Prince Hamlet

the Prince of Denmark, nephew to the usurping Claudius and son of the

previous King of Denmark, Old Hamlet.

to King Hamlet, second husband to Gertrude and uncle to Hamlet.

from Hamlet. They are courtiers who are sent by the

king to spy on Hamlet, using their claimed friendship with him to gain his confidence.

the father of Ophelia and Laertes. Polonius connives with Claudius to spy on

Hamlet. Hamlet unknowingly kills Polonius, provoking Ophelia's fit of madness and death and the climax of the play: a duel between Laertes and Hamlet.

the son of Polonius and the brother of Ophelia. In the final scene,

he kills Hamlet with a poisoned sword to avenge the deaths of his father and sister, for which he blamed Hamlet. While dying of the same poison, he implicates King Claudius. The Laertes character is thought to be originally from Shakespeare, as there is no equivalent character in any of the known sources for the play.

Laertes and Ophelia 

Hamlet's late-father is a character from William Shakespeare's play Hamlet, also known as The

Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. In the stage directions he is referred to as "Ghost."

in Hamlet

the clowns discuss whether Ophelia's death was a suicide and

whether or not she merits a Christian burial.

in the first three editions of Hamlet, showing the varying

quality of the text in the Bad Quarto, the Good Quarto and the First Folio