Shakespeare’s Plays
Major Characters Analysis
Miss Dannielle Rayhon
English 11th Grade
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Click on either the play title or the image to learn more!
When you are done try the review multiple choice question!
Hamlet
Romeo & Juliet
Macbeth
Julius Caesar
Antony &
Cleopatra
Midsummer’s
Night Dream
Tempest
King Lear
MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTION!
Hamlet
•Enigmatic, there is always more to him than meets the eye
•Thoughtful, obsessively so and overly emotional
•Yet, acts rashly and without premeditation
•Very melancholy and unhappy about the situation of the kingdom
Claudius
•Hamlet’s antagonist, thinks only of maintaining his power
•Corrupt and manipulative—ultimately leads to demise
•Killed King Hamlet and married his wife Gertrude, stealing the thrown from young
Hamlet
•Greatly fears Hamlet and his insanity
•Cowardly, manipulating others to do his dirty work
Gertrude
•Very mysterious intentions, is she with Claudius? Has she always been? Was she
involved in killing her husband?
•Very frail, always dependent and swayed by men
•She is graceful and charming, signs of a Queen, but lacks ability to think for herself
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Romeo
Juliet
• Truly complex character, often obscured by his feelings of love
• He begins a romantic character, a great reader of poetry for Rosalineat first a shallow desire to love
• His capacity for love deepens with Juliet and with that all of his feelings
become enhanced
• His love leads him to risk his life to catch a glimpse of Juliet and
extreme rage led him to kill Tybalt
• He is also quite intelligent and loves being witty
• She begins immature about love and marriage
• She tries to be dutiful and obedient by saying she will try to
love Paris, when he shows an interest in marrying her
• When she first meets Romeo, she is shocked into adulthood
• She becomes self-assured and while Romeo is romantic and rash, she
remains steady and logical
• Her suicide is much more intense since she actually has to stab herself,
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unlike Romeo who just swallowed poison
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Macbeth
• He starts as a brave warrior, but once he comes across the three witches, we
see that he is full of ambition and self-doubt
• His doubt and later guilt consume him and leave him weak
• He can barely bring himself to kill Duncan, and only does because Lady
Macbeth pushed him to do it
• As Lady Macbeth’s power ebbs, he becomes alone
• He enters a series of fits, such as seeing Banquo’s ghost and plots to steal
the thrown
• His ambition drives him to the thrown, but he feels too guilty killing to get
there and things begin to fall apart for him and he becomes somewhat
relieved, he doesn’t want to kill himself, so he dies in action
Lady
Macbeth
• She is a frightening woman, who is the opposite of her husband, she feels no
guilt
• She pushes her husband to murder
• She demonstrates the struggle between genders, she is implied to be a man
in a woman's body, since men were seen as ruthless and violent
• It is the Lady who calms her husband after the murder of the king, however
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she goes mad after that
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Brutus
Caesar
Antony
•Proves to be incredibly complex, he is not just a public figure, but he is also a loyal friend
and a military leader and a husband
•While the others are moved by ambition, he is moved by idealism
•Was his participation in the murder a noble act of friendship or was it an evil act in which
he ignored his friendship?
