Michael Maloney
Michael Maloney is an English actor. Born in Bury St. Edmunds, Maloney's first television appearance was as Peter Barkworth's teenage son in the 1979 drama series, Telford's Change. After several dry years in his career, Maloney went on to star in many films and television series, as well as developing a stage career and became a familiar face after playing a major role in Kenneth Branagh's 1989 film adaptation of Henry V. In the early 1990s, he starred on television in Mr Wakefield's Crusade, on film as Mark in Truly, Deeply, in 1994 he took the lead in the BBC adaptation of Love on a Branch Line, he appeared in both the 1990 and 1996 film versions of Hamlet, as Rosencrantz and Laertes and in several other Shakespeare screen adaptations. In addition to his TV appearances, he starred as Jason Fields in the film American Reel in 1999. 2002 saw him play Brian Albumen, personal aide to Rik Mayall's Adonis Cnut character in the Gran and Marks penned TV sitcom Believe Nothing. In 2003, he appeared as the Belgian Prosper Profond in The Forsyte Saga.
He played Cassius in the 2005 miniseries Empire, John Major in 2009's Margaret and Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel in the 2009 film The Young Victoria. He is active in radio drama on BBC Radio 4, playing the Dean in both series of High Table, Lower Orders and Giles the gossip columnist in His Master's Voice, he has made a guest appearance in the BBC Radio 4 series Baldi. He has appeared in a Bollywood film, I See You, playing a policeman. In 2010, he appeared in long-running drama Casualty as consultant Howard Fairfax, in series 4 of the political satire series The Thick of It, he played Matthew Hodge, part of the Goolding Inquiry. In 2013, he portrayed Sir Henry Stafford, third husband of Lady Margaret Beaufort, in the BBC TV series The White Queen. In 2016, he appeared in the ITV/Netflix series Paranoid, he has lent his voice to various video-game characters. The Lost Soul in the 2013 video-game Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate, Avallac'h in the 2015 video-game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Doloran in the 2018 video-game Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom.
Richard's Things – Bill Ordeal by Innocence – Micky Argyle Henry V – Louis the Dauphin Truly, Deeply – Mark Hamlet – Rosencrantz A Midwinter's Tale – Joe Harper Othello – Roderigo Hamlet – Laertes Painted Lady - Oliver Peel Bienvenue au gîte – Peter The Young Victoria – Robert Peel The Iron Lady – Doctor By Any Means Troy, trilogy of radio plays written by Andrew Rissik and directed by Jeremy Mortimer – Hector Scenes of Seduction, radio play written by Timberlake Wertenbaker and directed by Ned Chaillet, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 7 Mar 2005 – Henry. Bran in Earthsearch II, James Follett's 1982 "new adventure serial in time and space" on BBC Radio 4. A Pair of Blue Eyes, adaptation of a novel by Thomas Hardy, BBC Radio 4 Extra, directed by Cherry Cookson. Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, BBC 7 2003. Produced in Manchester by Katherine Beacon. Michael Maloney on IMDb
Gertrude (Hamlet)
In William Shakespeare's play Hamlet, Gertrude is Hamlet's mother and Queen of Denmark. Her relationship with Hamlet is somewhat turbulent, since he resents her marrying her husband's brother Claudius after he murdered the King. Gertrude reveals no guilt in her marriage with Claudius after the recent murder of her husband, Hamlet begins to show signs of jealousy towards Claudius. According to Hamlet, she scarcely mourned her husband's death before marrying Claudius, her name may derive from Gertrude of Bavaria, Queen Consort of Denmark 1182–1197. Gertrude is first seen in Act 1 Scene 2 as she tries to cheer Hamlet over the loss of his father, begging him to stay at home rather than going back to school in Wittenberg, her worry over him continues into the second act, as she sides with King Claudius in sending Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to raise the spirits of her son. Rather than ascribing Hamlet's sudden madness to Ophelia's rejection, she believes the cause to be his father, King Hamlet's death and her quick, subsequent marriage to Claudius: "I doubt it is no other but the main.
