Fearsome, Flattered, Glimpsing Transformation, 4.5: (Part 6) Laertes and Labors of Gratitude and Regret in Hamlet
This is the latest installment in a multi-part series examining how characters interact in Hamlet, offering opportunities, gifts, planting seeds for future inspiration, or for changes of heart & mind. It follows ideas from Lewis Hyde (“The Labor of Gratitude,” a chapter in his book, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property). See notes at the end for more details about the series, and for an index of other posts in the series.
[Images from Act 4, scene 5 of Kenneth Branagh's 1996 Hamlet: L: Laertes (played by Michael Maloney)& mob;
R: Ophelia (played by Kate Winslet), Laertes, & Claudius (played by Derek Jacobi).]
(Continued from the previous week's post)
[Nathaniel Parker as Laertes in Franco Zeffirelli's 1990 Hamlet]
A Laertes to be Feared?
The next time we see Laertes (4.5), his father is dead and his sister has gone mad. The Laertes who had an example of kings to fear and dread (and who referred to Claudius in 1.2 as his “dread Lord”) has heard of his father’s death and returned to Elsinore with a crowd of armed “rabble” who want to proclaim him king. He now establishes himself as one to be feared, in search of vengeance. In an apparent display of honor and self-control reminiscent of King Hamlet who defeated Old Fortinbras in single battle, he insists that the others remain outside and guard the door while he confronts Claudius:
[Alan Bates as Claudius & Nathaniel Parker as Laertes in Franco Zeffirelli's 1990 Hamlet]
LAERTES
I thank you: keep the door. O thou vile king,
Give me my father!
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Calmly, good Laertes.
LAERTES
That drop of blood that's calm proclaims me bastard,
Cries cuckold to my father, brands the harlot
Even here, between the chaste unsmirched brow
Of my true mother.
This is ironic, because Claudius may have cuckolded his brother, King Hamlet, if he had an adulterous affair with his brother's wife, Gertrude.
The understanding Shakespeare reflects here is that it’s natural for a son of a murdered father to be angry and want revenge. By that logic, it would unnatural, perhaps a sign of a bastard child fathered by some other man, to not be angry, not wish revenge. Yet the church taught that in baptism, we die to the old Adam, die to selfish nature and sin, and as we put on the baptismal garment, we also strive to “put on” Christ, to be like Jesus. Everyone in Shakespeare’s audience knew this from their regular church attendance, required by law. The gospels also have Jesus say, “You have heard it said, an eye for an eye”; instead, he says people should love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them. In that way, we’re reminded of Adam and the “old” nature which may be vengeful, as compared to the new challenge of Christian transformation which is willing to forgive and love enemies.
It’s also ironic that while Laertes gives voice to this line of argument about what is natural in him, demanding revenge for his natural father, we later see prince Hamlet on the sea-vogage find a new adoptive father in Providence, and in the memory of an old surrogate father-figure, Yorick. Hamlet lets the old Adam begin to die in him as he becomes more like merciful Providence and Yorick, but Laertes is not there yet, still a slave to his passions for revenge.
Claudius begins to work on him right away, to welcome Laertes, to insist that his king is not to be feared, and eventually, to turn Laertes against Hamlet:
CLAUDIUS
What is the cause, Laertes,
That thy rebellion looks so giant-like?
Let him go, Gertrude; do not fear our person:
There's such divinity doth hedge a king,
That treason can but peep to what it would,
Acts little of his will. Tell me, Laertes,
Why thou art thus incensed. Let him go, Gertrude.
Speak, man.
LAERTES
Where is my father?
CLAUDIUS
Dead.
LAERTES
How came he dead? I'll not be juggled with:
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 the worlds I give to negligence,
Let come what comes; only I'll be revenged
Most thoroughly for my father.
CLAUDIUS
Who shall stay you?
This rhetorical question seeks to impress on Laertes that Claudius has no wish to dissuade Laertes from revenge.
And we have yet more irony: What Laertes says about allegiance, vows, conscience and grace seems it would also have applied to Claudius before he poisoned his brother.
