Hamlet and Laertes are figures crucial to the plot of ‘Hamlet.’ They are roughly the same age and are all engaged in a quest for vengeance and personal gain. However, there are few similarities between them. This paper will explore the differences between the characters and also how they themselves influence each other. Hamlet and Laertes go through dramatic and very quick changes in character as the action of the play develops and, from a certain perspective, their relationship forms the focus of its final act. Most importantly, this paper will argue that by considering Hamlet and Laertes together then it is possible to make a fundamental claim regarding the play’s protagonist and his failings.
Hamlet’s relation to knowledge and action is inseparable from his occasionally espoused world view that he speaks several times throughout the play. It is introduced clearly in his first soliloquy: ‘How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable / Seem to me all the uses of this world. / Fir on’t ! O fie! ’tis an unweeded garden, /That grows to seed; things meek and gross in nature / Posses it merely…..’ (I.II.133-37). Hamlet is introduced in the play as someone who has no interest in action in the world. The world itself has been judged by him to be unworthy, including everyone who lives in it. In a memorable passage of ‘The Birth Tragedy’ Nietzsche compares Hamlet to his Dionysian man. He writes that;
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"Hamlet and Laertes".
‘both [Hamlet and the Dionysian] have gazed into the true essence of things, they do have acquired knowledge and they find action repulsive, for their actions can do nothing to change the eternal essence of things; they regard it as laughable or shameful that they should be expected to set to rights a world so out of joint. Knowledge kills action; action requires on to be shrouded in veil of illusion. (Nietzsche 40, 1999)
Nietzsche describes Hamlet as caught between an understanding of truth and a lack of knowledge. This differentiation leads to a quest for an ever increasing sense of empirical certainty. This certainty is finally achieved in Act III through the use of the play ‘The Mouse Trap,’ however it does prove to be enough. Rather Hamlet seeks more knowledge. He seeks verifiable certainty that his uncle will be damned when he kills him. He misses the opportunity to enact revenge stating: ‘Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent; / When he is drunk, asleep or in his rage, /Or in the incestuous pleasures of his bed / At gaming, swearing or about some act / That has no relish of salvation in’t. (III.III.88-92) This scene takes place at the literal centre of the play and shows that Hamlet, in the course of acting out his revenge is weighed down by the necessity for knowledge, an experience which Nietzsche would claim is related to his inherent understanding of the truth of the unchangeable nature of the world.
In contrast to this, Laertes is presented from the start of the play as someone who remains in control of the facts and is able to make his way consistently and effectively through the world. When he is first introduced he speaks to Claudius of his desire to return to university as soon as possible: ‘Dread my Lord, / Your leave and favour to return to France / From whence though willingly I came to Denmark / To show my duty to your coronation, / Yet now, I must confess, that duty done, / My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France’ (I.II.51-57).
When he returns to Elsinore, upon hearing of Polonius’s death at the hands of Hamlet, Laertes immediately resolves upon a course of revenge and of justice. He exclaims to Claudius:
“To hell allegiance! Vows to the blackest devil! / Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit! / I dare damnation. To this point I stand, / That both worlds I give to negligence. / Let come what comes; only I’ll be revenge’d / Most throughly for my father.” (IV.V.130-36)
Hamlet invokes hell several times throughout the play, although it is never expected that he intends to take action which would risk his soul. Laerte’s claim that he would risk damnation stands in direct contrast to Hamlet who is pre-occupied throughout with the uncertainty of what lies after death and what ‘dreams may come’ were he to commit suicide.
Later, upon Hamlet’s re-entrance to Elsinore, it is clear that Laertes will enact his revenge at the first opportunity as he moves to fight Hamlet, and is only stopped by the intervention of Gertrude and Claudius. Later in the final act Laertes shows himself to be completely committed to revenge as he speaks to Claudius about ways of making sure that Hamlet is killed, and is persuaded to conduct in his revenge in an intelligent and manipulative way in order to avoid civil disorder.
A.C. Bradley writes that Hamlet’s exceptional intellect is strange: ‘It shows itself, fitfully, in the affairs of life as unusual quickness of perception, great agility in shifting the mental attitude, a striking rapidity and fertility in resource…Hamlet easily sees through them [others] and masters them.’ (Bradley 2001, 48.) This is certainly true, however it is precisely this capacity for mastering other people which prevents Hamlet from taking action. He may persuade others to act in certain ways but he is unable to do so himself. Laertes, on the other hand, is easily influenced by Claudius into plotting to kill Hamlet in a way which is desirable to both of them. This is possible because, unlike Hamlet, Laertes is not acting against the world itself. He sees nothing fundamentally corrupt in the institutions which he serves, and even if he did then it is unlikely that he would allow this to intervene with his personal mission. Hamlet, on the other hand, is set against the whole of nature. This is the major difference between the two characters.
In conclusion, this paper has argued that by seeing Hamlet and Laertes together it is possible to greatly understand Hamlet’s tragic flaw. This flaw can be seen not merely as one of inaction but also of the overestimation of importance. Hamlet is unable to develop a project because he necessarily brings the entire world to bear on each decision. Laertes, in contrast, exists with a fixed goal and motivation, whether it be study or gaining revenge for his father and his sister. It is this that most obviously separates the two characters and that shows Hamlet to be both an extremely enigmatic, though ultimately tragic failure.
- Bradley. A. C. Shakespearean Tragedy. Penguin, London, 1991. Print.
- Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings. Translated by Raymond Guess. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Print.
- Shakespeare, William. “Hamlet” The Norton Introduction to Literature: 11th Edition. Edited by Kelly J. Mays. London: Norton, 2001. Print.
