What does it feel like to be Laertes in Hamlet 5.2.324?
In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Claudius had conspired with Laertes to poison Hamlet with a rapier and a chalice of wine.
Hamlet apologizes for the death of Polonius: “I shot mine arrow over the house and hurt my brother” - an accident, blaming madness [1].
Laertes sees the queen drink deeply from the poison chalice. Laertes knows she will die.
Witnessing her, Laertes hesitates. Kill Hamlet, now? He says in an aside: “yet it is almost against my conscience.” (5.2.324)
But he is too committed to the plan, so he goes ahead.
What does it feel like to be Laertes in that moment?
In her book, “Being Wrong” (2010), award-winning author Kathryn Schulz notes that being wrong often feels exactly like being right.
When Laertes goes ahead with the murderous poisoning plan, when the crucifier follows orders and nails Jesus to the cross, when the Nazi starts up the gas chamber, some people are so committed to a false ideology that they don’t realize (as Laertes nearly does) that they are wrong when they do acts of great evil. Instead, many think they are in the right.
Some may later realize they were wrong, but in realizing it, they are no longer wrong [2]. Recognition of wrong is always in the past tense. Schulz: “Call it the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle of Error: we can be wrong, or we can know it, but we can’t do both at the same time.” (18)
Christian theologians have reflected on psychodynamics of the crucifier archetype. Faced with great good, we may criticize, lash out: What another represents may make us feel shame and envy, inspiring denial, violence, even murder.
We must erase them, like The Misfit shooting the grandmother in her moment of greatest compassion toward him, in Flannery O’Connor’s now famous 1953 story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” [3].
The presence of great good may bring evil in us to the surface where it is made plain, out in the open, vulnerable.
For Laertes, it is a moment of grace. He repents.
Others might not find such grace, or go that far.
NOTES: All references to Shakespeare plays are to the Folger Shakespeare Library online versions: https://shakespeare.folger.edu
[1] Hamlet didn’t even see who he was stabbing after all, thinking it was Claudius, and that he was getting revenge for the death of his own father. In the last scene of the play Hamlet says to Laertes that he sees something like his own plight in that of Laertes who also lost a father (at the hand of Hamlet, thinking it was Claudius behind the arras …)
As others have long noted: With an allusion to what St. Paul says In Romans 7:15–20 about the "madness" of temptation and sin, Shakespeare has Hamlet apologize and say something like St. Paul said:
Paul says it was not him but sin, in him, that does evil,
and Hamlet says it was madness, not Hamlet, that did wrong.
So in spite of the early plan to feign madness, Hamlet may be saying that madness (or sin) in him tempted him toward evil and revenge, and in blindly stabbing through the arras, Polonius became collateral damage.
[2] Schulz, Kathryn, Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error. Ecco, 2010. Page 18. Once we recognize that we were wrong, we are then in the right, and may feel terrible sorrow and contrition if our actions were particularly evil, but in that feeling, we are no longer wrong. Our actions were in fact wrong. When we committed them, we felt we were in the right. Recognition of wrong, if it ever comes, is always in the past tense, Schulz notes.
[3] O'Connor, Flannery. 1977. A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
- Or like Renee Good, as recorded in video on the phone of ICE agent Jonathan Ross, telling him, “I’m not angry at you, ” and then he shoots her and shouts, “F–king B-tch!” as Le Monde reports:
“Cell phone footage apparently taken by the officer who fired the fatal shots shows him interacting with Good as he approaches and circles her car, and her saying, "I'm not mad at you." After he passes in front of the car, another agent can be heard ordering Good to exit the vehicle before she tries to drive off and shots ring out. The agent filming the video can be heard saying "fucking bitch" at the end of the clip.”
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2026/01/10/anger-over-minneapolis-shooting-probe-fuels-protests_6749273_4.html
IMAGES:
TOP: Hamlet fights Laertes. Liebig card, published in late 19th or early 20th century. From a series depicting scenes from Shakespeare's Hamlet. Creator: European School (19th century). Chromolithograph. Public domain via https://www.lookandlearn.com/history-images/preview/M/M524/M524440_Hamlet-fights-Laertes.jpg
BOTTOM: An illustration showing fencing positions, 1610, public domain via https://archive.org/details/gri_33125009485448/page/n92/mode/1up
and https://daily.jstor.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/the_fencing_moral_panic_of_1500s_london_alt_1050x700.jpg
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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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