文档介绍：Interpreting the King in Hamlet  
 
    Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet presents in the character of King Claudius an intelligent, cunning, and seemingly unselfish ruler. This essay will present a critic-supported, detailed consideration of the very capable and cunning King Claudius.
 
For the entirety of the drama a life-or-death mental contest ensues between Claudius and the protagonist. John Masefield discusses this mind battle in “Hamlet, Prince of Denmark”:
 
The King is probing Hamlet's mind with gross human probes, to find out if he is mad. Hamlet is searching the King's mind with the finest of intellectual probes, to find out if he is guilty.  The probe used by him, the fragment of a play within a play, is the work of a man with a knowledge of the impotence of intellect--
 
"Our wills and fates do so contrary run
That our devices still are overthrown"--
 
and a faith in the omnipotence of intellect--
 
"Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own." (n. pag.)
 
Salvador de Madariaga in “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern” discusses Claudius’ relationship with the two emissaries and former friends of Hamlet, who were escorting the prince to his execution in England:
 
The two young men receive from the King mission which, whatever the King’s secret intentions may be, is honorable. Hamlet, the King in fact tells them, is not what he was. The cause of the change "I cannot dream of."
 
Therefore, I beg you
so by panies
 
To draw him on to pleasures, and to gather
So much as from occasion you may glean
Whether aught to us unknown afflicts him thus
That opened lies within our remedy (n. pag.).
 
Like everyone else in the kingdom of Denmark, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are deceived by the king – and it costs them their lives. Just what sort of character do we find in the person of Claudius? Does the following critic misinterpret him? G. Wilson Knight in "The Embassy of Death" interprets him:
 
Claudius, as he a