Claudius believes Hamlet was to be executed in England, so he’s confident that news of an executed Prince Hamlet as the murderer of Polonius will satisfy Laertes.
Who will stop Laertes from revenge? Not Claudius. Who, then, Claudius asks?
LAERTES
My will, not all the world:
And for my means, I'll husband them so well,
They shall go far with little.
(Practicing good and economical husbandry, not wasteful, Laertes sounds here like his father, but also like a David standing up to a Goliath.)
CLAUDIUS
Good Laertes,
If you desire to know the certainty
Of your dear father's death, is't writ in your revenge,
That, swoopstake, you will draw both friend and foe,
Winner and loser?
LAERTES
None but his enemies.
Here, Claudius wishes to deceive Laertes into believing that he is a friend, not a foe, simply to save his own life and throne. Claudius is still playing the part of the seeming-generous and honest king, but he is neither. He will make Laertes want to know who Claudius says his true enemies are, and then he will deceive Laertes with the idea that Hamlet is his true enemy, and not the murderous, usurping Claudius who caused all these problems in the first place, which Hamlet set out to fix in such a flawed way by stabbing an unseen man behind the arras.
So after Laertes says he will only act against his enemies, Claudius asks:
KING CLAUDIUS
Will you know them then?
LAERTES
To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my arms;
And like the kind life-rendering pelican,
Repast them with my blood.
The image of the pelican, feeding its young with its own blood, is traditional symbolism for Christ. The original audiences of the play, more familiar with the pelican-Christ metaphor, should feel cognitive dissonance between a vengeful Laertes and a self-sacrificing Christ who offers the gift of his blood for the eternal life of many.
While Laertes seemed at first willing to dare damnation and oaths, he now sincerely seeks the truth about the identity of his enemies, and while still clearly committed to revenge, he is willing to be like a Christian symbol of Jesus’ self-sacrifice to those who would be his friends. This drips with irony regarding a revenger blinded by his passion.
Claudius is not his friend. Claudius wishes to deceive him. But just as Laertes accepted the grandstanding gift from Claudius of leave to return to France, Laertes will now accept more gifts of help from Claudius. This demonstrates what Lewis Hyde says about how some gifts are better rejected, because they bind us to people who do not have our best interests in mind; and if gratitude for gifts often moves us to become like the gift or giver, Laertes would not wish to be deceived and used, or to become more like the murderous, usurping, adulterous, incestuous poisoner, Claudius.
But through playing the good cop, through playing at welcome and trust and generosity, Claudius deceives Laertes into believing they are friends, and he seals it with a fatherly compliment:
CLAUDIUS
Why, now you speak
Like a good child and a true gentleman.
That I am guiltless of your father's death,
And am most sensible in grief for it,
It shall as level to your judgment pierce
As day does to your eye.
Claudius claims to be guiltless of Polonius' death, which is only true in the most narrow sense, but in a larger sense, if Claudius had not killed his brother and taken the throne, Hamlet would never have put on the play to test his uncle's conscience, or killed Claudius by stabbing him through the arras.
More Gifts from Ophelia
Ophelia enters again to be reunited with her brother for the first time since his departure for France, and she says a number of things that might be considered gifts, or gems of insight, but it’s unclear whether Laertes fully grasps or appreciates these as gifts, or of her madness is merely more motivation for her revenge. Laertes sees his sister and notes, interestingly:
LAERTES
Nature is fine in love, and where 'tis fine,
It sends some precious instance of itself
After the thing it loves.
In fact, this could be used to describe the dynamics of life-changing gifts: when we receive a gift we truly admire and wish to emulate, it is as if a part of us goes after the beloved giver or gift in search of becoming more like them. If Laertes truly loves his sister, and she him, even in her madness, she may be planting seeds in him that may come to fruit later, and he may send something of himself after her, even giving up a bit on his plan of revenge, letting it go in favor of an alternative Ophelia demonstrates for him.
