How would you play the "bad guy"? We are so very lucky to have Marty Curry playing Claudius in Hamlet next month... Here are a few of his thoughts, or Claudius' thoughts really...
"A holdover of emotion from childhood where the fruits of the royal family fortune and love went to my older brother... and its not like he was a bad guy; I loved him. He was my brother. It seems strange but since he is gone I have more vivid and different memories of our childhood; luxury hotels, lavish tables furnished with foods from halfway around the world; servants, who but at a moments notice, would do whatever I asked...not because I was the King...always because I was the Kings Brother. But in an age where brother kills brother in wars, politics; and love, I could not take any more; I could not live by the code of family nor by the demands of my silence...and so I took his life... so I could do right... so I could serve Denmark the way it deserved to be served. Is that so wrong?
And now I pay for it with sleepless nights and a nagging in my right ear from God. Sometimes i think i even can see him (my brother...not God) out of the corner of my eye... my brother; taunting me still; or maybe waiting...waiting..waiting...to have his revenge.
Even she, in her grief and her sorrow gives me a look; from time to time; that makes me think she knows. But times when her head is on my shoulder, me thinks I hear her call be by his name...No matter. She loves ME! In her despair she has but given me the one thing that I need to make this work...she has given me love.
But my heart lies.
It seems now I am living waiting for the other shoe to drop...and for...HIM...to claim his rightful title...and therein is the turmoil that send a shiver up my spine. I think back to when young Hamlet was born and how happy I was for my Brother...a child...a son. perhaps a tinge of jealousy when the family was placed ahead of our fishing trips and our poker nights...but all in all, happiness and joy for his birth...And it was great to watch him grow up; the young prince. But still I knew; that there would come a time when there must be a confrontation...a time when the childish things must be put away and the duties to God and State must be fulfilled...and there would be a reckoning...
But seriously...he is only a school boy fresh back from Wittenberg and do the people really believe that HE could be King??!?? We would be in a far worse place if the matters at hand were left to his youthful...experience. Patience...patience. This dog and pony show is but in its first act...and we are masters of our own demise.
AND... now I am King! I am the Alpha and Omega in the eye of the people (ahem, forgive me Lord for my sin of vanity). The affairs of State have been settled and we...WE...must with all our countenance and excuse delay the onslaught by this upstart Fortinbras...at least that is the facade of how this State will be run. We'll work a war as the focus while we take liberties with...liberty...HA! ( I am so clever) And it may become a template for future men of my...ilk...to assume the control of the world through this manner...to create wars and fight our neighbors to distract while the covert affairs of genius rage.
My name is Claudius.
I'm the bad guy."