In Act three, she eagerly listens to the report of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern on their attempt to cheer him, supports the King and Polonius' plan to watch Hamlet from a hidden vantage point as he speaks with Ophelia, with the hope that her presence will heal him. In the next act, Gertrude tells Claudius of Polonius' murder, convinced that Hamlet is mad, she shows genuine compassion and affection as she watches along with others as Ophelia sings and acts in absolute madness. At Ophelia's burial, she expresses her former hope that the young woman might have married her son: "I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife." When Hamlet appears and grapples with Laertes, she asks him to stop and for someone to hold him back—saying that he may be in a fit of madness now, but that will alleviate soon. At the beginning of the play, Gertrude lies more with her husband than her son. In the final scene, Gertrude notices Hamlet is tired during the fight with Laertes, offers to wipe his brow, she drinks a cup of poison intended for Hamlet by the King, against the King's wishes, dies, shouting in agony as she falls: "No, no, the drink,—O my dear Hamlet—The drink, the drink!
I am poison'd." Other characters' views of the Queen are negative. When the Ghost of her former husband appears to Hamlet, he describes her as a "seeming virtuous queen", but orders Hamlet not to confront her about it and leave her judgement to heaven. However, he expresses that his love for her was benevolent as he states that he would have held back the elements if they "visited her face too roughly". Hamlet sees her as an example of the weakness of women and hurt in his reflections of how she remarried. There have been numerous attempts to account for Gertrude's state of mind during the play, it could be argued that as she does not confess to any sins before she dies, she did not participate in her husband's murder. However, other considerations do point to Gertrude's complicity. After repeated erratic threats towards his mother to no response, Hamlet threatens to discover the true nature of Gertrude's character by setting up a mirror, at which point she projects a killer: In the 1919 essay "Hamlet and his problems" T. S. Eliot suggests that the main cause of Hamlet's internal dilemma is Gertrude's sinful behaviour.
He states, "Shakespeare's Hamlet... is a play dealing with the effect of a mother's guilt upon her son."In 1924, the social reformer Lillie Buffum Chace Wyman published a study, Gertrude of Denmark: An Interpretive Romance, an early attempt to give Gertrude's own perspective on her life and the events of the play. Wyman explicitly "interrogates the nineteenth-century cult of the self-sacrificing mother", critiquing the influence it had on interpretations of the play by both male critics and actresses playing Gertrude. In the 1940s, Ernest Jones—a psychoanalyst and Freud's biographer—developed Freud's ideas into a series of essays that culminated in his book Hamlet and Oedipus. Influenced by Jones's psychoanalytic approach, several productions have portrayed the "closet scene", where Hamlet confronts his mother in her private quarters, in a sexual light. In this reading, Hamlet is disgusted by his mother's "incestuous" relationship with Claudius while fearful of killing him, as this would clear Hamlet's path to his mother's bed.
Carolyn Heilbrun's 1957 essay "Hamlet's Mother" defends Gertrude, arguing that the text never hints that Gertrude knew of Claudius poisoning King Hamlet. This analysis has been championed by many feminist critics. Heilbrun argued that men have for centuries misinterpreted Gertrude, believing what Hamlet said about her rather than the actual text of the play. By this account, no clear evidence suggests that Gertrude is an adulteress: she is adapting to the circumstances of her husband's death for the good of the kingdom. Women were exclusively banned from appearing as actresses on the stage until 1660 and in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, troupes appeared that were composed of boy players. Indeed, they are famously mentioned in Hamlet, in which a group of travelling actors has left the city due to rivalry with a troupe of "little eyases". Eileen Herlie portrayed Gertrude in Laurence Olivier's 1948 Hamlet. Glenn Close played mother to Mel Gibson in the Franco Zeffirelli's 1990 Hamlet. Julie Christie appeared as Gertrude in Kenneth Branagh's 1996 Hamlet.
Despite her classical training as an actor, it was her first-ever
King Claudius
King Claudius is a fictional character and the primary antagonist of William Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet. He is the brother to King Hamlet, second husband to Gertrude and uncle and stepfather to Prince Hamlet, he obtained the throne of Denmark by murdering his own brother with poison and marrying the late king's widow. He is loosely based on the Jutish chieftain Feng who appears in Chronicon Lethrense and in Saxo Grammaticus' Gesta Danorum. There had never been an actual Danish King of that name. Claudius is seen at the beginning of the play to be a capable monarch as he deals diplomatically with such issues as the military threat from Norway and Hamlet's depression, it is not until the appearance of King Hamlet's Ghost in the courtyard that the reader questions his motives. During the play's progression he takes a turn for the worse by first resorting to spying, when that fails, murder, it is in Act III Scene 3, when Claudius forestalls Hamlet's revenge by confessing his sins to God in his own private chapel, that the audience can be sure of his guilt.