[Helena Bonham Carter as Ophelia in Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet, 1990]
Soon Laertes observes regarding his sister:
LAERTES
Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge,
It could not move thus.
If Ophelia had her wits and had been advocating revenge, it would not sound at all like what Ophelia is actually saying in her apparent madness.
Ophelia continues the next two lines in song, and perhaps the third and fourth are spoken:
OPHELIA
You must sing a-down a-down,
An you call him a-down-a.
O, how the wheel becomes it! It is the false
steward, that stole his master's daughter.
[Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Ophelia in 2009 Hamlet with Jude Law, directed by Michael Grandage]
I have written on this blog before about how the tale of the false steward was identified as probably that of a Ben Jonson play in which a girl is taken by a selfish steward while her father is away at war, and later when she falls in love, she is led to believe she is not worthy of the match because of her low birth, when in fact, her true parentage makes her worthy. Shakespeare’s play toys with the idea of true parentage: Hamlet finds a heavenly father in Providence and a better earthly father-figure in the memory of Yorick, similar to the way Francis of Assisi renounced his natural father and found a better father in heaven, as well as the idea of Jesus as son of Mary and a carpenter, Joseph, when his truer parentage is of heaven.
If Ophelia is turning this plot over in her mind, she may be realizing that her brother and father were bad stewards for making her feel unworthy of the match with Hamlet, and for advising her to fear the one she loved. A truer father, or heavenly father, might claim she was worthy of marriage to a prince, or anyone she chose. If so, this comment about the false steward is an interesting insight and a potential gift to her brother. Whether he is ready to receive it is unclear.
After giving away flowers, which various scholars have argued are insightful gifts associated with the traditional meanings of flowers from herbology of the age, Laertes does seem to note that something of Ophelia’s performance has been a kind of gift to him, and that he has been witnessing transformative gifts at work in her:
LAERTES
Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself,
She turns to favour and to prettiness.
Laertes witnesses his sister being something of an alchemist, turning baser metals (baser realities, emotions) into gold! This transformative power is not unlike that of Jesus. More on that later. But for now, we should note that Ophelia, even in madness, has transformative gifts, and Laertes names this, makes it absolutely explicit.
Unfortunately, he is still committed to revenge, and Claudius is still committed to deflecting his own guilt for his brother’s murder to spare his own neck, so Laertes doesn’t contemplate how he, himself, might take the hell of his own sorrow, afflictions, and passion for revenge, and turn them to favor, or to something more beautiful than revenge.
Before she exits, Ophelia seems to sing of her father, or perhaps also of the dead king, and then ends with a kind of prayer or blessing:
OPHELIA
God ha' mercy on his soul!
And of all Christian souls, I pray God. God be wi' ye.
If religiously-inclined people encounter transcendent and sometimes strangely benevolent mystery, and call it “God,” and if this applies to characters in Hamlet, then perhaps God is with them, incarnate in some way in Ophelia’s grief and in her attempts to turn affliction to favor. But this gift and her blessing - God be with ye - may be lost on Laertes, still shell-shocked by his grief, who wonders if God is even paying attention to the disaster that has befallen him and his family:
LAERTES
Do you see this, O God?
Shakespeare seems inclined at times to use female characters to be Christ-figures, like Desdemona in Othello, and Cordelia in King Lear. In the Christianity of Shakespeare's time, Jesus is not only a sacrificial victim who dies on the cross, but also a transformative figure adept at spiritual metaphors, changing water into wine, and bread and wine into his body and blood. The quality Laertes observes in Ophelia, her ability to transform affliction into favor, is a Christ-like transformative ability. But as with many critics’ reactions to Othello and Lear, some only perceive a play about an absent god who is not listening, rather than an incarnate presence of a transformative Christ-figure/victim, an offered grace that is neglected or missed by other characters.
Claudius, always on the lookout for an opportunity, quickly speaks up with more deception to win Laertes to his side, like a false steward or false father figure, misleading an adopted son:
CLAUDIUS
Laertes, I must commune with your grief,
Or you deny me right. Go but apart,
Make choice of whom your wisest friends you will.
