Epic heroes are usually described as brave, admirable, and glorious. The character Hamlet from Hamlet by William Shakespeare is an example of an epic hero but a completely different one from the usual. He is not the kind of character that perfectly has those qualities, he actually has the opposing ones.The quality that makes him unique though and different from Beowulf would be that he is based on language while Beowulf just says and does.
In the play Hamlet the author, Shakespeare, comes up with many soliloquies that Hamlet recites. Every time before a problem came up or he was about to do something to resolve it, Hamlet would think it over. For example "To be or not to be", since he had the problem of whether he should kill himself or not, he went through a whole thought process before deciding on what to do. Hamlet at the end though ends up not doing anything which makes him a coward. Several times Hamlet over thinks what he is going to do and at the end he fails to do it.Another example would be when he is about to kill King Claudius, again he starts thinking about it and ends up doing nothing. Beowulf on the other hand, he would say he would do something and never would he stop to think about what was going to happen to him. Beowulf was one one that was brave and courageous. Even though he knew he was in the risk of dying while fighting all those monsters, he still was willing to take the challenge. This character was not one that would let his problems get to him, he'd manage to get rid of them as soon as he could.
Hamlet was also not admirable whatsoever and it was mostly because of how depressed his thoughts would get him. Everything he would think would just bring pure negativity especially because he kept them to himself and would just act by them. For example all his thoughts about everything like his father and the revenge would make him just seem like a crazy person to all the others. He was definitely someone that was not to be admired in other peoples' eyes. He would always act in the way that people would just think pure negativity towards him. Beowulf though, everyone admired him. This character was a true hero to all his people because of all the actions he took. He also was the kind that did anything to make his people happy like at the ending when he let everyone have the treasure that he had. He wanted to make sure that every one of his people were taken care of.
The play, Hamlet, did not really have a glorious ending which means that Hamlet was not glorious. Hamlet did end up killing King Claudius but he was pretty much left with nothing. The protagonist did not have his love Ophelia because she was dead, his mother died, and even he died. Once he killed King Claudius all the characters put the pieces together but really they didn't think of him as that great hero that everyone praises, they pretty much just thought that they had been fooled the whole time. Beowulf though was glorious in almost all the fights with the monsters except for the last one. He was one that was able to experience glory and was viewed as a glorious leader unlike Hamlet.
Characters in literature can have so much in common but then again they can be the exact opposite. Hamlet from the play Hamlet by Shakespeare and Beowulf would be an example of two different characters. Being that Hamlet thinks over what he is going to do is what makes him different from Beowulf because of the fact that he does not think about what he's going to do but he just does it.
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