He is shown to be unhappy with the events taking place. The young prince spies him brooding about his wrongdoings and trying to pray for forgiveness, but he knows all too well that prayer alone will not save him if he continues to benefit from his own sin. If he were to repent, he would have to confess his sin and give up all he achieved through it, which he chooses not to do. Despite his remorse, the King still seeks Hamlet's death in an effort to save both his throne and his life, as he believes the prince is now aware of his part in Old King Hamlet's death. Hamlet is ready to kill him, only to back down, feeling that to kill the King in such a way would contradict the revenge conditions given to him by his father, who commanded him specifically: "Taint not thy mind." When Laertes seeks revenge for his father Polonius' death at Hamlet's hands, Claudius concocts a'surefire' plan to deal with Hamlet once and for all. He arranges a fencing match between Hamlet and Laertes, but plots with Laertes to poison his foil and give Hamlet a poisoned drink.
The king's plan fails. As Norway's army, led by young Prince Fortinbras, surrounds the castle, Hamlet exacts his revenge and slays Claudius by stabbing him with the sword and forcing him to drink the poison that he had intended for Hamlet; the character Claudius is both the major antagonist of a complex individual. He is the villain of the piece, as he admits to himself: "O, my offence is rank it smells to heaven", yet his remarkable self-awareness and remorse complicates Claudius's villain status, much like Macbeth. Claudius's fratricide is the corruption permeating the play's world – that which is, in the words of Marcellus, "something … rotten in the state of Denmark." Shakespeare reminds the audience of the crime several times by having characters mention the story of Cain and Abel, including Claudius himself, who admits being inflicted with "the primal eldest curse." Claudius's cruelty is reflected in his schemes to kill Hamlet – sending him to England to be killed, as well as setting up a rigged fencing match.
Claudius is a heavy drinker, proposing numerous toasts and presiding over a rowdy court. The king is not without redeeming virtues, though, he is seen to be an able monarch as well as a quick thinker and smooth talker, who in Act IV, Scene 5 converts Laertes from rebel to accomplice. In Act III, Scene 1 he fleetingly shows remorse for his crimes, attempts to pray in Scene 3 as he realises that he cannot sincerely repent, continues in his evil ways. Most commentators agree that the king's evil nature is evident, that the other aspects of his nature exemplify Shakespeare's ability to portray his villains as human; the king is named after the Roman emperor Claudius, considered the archetype of an evil ruler in Shakespeare's time. The historical Claudius's incestuous marriage to and alleged poisoning by Agrippina the Younger, herself murdered by her son Nero, are mirrored in the play, as Hamlet himself appears to note in Act III, Scene 2: "Soft! now to my mother. / O heart, lose not thy nature. Eduard von Winterstein portrayed Claudius in the 1921 German silent film adaptation of Hamlet.
Basil Sydney portrayed Claudius in Laurence Olivier's film adaptation of Hamlet. Alan Bates portrays Claudius as a drunken, craven schemer in Franco Zeffirelli's film adaptation of Hamlet. In Kenneth Branagh's 1996 film version of Hamlet, Claudius is played by Derek Jacobi. Jacobi had not only been Branagh's mentor as an actor, but had played Hamlet himself with Patrick Stewart playing Claudius in a BBC production. In Michael Almereyda's 2000 film version of Hamlet, Claudius is played by Kyle MacLachlan. Patrick Stewart once again portrayed Claudius with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2008, in a production directed by Gregory Doran. Claudius inspired the character Miraz in C. S. Lewis' novel Prince Caspian, part of The Chronicles of Narnia series. Ron Perlman portrays Clay Morrow in the television series Sons of Anarchy, which relies on the general plot structure of Hamlet
Helena Bonham Carter
Helena Bonham Carter is an English actress. She is known for her roles in large-scale blockbusters, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role as Kate Croy in The Wings of the Dove. For her role as Queen Elizabeth in The King's Speech, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, she won the 2010 International Emmy Award for Best Actress for her role as British author Enid Blyton in the TV film Enid. Bonham Carter began her film career, playing the title character in Lady Jane, playing Lucy Honeychurch in A Room with a View, her other film roles include Ophelia in Hamlet, Where Angels Fear to Tread, Howards End, Elizabeth Lavenza in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Woody Allen's Mighty Aphrodite, Marla Singer in Fight Club, Bellatrix Lestrange in the Harry Potter series, Skynet in Terminator Salvation, Miss Havisham in Great Expectations, Madame Thénardier in Les Misérables, the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella and Rose Weil in Ocean's 8.