And they shall hear and judge 'twixt you and me:
If by direct or by collateral hand
They find us touch'd, we will our kingdom give,
Our crown, our life, and all that we can ours,
To you in satisfaction; but if not,
Be you content to lend your patience to us,
And we shall jointly labour with your soul
To give it due content.
Claudius here seems willing to be even more generous than Herod was to Salome (something I've explored in the past here on this blog): he claims to offer not merely up to half his kingdom, but in fact his whole kingdom. But he may be merely stalling for time. He is also confident that no one would consider Claudius guilty of killing Polonius. So it is, in essence, a false offer. The audience knows that if Claudius had not killed his brother (as I've asserted above), Hamlet would not have spoken to the ghost and attempted to kill what he thought mistakenly was Claudius behind the arras, only to find it was Polonius. Hamlet and Gertrude know that Hamlet considers Claudius a murderous usurper, but no one else in Denmark knows, because Gertrude seems to have kept Hamlet’s secret.
So a deceptive Claudius says he will “jointly labor” with Laertes’ “soul / To give it due content.” In fact, as soon as Hamlet’s letter arrives, he will labor to use Laertes to get rid of Hamlet, and in so doing, to continue to cover up the regicide/fratricide he committed. Instead of helping Laertes’ soul, he is endangering it.
LAERTES
Let this be so;
His means of death, his obscure funeral--
No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o'er his bones,
No noble rite nor formal ostentation--
Cry to be heard, as 'twere from heaven to earth,
That I must call't in question.
CLAUDIUS
So you shall;
And where the offence is let the great axe fall.
I pray you, go with me.
The audience knows that the initial and greater offense was committed by Claudius, but Claudius is not about to confess.
CONCLUSION for LAERTES in 4.5:
Dynamic Laertes, Open to Change, & Static Laertes, Committed to Revenge
We see in this scene how Laertes returns, passionate about obtaining revenge, but he is swayed by the lies and feigned generosity of Claudius who is only interested in saving his own neck, and who later, will turn Laertes into a poisoner like himself.
A dynamic Laertes who is open-minded and open-hearted seems at war inside of himself with a static Laertes who is stubbornly committed to revenge, unwilling to change or consider alternatives.
We also see how Laertes is moved by what he witnesses in Ophelia, who has absolutely no interest in revenge, and who displays a strange transformative power, an ability like alchemy, to change baser metals into gold, or to change affliction, passion, and hell, into "favour and prettiness."
Eventually, by play's end, the transformative powers that he witnesses in his sister will win out, but not before he has poisoned Hamlet, accidentally changed weapons with Hamlet, and Hamlet has unknowingly scratched him, too, with the same poison. Laertes will be transformed, but a bit late for him to save his own life and Hamlet's.
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Continued Next Week
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NOTE ON THIS SERIES OF POSTS:
Hamlet quotes are taken from the Complete Moby(tm) Shakespeare at mit.edu.
This is the latest installment in a multi-part series examining how characters interact in Hamlet, offering opportunities, gifts, planting seeds for future inspiration, or for changes of heart & mind. It follows ideas from Lewis Hyde (“The Labor of Gratitude,” a chapter in his book, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property).
- The more I examine characters in this way, the more I realize how the major characters in Hamlet are dynamic characters who change, becoming better or worse in one way or another. This approach goes against the grain of a great deal of scholarship that seems to reify (or thing-ify) too many characters (as foil, as Oedipal, as Machiavellian, etc.) and view them as more static, rather than as dynamic, fluid, interacting. For an index of previous posts in this series, see below.
- For Laertes, there are at least two diametrically opposed sets of gift-forces at work: One set involves Claudius & Polonius who pull him in a somewhat selfish direction. Other gift-forces that pull him in another direction come from Ophelia in 1.3, 4.5, and 4.7; and from Hamlet in 5.1 and 5.2.
