Character maps · William Shakespeare
Hamlet Character Map
Every named figure in the play, charted from the public-domain text — three sons avenging three fathers, with a line from Shakespeare behind each one.
Hamlet is not a play you lose the thread of because the cast is enormous — 33 named figures is a dinner party next to Tolstoy. You lose it because the play is built out of repetitions: three sons with murdered fathers, two courtiers nobody can tell apart, a king watching a staged murder that has already happened to him. This map charts all of it — 33 figures and 65 relationships, each carrying a short quote from the text, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
The structure the map surfaces first is the one the play keeps in its pockets: Hamlet is three revenge plots wearing one coat. Hamlet has a murdered father and an uncle on the throne. Laertes has a murdered father too, stabbed through a curtain by Hamlet. And so does Fortinbras — his father was killed in single combat by Hamlet’s father, years before the first line is spoken. On this map that third plot is a single line drawn between Fortinbras and the Ghost: two men who never share a scene, one of whom is dead before the play begins. A cast list can’t show you that relationship. A graph has no choice but to draw it.
Selecting a figure dims everyone they aren’t connected to, which is where the play’s other joke becomes visible. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have the same map — the same king commanding them, the same friend suspecting them, the same errand to England and the same execution at the end of it. Not similar: identical, apart from the line joining them to each other. The reason nobody can tell them apart is that structurally there is nothing to tell apart. Search a name to jump to it; solid lines are kinship, dashed lines are allegiance and service, dotted lines are social ties.
Two honest notes. The dead king carries more names than anyone alive — eleven on this map, from “King Hamlet” and “the late king” down to the two his son throws at him through the floorboards, “old mole” and “truepenny.” And the map was made by software reading the play, so it can be wrong: this parse folds the three watchmen who open the first scene — Barnardo, Francisco and Marcellus — into one figure, because the text gives them nearly interchangeable lines. Searching any of the three still finds it. Every figure and relationship carries its evidence quote precisely so you can catch that kind of thing instead of trusting us.
Who’s who in Hamlet
The short version, for the reader who just needs the thread back. Every name here is on the map, with the passage that puts them there.
- Hamlet
- Prince of Denmark, and the most-mentioned figure in the play by more than double the next name. Also “Lord Hamlet,” “young Hamlet,” and “Hamlet the Dane” — the last of them shouted into an open grave.
- Claudius
- Hamlet’s uncle, his stepfather, and his father’s murderer: three relationships with one man, all three drawn separately on the map. Hamlet mostly calls him “mine uncle,” which he means as an accusation.
- Gertrude
- Hamlet’s mother, remarried to his uncle inside two months — and the only figure on the map with a marriage line to a ghost as well as to a living king.
- The Ghost
- The murdered king, and the hinge the whole play turns on. He connects to Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude and Fortinbras, and in the play he actually meets only one of them.
- Polonius
- Lord Chamberlain, father to Ophelia and Laertes, and the most enthusiastic surveillance operation in Elsinore — he sends a servant to spy on his own son in Paris before Act 2 is underway.
- Ophelia
- Polonius’s daughter, and the figure with the smallest map of any principal. Look at what her lines have in common: nearly every one is somebody managing, warning, forbidding, or observing her.
- Laertes
- Her brother, and the play’s other avenging son — the one who does immediately and loudly what Hamlet spends five acts not doing.
- Horatio
- Hamlet’s friend from Wittenberg, mentioned more often than Gertrude or Ophelia, and the only one of the principals still standing when the stage clears.
- Rosencrantz & Guildenstern
- Two courtiers with one function. Their maps are identical apart from the line joining them to each other — which is the joke, and also why they die offstage, in one line delivered by an ambassador who has come about something else.
- Fortinbras
- Prince of Norway, the third son of a killed father, and the man who walks in at the end to inherit a country the other two plots have emptied. Easy to skim past on a first read; impossible to miss on the map.
- The Gravediggers
- The First Clown carries 50 mentions — more than Fortinbras and Osric combined — and is the only figure in the play who out-talks Hamlet.
- Yorick
- Twenty-three years dead and still on the map: the court jester whose skull supplies the most quoted image in English drama. He connects to exactly one person.
Questions people ask about Hamlet
How many characters are in Hamlet?
This map carries 33 named figures and 65 relationships, drawn from the full public-domain text. Published counts disagree because editions disagree about what to count — whether the Ghost, the travelling players, the play-within-the-play cast, and unnamed attendants belong on the list. This map includes them, and shows the passage that names each one.
Who are the main characters in Hamlet?
Sized by how often Shakespeare actually names them: Hamlet (360 mentions), Claudius (160), Polonius (128), Horatio (115), Gertrude (103) and Ophelia (87). That ordering surprises most readers — Polonius and Horatio both outrank the two women the plot is usually said to turn on, which tells you something about who is given words and who is given a fate.
How is Hamlet related to Claudius?
Claudius is Hamlet’s paternal uncle — the brother of the murdered king — and became his stepfather by marrying Hamlet’s mother after the funeral. He is also, as the Ghost reveals in Act 1, his father’s killer. The map draws all three ties separately, because the play never lets Hamlet consider one of them without the others.
Who dies in Hamlet, and in what order?
King Hamlet is murdered before the play opens. Then, in order: Polonius, stabbed through the arras; Ophelia, drowned; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, executed offstage in England and reported by the English ambassador; and in the final scene Gertrude, Claudius, Laertes and Hamlet. Horatio survives to tell the story, and Fortinbras arrives to inherit the throne.
Are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern the same character?
No — they are two men, but the play treats them as one instrument, and this map shows why the confusion is structural rather than careless. Their relationship maps are identical apart from the line joining them to each other: same summons, same king, same suspicious friend, same errand, same end. Shakespeare makes the joke himself in Act 2, when Claudius thanks “Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern” and Gertrude immediately reverses the names.
Who is Fortinbras, and why does he matter?
Fortinbras is the Prince of Norway and the third son in the play carrying a dead father: his was killed in single combat by Hamlet’s father, and he spends the play marching an army in search of the lands lost with him. On this map that appears as a direct line between Fortinbras and the Ghost — a relationship between two people who never meet. He takes the Danish throne in the last speech, which is the play quietly noting that the son who acts is the one who inherits.
Which text is this map built from?
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, from Project Gutenberg (eBook #1524), which is public domain — so the exact text behind every quote is free to read tonight. If you are buying an edition to study, the Arden and Folger texts carry the notes and the quarto/folio variants this one does not.
Is the map free to use?
Yes. This map opens for anyone, with no account and no signup. Making your own map of a text you upload is what the free plan and the paid plans are for.
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, public domain, via Project Gutenberg (eBook #1524). Evidence quotes are capped at 50 words — the discipline we build with, not a licensing workaround.
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