•He consistently makes misjudgments due to his moral principles such as when Cassius tells
him to have Antony killed with Caesar
•He attempts to not act self-servingly, but always fails and ends up committing actions that
serve no one
•A ruler who is charged by the conspirators with ambition
•He does not wish for complete power over Rome rather to have his name live on forever
•His sense of permanence leads to his demise as he ignores several warnings that he will be
killed
•Opposite of Brutus in that he is impulsive and manipulative
•He isn’t plagued by moral principles like Brutus and can kill without a second thought
•He is a great politician, in that he doesn’t let his personal life interfere with the words he is
telling the audience unlike Brutus
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Antony
•Struggles with love for Cleopatra and duties to the Empire
•Consistently battling internal conflicts of his duties in Rome and his love for Alexandria
•He believes he is first most the leader of Rome, having won the battle for ruler from
Brutus and Cassius after killing Caesar
•His affair with Cleopatra leads him to feel he has lost his honor and thus he commits
suicide in attempt to regain it
Cleopatra
•She is a foreign, extravagant, and noble ruler
•The Romans often portray her as a whore and other slandering's because they feel she
has ruined Antony, but she is not actually so
•Cleopatra is captivating due to her open sexuality & confidence
•She often acts naïve and narcissistically but she has an air of power, charisma and will
Octavius
•-A one-dimensional character that represents the law of Rome
•He often appears menacing and harsh but his conflicted feelings about Antony betray
this hard exterior and make him appear human, he spends all of his time working to kill
him, and once Antony is dead, he then mourns the loss
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Puck
• He is a mischievous and witty character that sets many of the actions in the play into
motion using magic
• He is capricious and fun-loving, his characteristics represent many of the themes of
the play, for example his humor and language symbolize the contrasting elements
such as the whimsical fairies and the down to Earth craftsmen
• He is unique in that he stands out from the other fairies in appearance and
demeanor
Nick
Bottom
• An openly comedic character, who believes he is overly- competent and is actually
terrible at acting
• He is quite foolish but he doesn’t realize it and that is where a lot of his humor
stems from
• Puck turns his head into that of an ass, demonstrating how he makes himself one by
being so ridiculously self-confident when he is actually a fool, which is demonstrated
when the fairy queen falls in love with him and he thinks this is because he is so
great, not realizing it is due to a love potion
Helena
• She is faithfully in love with Demetrius which is the basis of every decision she makes
throughout the play
• She is the only character in the play often unsure of herself and doubtful
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Miranda
Prospero
Caliban
•A meek, young girl, whom is set up with Ferdinand by Prospero
•Ferdinand treats her almost as a prop, not as a real person
•On several occasions she is known to speak up for herself and these are always about her
sexuality
•Absorbed in the concept of attaining knowledge, which gets him into trouble in a number of
circumstances, firstly being the loss of his Dukedom to his brother
•His use of magic makes him unlikable, because he uses it to control Miranda and punish
Caliban
•Basically runs the entire plot of the play with his magical schemes
•Strong references and comparisons to a playwright
•Towards the ending of the play he comes to realize the wrongness of his actions and he also
manages to get the audience to see his side of the story– the ultimate dream of a playwright
•The slave of Prospero, he is often referred to as a monster
•He is the only native of the island, and is a very complex character in that he often mirrors and
foils other characters
•He is also conflicting in his own personality in that he often presents himself as the monster
people see him to be but he has a soft and sensitive side to him
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King Lear
• He values the appearance of things before reality, in that he enjoys having the title
of king but does not want to fulfill the obligations of the title
• King Lear is tragic in that he doesn’t learn from his mistakes as king
• However he does realize how he is arrogant and humbles himself
• He never fully recovers his sanity and the devastating sacrifice of Cordelia awakens
him to the cruel reality of the world
Cordelia
• Everyone knows her for her beauty, loyalty and honesty
• In her refusal to play games she demonstrates morals and virtues
• Her death demonstrates the cruelness of the world for the audience and also the
characters in the world since she symbolizes good
Edmund
• He is a schemer willing to jump at any opportunity to further him
• He wants power and recognition that is denied to his bastard self
• His villainy only wavers when he is mortally wounded and realizes that two people
have died for him and must have truly loved him
Goneril &
Regan
• Basically the same person because of their combined evilness
• They want and they have no conscience
• They are clever enough to play games to flatter their father for power
• This leads to their destruction, as they turn on themselves
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Which character is in two of
Shakespeare’s plays?
Click on the answer you think is correct!
A. Hamlet
B. Caliban
C. Antony
Hamlet is only in the play named after him, Hamlet
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Caliban is in the play The Tempest
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Antony is in Julius Caesar and Antony & Cleopatra
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