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Index of other posts in this series:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2024/09/index-character-arcs-labors-of.html
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Disclaimer: If and when I quote or paraphrase bible passages or mention religion in many of my blog posts, I do not intend to promote any religion over another, nor am I attempting to promote religious belief in general; only to explore how the Bible and religion influenced Shakespeare, his plays, and his age.
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[Images from Act 4, scene 5 of Kenneth Branagh's 1996 Hamlet: L: Laertes (played by Michael Maloney)& mob;
R: Ophelia (played by Kate Winslet), Laertes, & Claudius (played by Derek Jacobi).]
(Continued from the previous week's post)
[Nathaniel Parker as Laertes in Franco Zeffirelli's 1990 Hamlet]
A Laertes to be Feared?
The next time we see Laertes (4.5), his father is dead and his sister has gone mad. The Laertes who had an example of kings to fear and dread (and who referred to Claudius in 1.2 as his “dread Lord”) has heard of his father’s death and returned to Elsinore with a crowd of armed “rabble” who want to proclaim him king. He now establishes himself as one to be feared, in search of vengeance. In an apparent display of honor and self-control reminiscent of King Hamlet who defeated Old Fortinbras in single battle, he insists that the others remain outside and guard the door while he confronts Claudius:
[Alan Bates as Claudius & Nathaniel Parker as Laertes in Franco Zeffirelli's 1990 Hamlet]
LAERTES
I thank you: keep the door. O thou vile king,
Give me my father!
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Calmly, good Laertes.
LAERTES
That drop of blood that's calm proclaims me bastard,
Cries cuckold to my father, brands the harlot
Even here, between the chaste unsmirched brow
Of my true mother.
This is ironic, because Claudius may have cuckolded his brother, King Hamlet, if he had an adulterous affair with his brother's wife, Gertrude.
The understanding Shakespeare reflects here is that it’s natural for a son of a murdered father to be angry and want revenge. By that logic, it would unnatural, perhaps a sign of a bastard child fathered by some other man, to not be angry, not wish revenge. Yet the church taught that in baptism, we die to the old Adam, die to selfish nature and sin, and as we put on the baptismal garment, we also strive to “put on” Christ, to be like Jesus. Everyone in Shakespeare’s audience knew this from their regular church attendance, required by law. The gospels also have Jesus say, “You have heard it said, an eye for an eye”; instead, he says people should love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them. In that way, we’re reminded of Adam and the “old” nature which may be vengeful, as compared to the new challenge of Christian transformation which is willing to forgive and love enemies.
It’s also ironic that while Laertes gives voice to this line of argument about what is natural in him, demanding revenge for his natural father, we later see prince Hamlet on the sea-vogage find a new adoptive father in Providence, and in the memory of an old surrogate father-figure, Yorick. Hamlet lets the old Adam begin to die in him as he becomes more like merciful Providence and Yorick, but Laertes is not there yet, still a slave to his passions for revenge.
Claudius begins to work on him right away, to welcome Laertes, to insist that his king is not to be feared, and eventually, to turn Laertes against Hamlet:
CLAUDIUS
What is the cause, Laertes,
That thy rebellion looks so giant-like?
Let him go, Gertrude; do not fear our person:
There's such divinity doth hedge a king,
That treason can but peep to what it would,
Acts little of his will. Tell me, Laertes,
Why thou art thus incensed. Let him go, Gertrude.
Speak, man.
LAERTES
Where is my father?
CLAUDIUS
Dead.
LAERTES
How came he dead? I'll not be juggled with:
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 the worlds I give to negligence,
Let come what comes; only I'll be revenged
Most thoroughly for my father.
CLAUDIUS
Who shall stay you?
This rhetorical question seeks to impress on Laertes that Claudius has no wish to dissuade Laertes from revenge.
And we have yet more irony: What Laertes says about allegiance, vows, conscience and grace seems it would also have applied to Claudius before he poisoned his brother.
Claudius believes Hamlet was to be executed in England, so he’s confident that news of an executed Prince Hamlet as the murderer of Polonius will satisfy Laertes.
Who will stop Laertes from revenge? Not Claudius. Who, then, Claudius asks?
