Toxic Masculinity Distracts While Ophelia Drowns, 4.7: (Part 7) Labors of Gratitude and Regret in Hamlet

Part 7: Laertes' Labors of Gratitude & Regret: Toxic Masculinity Distracts While Ophelia Drowns (Hamlet 4.7)
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). For an index of previous posts in this series, see the end of this post.

Sorting Out Hamlet 4.7
The seventh scene of Act Four in Hamlet may seem packed with superfluous details that could be (and probably often are) cut: It’s a long play; usually, cuts are made. Laertes still has questions about his father’s death: if Hamlet intended to kill Claudius, then why didn’t Claudius take action against Hamlet? Claudius shares more flattery with Laertes, conveying to Laertes some things Claudius claims (truthfully or not) that Hamlet said about Laertes, and also a story he may elicit from Laertes about a Norman in France named Lamond. A lot of guy-talk. Men talking about manly concerns. Right after Laertes has been reunited with Ophelia, who seems to have had a nervous breakdown.

How to make sense of all of this?

First, it’s helpful to remember that Laertes returned to Denmark only in 4.5, and with a mob, seemingly ready to blame and kill Claudius for the death of his father. Claudius is still working on Laertes to be certain he is no longer a threat, so this explains some of the flattery and chummy man-talk.

Second, Laertes for his part may be a bit awestruck that he has this extended audience with the king, his deceased father’s boss, who has promised that he had nothing to do with Polonius’ death, and also says he will help Laertes obtain revenge against what Claudius calls Laertes’ true enemy, Hamlet. Claudius, of course, is using Laertes.

Third, we know that by the end of the scene, Gertrude will enter and tell the tale of Ophelia’s drowning death.

So I have a proposal: If one is filming this scene, I think it should be a split-screen, showing Ophelia hanging flowers in the willow and climbing its branches on one side, the branch breaking, sending her into the water while she continues to sing and sink. On the other side of the screen we get to watch Laertes and Claudius: Laertes is more concerned about receiving flattery from the king and getting revenge than he is about his sister; Claudius is more concerned about using flattery to save his own neck, and killing Hamlet, than he is about Ophelia or Laertes.

Or if one were to stage this instead of filming it, find a way to divide the stage, or to have Claudius and Laertes talking somewhere off-stage, perhaps in the midst of the audience or in an aisle, while we watch Ophelia hang flowers and drown center-stage.

The reason I propose this is that I think Shakespeare meant for the superfluousness of the flattery and man-talk in this scene to offer a tragic counterpoint to the neglect of Ophelia and her drowning. We *should* feel a bit impatient while these guys go about their man-talk and revenge-talk, and while Ophelia is somewhere falling into the water, unaware of the danger (if we believe Gertrude), and then drowning. This is one illustration of what toxic masculinity can look like: Ophelia is in great need, but these men neglect her in favor of manly concerns of power; they have no power to save her, nor empathy great enough to focus their power on the possibility of helping her.

Some might respond: Oh, but this is not commensurate with the understanding of madness at the time in Shakespeare's London, and people would have avoided Ophelia or had her committed to a place like Bedlam hospital in London. But in fact, a bit earlier in the play, when Polonius proposed that perhaps Hamlet’s madness was caused by love, Gertrude expressed her hope that Ophelia’s kind attention might restore Hamlet’s healthy mind.

If the hope was that Ophelia’s love might cure Hamlet of his madness, then whose love and kind attention might restore Ophelia? Hamlet's if Claudius was not trying to send him to his death on a sea-voyage to England? Or perhaps at least her brother’s love, but he is too focused on receiving flattery and planning revenge.

In that way, Claudius and Laertes are guilty of neglect while Ophelia drowns. We frequently hear people blame Hamlet for all the deaths in the play with a sloppy sort of logic that says if only Hamlet had killed Claudius while Claudius was at prayer, many deaths might have been avoided. This is sloppy and short-sighted logic because it seeks to find a single, simple answer, a magic bullet solution, by having Hamlet change just one thing, and then we don't have to expect other characters to be responsible for their own bad choices.

But in this scene, Laertes and Claudius are certainly negligent to let their attention become so preoccupied while Ophelia is in great need and peril.

Once a letter arrives telling of Hamlet’s return (and news to Claudius that Hamlet is not dead in England), Laertes is easily distracted by Claudius to plan revenge against Hamlet.

Pazzi Conspiracy: “To cut his throat i' the church”
Claudius asks Laertes to what length he would go to show his love for his father and desire for revenge, not merely in words, but in action. Laertes responds that he would cut Hamlet’s throat in the church. This is an interesting phrase in part because we don’t have any scene in the play that takes place in a church. Frank Ardolino (Apocalypse & Armada) noticed references to the Pazzi Conspiracy in The Spanish Tragedy, and this is probably one such reference in Hamlet.

The Pazzi Conspiracy was to Shakespeare’s time something like what the assassination of Abraham Lincoln is to citizens of the USA in our own time. Students are taught in school about how, in 1865, John Wilkes Booth gained entrance to the Presidential Box of the Ford Theater, shot the president, and then jumped down to the stage before escaping the building. As of this writing, that assassination was 154 years ago.

The Pazzi Conspiracy took place in 1478, about 125 years before the first quarto of Hamlet was published. It involved the attempted assassination of Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici, but succeeded in killing only Giuliano. Laertes’ line would evoke audience memory of the Pazzi Conspiracy because the assassination plot involved an attack in a church, or more specifically the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, or Duomo di Firenze, whose famous dome had been designed by Filippo Brunelleschi. The conspiracy was especially scandalous because while Pope Sixtus said the church could not sanction killing, he would be grateful if the Medici were removed. For Catholics, the incident highlighted the need for reform in the church. For Protestants, the event became emblematic of Roman corruption. Add to this the fact that two of the assassins were named Francisco and Bernardo (Francesco de' Pazzi and Bernardo Bandini dei Baroncelli), the same as the first two characters on stage, the sentinels. It seems probable that among other possible allusions in Hamlet, the Pazzi Conspiracy is at least one of them.

If Americans are motivated to recall the assassination of Lincoln in part because of ongoing civil rights struggles and things like the Black Lives Matter movement, people in Shakespeare's England were motivated to recall the Pazzi Conspiracy because of ongoing religious debates related to the English reformation.

News of Ophelia’s Death
Then word comes from Gertrude that Ophelia has drowned. In a future post, I’ll examine Gertrude’s manner of conveying this news. But for now we might note that Laertes speaks, not mostly of his grief, but of his effort to suppress it:

LAERTES
Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,
And therefore I forbid my tears: but yet
It is our trick; nature her custom holds,
Let shame say what it will: when these are gone,
The woman will be out. Adieu, my lord:
I have a speech of fire, that fain would blaze,
But that this folly douts it.

“The woman will be out” is his way of saying tears are unmanly, but once he’s done crying, that part of him he considers too feminine will be purged and gone. A very strange thing to say upon receiving news of his sister’s death, but indicative of how much his own manner of interpreting his masculinity means to him.

So Hamlet 4.7 has Laertes and Claudius distracted with flattery, man-talk, and man-revenge-talk, and later, after news of Ophelia’s death, Laertes seeks to purge from himself all trace of the feminine, his sensitivity to the world and openness to sorrow. This will change in 5.2, but not before he comes to more grief.


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Continued Next Week
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NOTE ON THIS SERIES OF POSTS:
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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