She has collaborated with director Tim Burton. Her other television films include A Pattern of Roses, Fatal Deception: Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald, Live from Baghdad and Burton & Taylor. In 2018, she was confirmed to play Princess Margaret on seasons four of The Crown, she was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2012 New Year Honours list for services to drama, in January 2014, the British prime minister, David Cameron, announced that Bonham Carter had been appointed to Britain's new national Holocaust Commission. Bonham Carter was born in London, her father, Raymond Bonham Carter, who came from a prominent British political family, was a merchant banker and served as the alternative British director representing the Bank of England at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D. C. during the 1960s. Her mother, Elena, is a psychotherapist, of three quarters Jewish background, whose own parents were diplomat Eduardo Propper de Callejón and painter Baroness Hélène Fould-Springer.
Bonham Carter's paternal grandmother was politician and feminist Violet Bonham Carter, daughter of Herbert Asquith, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the first half of the First World War. Bonham Carter is the youngest of three children, with two brothers and Thomas, they were brought up in Golders Green and she was educated at South Hampstead High School, completed her A-levels at Westminster School. Bonham Carter was denied admission to King's College, not because of her academic performance but because college officials were afraid that she would leave during the course to pursue her acting career; when Bonham Carter was five, her mother had a serious nervous breakdown, which took three years for recovery. Soon afterwards, her mother's experience in therapy led her to become a psychotherapist herself—Bonham Carter has since paid her to read her scripts and deliver opinions on the characters' psychological motivations. Five years after her mother's recovery, her father was diagnosed with acoustic neuroma.
He suffered complications during an operation to remove the tumour that led to a stroke that left him half-paralysed and using a wheelchair. With her brothers at college, Bonham Carter was left to help her mother cope, she studied her father's movements and mannerisms for her role in The Theory of Flight. He died in January 2004. Bonham Carter, who has no formal acting training, entered the field winning a national writing contest and used the money to pay for her entry into the actors' Spotlight directory, she made her professional acting début at the age of 16 in a television commercial. She had a part in a minor TV film, A Pattern of Roses, her first lead film role was as Lady Jane Grey in Lady Jane, given mixed reviews by critics. Her breakthrough role was Lucy Honeychurch in A Room with a View, filmed after Lady Jane but released two months earlier. Bonham Carter appeared in episodes of Miami Vice as Don Johnson's love interest during the 1986–87 season and in 1987 opposite Dirk Bogarde in The Vision, Stewart Granger in A Hazard of Hearts and John Gielgud in Getting It Right.
Bonham Carter was cast in the role of Bess McNeill in Breaking the Waves, but backed out during production due to "the character's painful psychic and physical exposure", according to Roger Ebert. The role went to Emily Watson, nominated for an Academy Award for her performance. In 1994, Bonham Carter appeared in a dream sequence during the second series of the British sitcom Absolutely Fabulous, as Edina Monsoon's daughter Saffron, played by Julia Sawalha. Throughout the series, references were made to Saffron's resemblance to Bonham Carter, her early films led to her being typecast as a "corset queen", "English rose", playing pre- and early 20th century characters in Merchant-Ivory films. She played Olivia in Trevor Nunn's film version of Twelfth Night in 1996. One of the high points of her early career was her performance as the scheming Kate Croy in the 1997 film adaption of The Wings of the Dove, acclaimed internationally and netted her first G
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. referred to as Warner Bros. and abbreviated as WB, is an American entertainment company headquartered in Burbank, California and a subsidiary of AT&T's WarnerMedia. Founded in 1923, it has operations in film and video games and is one of the "Big Five" major American film studios, as well as a member of the Motion Picture Association of America; the company's name originated from the four founding Warner brothers: Harry, Albert and Jack Warner. Harry and Sam emigrated as young children with their parents to Canada from Krasnosielc, Poland. Jack, the youngest brother, was born in Ontario; the three elder brothers began in the movie theater business, having acquired a movie projector with which they showed films in the mining towns of Pennsylvania and Ohio. In the beginning and Albert Warner invested $150 to present Life of an American Fireman and The Great Train Robbery, they opened their first theater, the Cascade, in New Castle, Pennsylvania, in 1903. When the original building was in danger of being demolished, the modern Warner Bros. called the current building owners, arranged to save it.