LAERTES
My will, not all the world:
And for my means, I'll husband them so well,
They shall go far with little.
(Practicing good and economical husbandry, not wasteful, Laertes sounds here like his father, but also like a David standing up to a Goliath.)
CLAUDIUS
Good Laertes,
If you desire to know the certainty
Of your dear father's death, is't writ in your revenge,
That, swoopstake, you will draw both friend and foe,
Winner and loser?
LAERTES
None but his enemies.
Here, Claudius wishes to deceive Laertes into believing that he is a friend, not a foe, simply to save his own life and throne. Claudius is still playing the part of the seeming-generous and honest king, but he is neither. He will make Laertes want to know who Claudius says his true enemies are, and then he will deceive Laertes with the idea that Hamlet is his true enemy, and not the murderous, usurping Claudius who caused all these problems in the first place, which Hamlet set out to fix in such a flawed way by stabbing an unseen man behind the arras.
So after Laertes says he will only act against his enemies, Claudius asks:
KING CLAUDIUS
Will you know them then?
LAERTES
To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my arms;
And like the kind life-rendering pelican,
Repast them with my blood.
The image of the pelican, feeding its young with its own blood, is traditional symbolism for Christ. The original audiences of the play, more familiar with the pelican-Christ metaphor, should feel cognitive dissonance between a vengeful Laertes and a self-sacrificing Christ who offers the gift of his blood for the eternal life of many.
While Laertes seemed at first willing to dare damnation and oaths, he now sincerely seeks the truth about the identity of his enemies, and while still clearly committed to revenge, he is willing to be like a Christian symbol of Jesus’ self-sacrifice to those who would be his friends. This drips with irony regarding a revenger blinded by his passion.
Claudius is not his friend. Claudius wishes to deceive him. But just as Laertes accepted the grandstanding gift from Claudius of leave to return to France, Laertes will now accept more gifts of help from Claudius. This demonstrates what Lewis Hyde says about how some gifts are better rejected, because they bind us to people who do not have our best interests in mind; and if gratitude for gifts often moves us to become like the gift or giver, Laertes would not wish to be deceived and used, or to become more like the murderous, usurping, adulterous, incestuous poisoner, Claudius.
But through playing the good cop, through playing at welcome and trust and generosity, Claudius deceives Laertes into believing they are friends, and he seals it with a fatherly compliment:
CLAUDIUS
Why, now you speak
Like a good child and a true gentleman.
That I am guiltless of your father's death,
And am most sensible in grief for it,
It shall as level to your judgment pierce
As day does to your eye.
Claudius claims to be guiltless of Polonius' death, which is only true in the most narrow sense, but in a larger sense, if Claudius had not killed his brother and taken the throne, Hamlet would never have put on the play to test his uncle's conscience, or killed Claudius by stabbing him through the arras.
More Gifts from Ophelia
Ophelia enters again to be reunited with her brother for the first time since his departure for France, and she says a number of things that might be considered gifts, or gems of insight, but it’s unclear whether Laertes fully grasps or appreciates these as gifts, or of her madness is merely more motivation for her revenge. Laertes sees his sister and notes, interestingly:
LAERTES
Nature is fine in love, and where 'tis fine,
It sends some precious instance of itself
After the thing it loves.
In fact, this could be used to describe the dynamics of life-changing gifts: when we receive a gift we truly admire and wish to emulate, it is as if a part of us goes after the beloved giver or gift in search of becoming more like them. If Laertes truly loves his sister, and she him, even in her madness, she may be planting seeds in him that may come to fruit later, and he may send something of himself after her, even giving up a bit on his plan of revenge, letting it go in favor of an alternative Ophelia demonstrates for him.
[Helena Bonham Carter as Ophelia in Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet, 1990]
Soon Laertes observes regarding his sister:
LAERTES
Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge,
It could not move thus.
If Ophelia had her wits and had been advocating revenge, it would not sound at all like what Ophelia is actually saying in her apparent madness.
