And the vile villains are ...

Thank you to all who took the time and effort to write about your favourite Shakespeare villain. The two best entrants have won tickets to Steven Berkoff's tour de force creation Shakespeare's Villains: A Masterclass in Evil.

Entrants ruled that the Bard's baddest included Iago, Shylock, Richard III, Claudius, Macbeth, Lady Macbeth and, interestingly, Hamlet.

Both of the top two have opted for seats at Berkoff's Civic Theatre season (he's also at the Bruce Mason Centre in Takapuna earlier next week). Our winners will take themselves and a partner to see Berkoff at the Civic on March 5: they are Xavier Hornblow, of Grey Lynn, and Nick Jacob, of Pt Chevalier.

NICK JACOB: In defence of Hamlet

I see no villainy in Hamlet's acts,
Just delayed response to murderous facts,
When watching him plan the death of the king,
My hands together, I silently wring.
Old Polonius slain by accident
Was his only mistake and was not meant.
Prying advisers should not come between
An angry son and his mother, the queen.
The usurping king had no rightful place
And merited nothing of Heaven's grace.
Hamlet is more sinned against than sinning,
I will him on, imagine him winning.
But you can't bring your dad back from the dead
And Hamlet's afflictions go to his head.
The awful bloodbath at the bitter end
Is the result to which his actions tend,
And when senseless deaths are laid at his door,
They fully expose his terrible flaw.
Hamlet, refusing to be decisive,
Takes up methods entirely divisive.
Leaves himself exposed and without allies,
No longer having familial ties.
Alone in the world he contemplates death
And whether his life is worth drawing breath.
As revenge is all that keeps him going,
He can only reap what he's been sowing.
A lover, mother, potential brother
Slain while trying to murder another
Adds up to tragedy realised too late,
And this is the way the writer seals his fate.

XAVIER HORNBLOW: Four hundred years after writing his plays, it's only natural that some of Shakespeare's most dastardly villains would be struggling for relevance.

The anti-semitism of his portrayal of Shylock the Jewish moneylender serves as a prime example. My favourite villain, however, remains as despicable and malevolent as he did in 1600. He represents the ultimate prototype of hypocritical spin-doctoring: King Claudius of Denmark, uncle and stepfather of Hamlet.

Murdering his brother in order to steal his throne and his wife in two months is downright nasty, sure, but by no means outdoes other Shakespearean miscreants. What sets him apart is his utter gall. Claudius lectures his nephew (the rightful heir to the throne, lest we forget) on the wisdom of cheering up and forgetting his father's existence completely - "we pray you, throw to Earth this unprevailing woe; and think of us as a father".

Not likely.

Royal or not, anyone who refers to themselves in the third person twice in one sentence deserves a fatal stab wound, and in Shakespearean tragedy they usually get it.

When it comes to hurling insults, painful and entertaining, Claudius is a worthy recipient. Hamlet paints him as a "bloody, bawdy villain, a remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain". Ouch.

An advantage of Shakespeare's lack of stage directions is that each director gets to choose how to dispose of this "smiling, damned villain".

My choice? Give him some of his own medicine: a dose of the same deadly poison he poured into his brother's ear.