Becoming Claudius

Before I get started, apologies to all for not really posting anything over the Thanksgiving weekend.  I've only recently (yesterday) emerged from a turkey-induced stupor that left me completely unable to analyze King Lear (kidding...mostly...)



The game is up, Patrick.  We know.



Anyways, I've been looking over my group's script and deciding how I want to read my lines.  I see Claudius as a sort of wannabe puppet master in this play.  He thinks that he's committed the murder very smoothly and gotten away with it, so for the first half of the play (at least) I have to be imperious monarch who is congratulating himself on a job well done. 

KHAAN! Sorry, wrong captain.
The second option might look like this though.

But in the last part of the play, some kind of other emotion has to come into it.  For example, Claudius' aside, "It is the poison'd cup; it is too late" (5.1.3944) could be taken either as simply regretful, as in "Oh well, she's dead too.  Now I have to find another wife and son..."  or it could be "No!  My plan is coming undone right in front of my eyes!  It's claiming unintended victims! Hamlet really is crazy!"  You get the point. 

So which Claudius is more realistic?  Dispassionate egomaniacal killer or...emotional egomaniacal killer?