Ophelia continues the next two lines in song, and perhaps the third and fourth are spoken:
OPHELIA
You must sing a-down a-down,
An you call him a-down-a.
O, how the wheel becomes it! It is the false
steward, that stole his master's daughter.
[Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Ophelia in 2009 Hamlet with Jude Law, directed by Michael Grandage]
I have written on this blog before about how the tale of the false steward was identified as probably that of a Ben Jonson play in which a girl is taken by a selfish steward while her father is away at war, and later when she falls in love, she is led to believe she is not worthy of the match because of her low birth, when in fact, her true parentage makes her worthy. Shakespeare’s play toys with the idea of true parentage: Hamlet finds a heavenly father in Providence and a better earthly father-figure in the memory of Yorick, similar to the way Francis of Assisi renounced his natural father and found a better father in heaven, as well as the idea of Jesus as son of Mary and a carpenter, Joseph, when his truer parentage is of heaven.
If Ophelia is turning this plot over in her mind, she may be realizing that her brother and father were bad stewards for making her feel unworthy of the match with Hamlet, and for advising her to fear the one she loved. A truer father, or heavenly father, might claim she was worthy of marriage to a prince, or anyone she chose. If so, this comment about the false steward is an interesting insight and a potential gift to her brother. Whether he is ready to receive it is unclear.
After giving away flowers, which various scholars have argued are insightful gifts associated with the traditional meanings of flowers from herbology of the age, Laertes does seem to note that something of Ophelia’s performance has been a kind of gift to him, and that he has been witnessing transformative gifts at work in her:
LAERTES
Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself,
She turns to favour and to prettiness.
Laertes witnesses his sister being something of an alchemist, turning baser metals (baser realities, emotions) into gold! This transformative power is not unlike that of Jesus. More on that later. But for now, we should note that Ophelia, even in madness, has transformative gifts, and Laertes names this, makes it absolutely explicit.
Unfortunately, he is still committed to revenge, and Claudius is still committed to deflecting his own guilt for his brother’s murder to spare his own neck, so Laertes doesn’t contemplate how he, himself, might take the hell of his own sorrow, afflictions, and passion for revenge, and turn them to favor, or to something more beautiful than revenge.
Before she exits, Ophelia seems to sing of her father, or perhaps also of the dead king, and then ends with a kind of prayer or blessing:
OPHELIA
God ha' mercy on his soul!
And of all Christian souls, I pray God. God be wi' ye.
If religiously-inclined people encounter transcendent and sometimes strangely benevolent mystery, and call it “God,” and if this applies to characters in Hamlet, then perhaps God is with them, incarnate in some way in Ophelia’s grief and in her attempts to turn affliction to favor. But this gift and her blessing - God be with ye - may be lost on Laertes, still shell-shocked by his grief, who wonders if God is even paying attention to the disaster that has befallen him and his family:
LAERTES
Do you see this, O God?
Shakespeare seems inclined at times to use female characters to be Christ-figures, like Desdemona in Othello, and Cordelia in King Lear. In the Christianity of Shakespeare's time, Jesus is not only a sacrificial victim who dies on the cross, but also a transformative figure adept at spiritual metaphors, changing water into wine, and bread and wine into his body and blood. The quality Laertes observes in Ophelia, her ability to transform affliction into favor, is a Christ-like transformative ability. But as with many critics’ reactions to Othello and Lear, some only perceive a play about an absent god who is not listening, rather than an incarnate presence of a transformative Christ-figure/victim, an offered grace that is neglected or missed by other characters.
Claudius, always on the lookout for an opportunity, quickly speaks up with more deception to win Laertes to his side, like a false steward or false father figure, misleading an adopted son:
CLAUDIUS
Laertes, I must commune with your grief,
Or you deny me right. Go but apart,
Make choice of whom your wisest friends you will.
And they shall hear and judge 'twixt you and me:
If by direct or by collateral hand
They find us touch'd, we will our kingdom give,
Our crown, our life, and all that we can ours,
To you in satisfaction; but if not,
Be you content to lend your patience to us,
And we shall jointly labour with your soul
To give it due content.
