Shakespeare was a prolific writer and among his works exist ten tragedies, each of which are governed by varying levels of ancient Greek and contemporary Christian values and themes. Despite this fact there is always one major theme which appears too occur in all tragedies Shakespearean or otherwise; that is there exists a constant struggle for control between the forces of destiny and free will which brings about the hero's destruction.

Once again our history of Shakespeare is obscured until the early 1590's when he resurfaced in London as an established actor. His formal debut as a poet came in 1593 as he published Venus and Adonis. From this point on his career as an actor, playwright and poet was in full stride. By the time he was done Shakespeare had written at least 36 plays and 154 sonnets.

Although there are plenty of other interesting and important supporting characters in this play I will only discuss Claudius briefly, since he is the villain of the tragedy and the main antagonist force opposite of Hamlet.

In the end what makes Claudius the villain is that he is wrong and his methods are cowardly and secretive, while Hamlet on the other hand, flawed as he may be, is honest and justified in his actions and suffers from an active conscience.

Hamlet has been described as Shakespeare's (maybe even all of literature's), most masterfully captivating, enigmatic and universally aware character. He is a man of radical contradictions and constant unpredictability. Hamlet repeatedly displays his propensities for being reckless yet cautious, courteous yet barbaric, angry yet manic, loving and tender yet ferocious and cold-hearted. On top of all that he somehow also manages to be sometimes driven, energetic and highly motivated, and at other times extremely indecisive, depressed and suicidal.

Shakespeare's prolific writing has had a tremendous impact not only on the world of poetry and drama but also on the English language itself. It is said that he is responsible for the creation of upwards of 2000 commonly used words in our language today. Through his writing nouns were changed into verbs, verbs into adjectives, words never before used together became connected, prefixes and suffixes were added, not to mention countless other words that the man simply masterminded to his own liking. He also invented multitudes of expressions and phrases, which can be seen clearly, not to mention humorously, in the following masterful passage written by Bernard Levin:

Some topics in this essay:
God Hamlet, Bernard Levin, Othello Iago's, Hamlet Othello, Moor Venetian, Iago Claudius, Venus Adonis, Oedipus Rex, William Shakespeare, Role Drama, quoting shakespeare, hamlet othello, shakespeare's tragedies, complex unpredictable, critical analysis, supporting characters, constant struggle control, horatio cassio, segmented five, tragedy plot, segmented five acts, five acts, death existence god, struggle control forces, forces destiny free,