he mentions Gertrude's infidelity before finally telling Hamlet that Claudius was the one that murdered him. Assuming he is going chronologically, this would suggest that Claudius and Gertrude were sleeping together before the old king was even dead. It would certainly explain their hasty marriage. Then in act III scene III, we see him kneeling in penitence, willing himself to beg for forgiveness, yet he himself admits that he does not truly feel remorse but wishes to. He knows that what he did was wrong, but is enjoying the position that the murder put him in.

I could continue on, but this post is already long. It's just so easy to oversimplify the other characters and take them for granted, but they each have their own delicately balanced, complicated psyches; Hamlet isn't the only one. Gertrude certainly has more than one layer to her, and even Rosencrantz and Guildenstern can be analyzed to find depth. None of the characters in Hamlet are flat.