Claudius here seems willing to be even more generous than Herod was to Salome (something I've explored in the past here on this blog): he claims to offer not merely up to half his kingdom, but in fact his whole kingdom. But he may be merely stalling for time. He is also confident that no one would consider Claudius guilty of killing Polonius. So it is, in essence, a false offer. The audience knows that if Claudius had not killed his brother (as I've asserted above), Hamlet would not have spoken to the ghost and attempted to kill what he thought mistakenly was Claudius behind the arras, only to find it was Polonius. Hamlet and Gertrude know that Hamlet considers Claudius a murderous usurper, but no one else in Denmark knows, because Gertrude seems to have kept Hamlet’s secret.
So a deceptive Claudius says he will “jointly labor” with Laertes’ “soul / To give it due content.” In fact, as soon as Hamlet’s letter arrives, he will labor to use Laertes to get rid of Hamlet, and in so doing, to continue to cover up the regicide/fratricide he committed. Instead of helping Laertes’ soul, he is endangering it.
LAERTES
Let this be so;
His means of death, his obscure funeral--
No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o'er his bones,
No noble rite nor formal ostentation--
Cry to be heard, as 'twere from heaven to earth,
That I must call't in question.
CLAUDIUS
So you shall;
And where the offence is let the great axe fall.
I pray you, go with me.
The audience knows that the initial and greater offense was committed by Claudius, but Claudius is not about to confess.
CONCLUSION for LAERTES in 4.5:
Dynamic Laertes, Open to Change, & Static Laertes, Committed to Revenge
We see in this scene how Laertes returns, passionate about obtaining revenge, but he is swayed by the lies and feigned generosity of Claudius who is only interested in saving his own neck, and who later, will turn Laertes into a poisoner like himself.
A dynamic Laertes who is open-minded and open-hearted seems at war inside of himself with a static Laertes who is stubbornly committed to revenge, unwilling to change or consider alternatives.
We also see how Laertes is moved by what he witnesses in Ophelia, who has absolutely no interest in revenge, and who displays a strange transformative power, an ability like alchemy, to change baser metals into gold, or to change affliction, passion, and hell, into "favour and prettiness."
Eventually, by play's end, the transformative powers that he witnesses in his sister will win out, but not before he has poisoned Hamlet, accidentally changed weapons with Hamlet, and Hamlet has unknowingly scratched him, too, with the same poison. Laertes will be transformed, but a bit late for him to save his own life and Hamlet's.
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Continued Next Week
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NOTE ON THIS SERIES OF POSTS:
Hamlet quotes are taken from the Complete Moby(tm) Shakespeare at mit.edu.
This is the latest installment in a multi-part series examining how characters interact in Hamlet, offering opportunities, gifts, planting seeds for future inspiration, or for changes of heart & mind. It follows ideas from Lewis Hyde (“The Labor of Gratitude,” a chapter in his book, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property).
- The more I examine characters in this way, the more I realize how the major characters in Hamlet are dynamic characters who change, becoming better or worse in one way or another. This approach goes against the grain of a great deal of scholarship that seems to reify (or thing-ify) too many characters (as foil, as Oedipal, as Machiavellian, etc.) and view them as more static, rather than as dynamic, fluid, interacting. For an index of previous posts in this series, see below.
- For Laertes, there are at least two diametrically opposed sets of gift-forces at work: One set involves Claudius & Polonius who pull him in a somewhat selfish direction. Other gift-forces that pull him in another direction come from Ophelia in 1.3, 4.5, and 4.7; and from Hamlet in 5.1 and 5.2.
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Index of other posts in this series:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2024/09/index-character-arcs-labors-of.html
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Disclaimer: If and when I quote or paraphrase bible passages or mention religion in many of my blog posts, I do not intend to promote any religion over another, nor am I attempting to promote religious belief in general; only to explore how the Bible and religion influenced Shakespeare, his plays, and his age.
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Thanks for reading!
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