Hamlet

In "Hamlet," why is Claudius a bad guy?

Hmmm. I'm not sure "bad" is a strong enough adjective for Claudius, but here goes:

Claudius is the king of Denmark, a position he attained by murdering his brother, the rightful king. To add insult to injury, Claudius also married Gertrude, the king's wife and Hamlet's mother. He is willing to do whatever it take to secure power for himself, and has no scruples about his methods.

Even though he is both Hamlet's uncle and stepfather, he also makes arrangements to have him killed. He sends Hamlet to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to be executed by the English king. It is Hamlet, however, who ultimately succeeds in killing Claudius.

Claudius, through his love of power, has poisoned his brother and assumed the throne.  Additionally, he has lusted after his brother's wife, so in one act of treachery and murder, he satisfies two urges: to be King and to have Gertrude for his own.

Claudius is manipulative and selfish.  As with others who attain power through evil deeds, Claudius is suspicious and engages in spying on Hamlet.  He is an individual preoccupied with protecting his power.

He is not a good and worthy King, he is more concerned for himself than for his kingdom.  The definition of a good King usually stems from his devotion and commitment to his country not to his desire and lust for power.

He killed his brother and took his wife and his rule, and got away with it well sort of.

he killed his brother..hamlets father...right there you can tell he doesn't have any feelings at all and proves that he just wants power..he does want to be forgived..but you can't get back someone life..

i think we are over analyizing this play.  Obviously King Claudius was abused as a child.  If my father would beat me with a spiked mallet, sexually abused me, etc.  I would kill my brother, marry his wife, and pretend his son was now mine as well.  So lets not be so harsh on Claudius because we don't even know him. 

Yes.  Right from the beginning we find out that Claudius married his "dead" brother's wife.  Further along in the story, we find out that Claudius actually poisioned King Hamlet, his own brother, just so he could become King.  These are most certaintly not traits of a "good" guy, so, that only leaves one other option...

I dont believe that Claudius is a bad guy, I think that  greed was what impolsed him to do what he did.

Claudius character I believe suits him very well he portrays the typical antagonist that Shakespeare would include in his plays. So it is expected that he would be considered a bad guy. In reality though, he really isn't a bad guy, I feel that he just got a bit too carried away with his ambitions, similar to Shakespeare's other  play, Macbeth. 

Claudius is not necessarily a "bad guy" in my opinion. I say this because although he made extremely bad mistakes by killing King Hamlet, taking his spot on the throne, and marrying his wife, later on in the play we find out that he regrets killing him and asks for forgiveness. He says this in his prayer when Hamlet is about to murder him. So he is a bad guy in a way for what he did but we can't just label him as a complete bad guy. We also don't know anything about the rest of his life. Maybe he had something bad happen to him in his childhood and is all stupid in the brain. We don't know. But personally, I wouldn't call him a total and complete bad guy. Everyone makes mistakes (some worse than others) but if that's the case then we're all "bad guys".