the foils of hamlet In his plays, Shakespeare often puts the antagonists in circumstances similar to or resembling the problems of the main character or hero. He does this in order to give us a clear perception of what the characters are like, through contrast or similarity between them. These literary experiments are called foils. In Hamlet, Shakespeare gives us many foils for Hamlet, the main character. One major foil is Ophelia. Hamlet and Ophelia …showed first 75 words of 1583 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1583 total…directly. It can be gathered that Polonius was what kept everyone together, yet apart at the same time. He was what kept direct conflicts out of the picture, and now that he was dead, the pinnacle of conflict came into play. There was no one there to confuse the characters, so there was nothing left to do but confront eachother, hence, the death of Polonius lead to the deaths and demise of the other characters.