“To be or not to be”: an examination of Shakespeare's tragically flawed characters Shakespeare's tragedies often follow characters who hold a position of high power, but have flaws that become the reason for their demise . Although every character has a flaw, their flaws are not the same. Macbeth is obsessed with power, Hamlet has the inability to decide, and Othello suffers from severe jealousy. All three, however, die at the end of the play, hurt people they loved currently or in the past, and suffer from mental illness or grief. Hamlet, Macbeth, and Othello all begin as characters who have done nothing wrong. Hamlet is a simple prince, Macbeth is a noble man fighting for his land and Othello is a man in love with Desdemona, his wife. Over the course of the play, these characters succumb to their enemies who are other people and/or themselves. Hamlet's enemy is King Claudius who killed Hamlet's father with a drop of poison in his ear so that he could become king, however, Claudius is not his only enemy. . Hamlet's obsession with getting revenge on his father becomes too much for the people around him, and his decision to pretend to be mad becomes all too real. It begins by saying, “How strange or strange I act / As perhaps I will later.” think meet/put an old-fashioned disposition” (Hamlet, I.iii.170-172). At this point he admits that he is pretending to be mad, but later in the play Hamlet's madness seems to become real. Towards the end of the play, when Laertes is about to duel Hamlet, Hamlet says: What I have done may be thy nature, honor and exception. Smart enough, I here declare that it was madness. Didn't Hamlet wrong Laertes? Never Hamlet: If Hamlet is taken away from himself, and when he is not himself he does... middle of the paper... that's not true, he kills Desdemona because of how angry and upset he is. The lack of communication between him and Desdemona can be seen as a major factor in his death. Othello, Macbeth, and Hamlet have many similarities, but they also have many differences. Othello was led to certain death by a lie, Macbeth was led to his death by a committed murder, and Hamlet was led to his death by his quest for revenge for his father's death. Even though they all died in the end, each character died for a different reason and for a different purpose. In some people's eyes Othello and Macbeth can be seen as the villains. Othello kills the woman he loves based on some evidence shown by others, but he never talks to Desdemona about the evidence. Macbeth kills his king to rise to power, however his evil side seems to be more of a dissolution.