Hamlet — William Shakespeare

Hamlet is the most analysed character in the history of literature — a Prince of Denmark whose paralysing indecision in the face of moral certainty has made him the archetype of intellectual introspection. Goethe saw him as the sensitive soul overwhelmed by duty; Freud saw an Oedipal complex; Nietzsche saw a man nauseated by knowledge. The character's capacity to sustain 400 years of contradictory interpretations is itself the measure of Shakespeare's genius.