The owners noted people across the country had asked them to protect it for its historical significance. In 1904, the Warners founded the Pittsburgh-based Duquesne Amusement & Supply Company, to distribute films. In 1912, Harry Warner hired. By the time of World War I they had begun producing films. In 1918 they opened the first Warner Brothers Studio on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Sam and Jack produced the pictures, while Harry and Albert, along with their auditor and now controller Chase, handled finance and distribution in New York City. During World War I their first nationally syndicated film, My Four Years in Germany, based on a popular book by former ambassador James W. Gerard, was released. On April 4, 1923, with help from money loaned to Harry by his banker Motley Flint, they formally incorporated as Warner Bros. Pictures, Incorporated; the first important deal was the acquisition of the rights to Avery Hopwood's 1919 Broadway play, The Gold Diggers, from theatrical impresario David Belasco.
However, Rin Tin Tin, a dog brought from France after World War I by an American soldier, established their reputation. Rin Tin Tin debuted in the feature; the movie was so successful. Rin Tin Tin became the studio's top star. Jack nicknamed him "The Mortgage Lifter" and the success boosted Darryl F. Zanuck's career. Zanuck became a top producer and between 1928 and 1933 served as Jack's right-hand man and executive producer, with responsibilities including day-to-day film production. More success came. Lubitsch's film The Marriage Circle was the studio's most successful film of 1924, was on The New York Times best list for that year. Despite the success of Rin Tin Tin and Lubitsch, Warner's remained a lesser studio. Sam and Jack decided to offer Broadway actor John Barrymore the lead role in Beau Brummel; the film was so successful. By the end of 1924, Warner Bros. was arguably Hollywood's most successful independent studio, where it competed with "The Big Three" Studios. As a result, Harry Warner—while speaking at a convention of 1,500 independent exhibitors in Milwaukee, Wisconsin—was able to convince the filmmakers to spend $500,000 in newspaper advertising, Harry saw this as an opportunity to establish theaters in cities such as New York and Los Angeles.
As the studio prospered, it gained backing from Wall Street, in 1924 Goldman Sachs arranged a major loan. With this new money, the Warners bought the pioneer Vitagraph Company which had a nationwide distribution system. In 1925, Warners' experimented in radio, establishing a successful radio station, KFWB, in Los Angeles. Warner Bros. was a pioneer of films with synchronized sound. In 1925, at Sam's urging, Warner's agreed to add this feature to their productions. By February 1926, the studio reported a net loss of $333,413. After a long period denying Sam's request for sound, Harry agreed to change, as long as the studio's use of synchronized sound was for background music purposes only; the Warners signed a contract with the sound engineer company Western Electric and established Vitaphone. In 1926, Vitaphone began making films with music and effects tracks, most notably, in the feature Don Juan starring John Barrymore; the film was silent. To hype Don Juan's release, Harry acquired the large Piccadilly Theater in Manhattan, New York City, renamed it Warners' Theatre.
Don Juan premiered at the Warners' Theatre in New York on August 6, 1926. Throughout the early history of film distribution, theater owners hired orchestras to attend film showings, where they provided soundtracks. Through Vitaphone, Warner Bros. produced eight shorts in 1926. Many film production companies questioned the necessity. Don Juan did not recoup its production cost and Lubitsch left for MGM. By April 1927, the Big Five studios had ruined Warner's, Western Electric renewed Warner's Vit
Prince Hamlet
Prince Hamlet is the title role and protagonist of William Shakespeare's c. 1600 tragedy Hamlet. He is the Prince of Denmark, nephew to the usurping Claudius, son of King Hamlet, the previous King of Denmark. At the beginning of the play, he struggles with whether, how, to avenge the murder of his father, struggles with his own sanity along the way. By the end of the tragedy, Hamlet has caused the deaths of Polonius, Laertes and two acquaintances of his from the University of Wittenberg Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, he is indirectly involved in the deaths of his love Ophelia and of his mother Gertrude. The play opens with Hamlet depressed over the recent death of his father, King Hamlet, his uncle Claudius' ascension to the throne and hasty marriage to Hamlet's mother Gertrude. One night, his father's ghost appears to him and tells him that Claudius murdered him in order to usurp the throne, commands his son to avenge his death. Claudius sends for two of Hamlet's friends from Wittenberg, to find out what is causing Hamlet so much pain.
Claudius and his advisor Polonius persuade Ophelia—Polonius' daughter and Hamlet's love interest—to speak with Hamlet while they secretly listen. Hamlet enters. Ophelia greets him, offers to return his remembrances, upon which Hamlet questions her honesty and tells her to "get thee to a nunnery." Hamlet devises a test to see whether Claudius is guilty: he hires a group of actors to perform a play about the murder of a king in front of the royal court, has Horatio gauge Claudius' reaction. Claudius demands the play be stopped half through; when Claudius leaves the audience upset, Hamlet knows that the ghost was telling the truth. He follows Claudius into his chambers in order to kill him, but stops when he sees his uncle praying. A second attempt on Claudius' life ends in Polonius' accidental death. Claudius, now fearing for his life, sends Hamlet to England, accompanied by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Alone, Claudius discloses that he is sending Hamlet to his death. Prior to embarking for England, Hamlet hides Polonius' body revealing its location to the King.
Meanwhile, her father's death has driven Ophelia insane with grief, Claudius convinces her brother Laertes that Hamlet is to blame. He proposes a fencing match between the two. Laertes informs the king that he will further poison the tip of his sword so that a mere scratch would mean certain death. Claudius plans to offer Hamlet poisoned wine. Gertrude enters to report. In the Elsinore churchyard, two "clowns" represented as "gravediggers", enter to prepare Ophelia's grave. Hamlet arrives with Horatio and banters with one of them, who unearths the skull of a jester whom Hamlet once knew, Yorick. Ophelia's funeral procession approaches. Hamlet interrupts, grief for Ophelia, he and Laertes grapple. That day, Hamlet tells Horatio how he escaped death on his journey, disclosing that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have been sent to their deaths instead. A courtier, interrupts to invite Hamlet to fence with Laertes. Despite Horatio's warnings, Hamlet accepts and the match begins. After several rounds, Gertrude toasts Hamlet, accidentally drinking the wine Claudius poisoned.
Between bouts, Laertes pierces Hamlet with his poisoned blade. Gertrude, in her dying breath, announces that she has been poisoned. In his dying moments, Laertes reveals Claudius' plot. Hamlet stabs Claudius with the poisoned sword, forces him to drink from his own poisoned cup to make sure he dies. In his final moments, Hamlet names Prince Fortinbras of Norway as the probable heir to the throne. Horatio attempts to kill himself with the same poisoned wine, but it was stopped by Hamlet, so he will be the only one left alive to give a full account of the story, he wills the throne of Denmark to Fortinbras before dying. The most straightforward view sees Hamlet as seeking truth in order to be certain that he is justified in carrying out the revenge called for by a ghost that claims to be the spirit of his father; the 1948 movie with Laurence Olivier in the title role is introduced by a voiceover: "This is the tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind." T. S. Eliot offers a similar view of Hamlet's character in his critical essay, "Hamlet and His Problems".
He states, "We find Shakespeare's'Hamlet' not in the action, not in any quotations that we might select, so much as in an unmistakable tone...". Others see Hamlet as a person charged with a duty that he both knows and feels is right, yet is unwilling to carry out. In this view, his efforts to satisfy himself on Claudius' guilt and his failure to act when he can are evidence of this unwillingness, Hamlet berates himself for his inability to carry out his task. After observing a play-actor performing a scene, he notes that the actor was moved to tears in the passion of the story and compares this passion for an ancient Greek character, Hecuba, in light of his own situation: O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! Is it not monstrous that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit That from her working all his visage wan'd.
