#hamlet and laertes my favourite narrative foils

[theofficialpresidentofmars]

feeling righteous anger on behalf of Laertes again

like he’s kind of a jerk to Ophelia at the start. but he’s also sort of right. and siblings are just Like That. they’ve only had each other and Polonius for their whole lives and goodness knows how many times they’ve come to each other to talk about Polonius behind his back or to cry on each other’s shoulder. or the teasing or inside jokes or Laertes trying to be the one to empathise with Ophelia being the only woman in the family because lord knows Polonius won’t.

when Laertes warns Ophelia to stay away from Hamlet, he expects her to ignore his warning. He’s not entirely opposed to the idea truthfully- the prince does seem to like her well enough. It’s not like he couldn’t see it working out. But he’s also both overprotective and filled with the brotherly need to remind her of how much he himself can get away with, and he knows what men are like, so he tells her to keep her distance. She laughs, and says she will in a tone that suggests she very much won’t.

When he leaves for France, after the occasional scarce letter from his father about the prince’s state, Laertes expects the worst upon his return.

except he thinks the worst is that he’ll come back to his heartbroken sister, crying in her bedroom, and she’ll tell him that he was right, and he’ll tell her that all men are jerks and arrant knaves and they all suck. and he’ll offer her a tissue and maybe a lighthearted jest at their father or the prince or men again or something to improve her mood and she’ll laugh, and eventually she’ll be okay.

When he learns his father is dead, something inside him goes numb. He tries to remember what he and Ophelia used to complain about, but he can't think of anything. Polonius was all they had, after all. And for all his flaws, Laertes loved him.

When he learns his father was murdered, he swears he'll have the head of the monster that killed him.

And when he gets back to Elsinore, when he hears of the circumstances surrounding his father's death and sees the state of his sister, he burns with an anger he never knew he was capable of.

When his sister's funeral is disrupted by the prince himself, claiming to grieve, claiming to have lost more than Laertes could even comprehend, Laertes finds his hands around his throat before he can even fully realise what's happening. How DARE he? How dare he put an end to what little service the king would allow to put his sister to rest? How dare he claim he ever loved her when his actions put her in the grave? How dare he pretend to have lost when he could not possibly understand what he put Laertes through? What he put Ophelia through?

It's only natural that less than two days later, he finds himself at the other end of a poisoned blade. A dirty play, Laertes knows, to stab at your opponent before the round starts, but Laertes is so beyond any sense of fairness or mercy by now. The prince is dead within the half hour, his sister and father revenged, justice served.

What he doesn't expect is the prince to take the blade out of his hands and return the blow. And as he bleeds, Laertes realises the fate he's resigned himself to.

What he doesn't expect is the look in the prince's eyes after his mother falls, holding her as she dies. It's a terrified, vulnerable, pained expression, the likes of which he's never seen on the prince. The kinds of emotion he was beginning to doubt the prince was capable of, even. But Laertes can see in his face that, strangely enough, they only seem to scratch the surface of some melancholy that runs bone-deep.

And of all things, Laertes can't help himself but be struck with a sense of empathy for the villain. He remembers how he felt after the death of his father. He knows how it feels to live without a mother.

He thinks of the desperation he himself felt to find out who was at fault, and he thinks about Claudius. He thinks about how quick Claudius was to encourage his vengeful plans. He thinks about how Claudius had the opportunity to stop his own wife from drinking poison, but said nothing. He thinks about how the prince acted towards Claudius in the time before he left the country. He thinks about how the prince was then, grieving over the death of his father.

Something starts to make sense.

There's not a full hour between them. Maybe, in these last moments, he won't be the only one avenged.

Laertes calls out to Hamlet and warns him of his fate, revealing Claudius' plan. Within less than a minute, the king is dead.

There never was enough time to get a further explanation from either party, but in the little time they had left, some understanding was had. Perhaps it was Laertes' empathy. Perhaps it was his realisations. Perhaps it was the dwindling clock, and the idea that he'd see his father and sister again soon.

He'd talk it out with Hamlet then. For now, his and his father's death did not come upon him, nor his on himself.

[theofficialpresidentofmars]

I’ve always been a fan of the Hamlet Sr and Claudius are identical twins for a few reasons (one, the hypocrisy of HJr when comparing the two, and two, in the months following his father’s death, HJr might occasionally turn a corner or catch a glimpse and for a moment, think he sees someone else. and then after the quick realisation that it’s Claudius, hate Claudius more for these moments. he swears the two of them are not identical to him. the difference is glaringly obvious. Hyperion to a Satyr. but although he denies it, his heart has almost stopped one too many times at the sight of someone he mistook for his father)

but I’d like you all to also consider, in a visual adaptation (I like to imagine an animated mini-series) of the play, the only difference between HSr and Claudius is that Claudius has a large, un-ignorable scar across the right side of his face. Doesn’t have to be explained, doesn’t have to be like intensely detailed or a horrible near-gaping wound or anything, just a noticeable scar across his right eye, perhaps. An easy identifier. If you were to approach him from the left, or even if you weren’t paying attention, still quite possible to mistake him for his better. (And well, perhaps a Lion King reference if you will).

Hamlet (Jr) can’t help but almost fixate on this scar. It’s bad enough as it is that it looks like he could be Claudius’s son, so he’s drawn to what sets them apart. What sets his father and him apart. Even if he won’t admit it, it’s practically the only difference between the image of his father and the image of this vile, incestuous murderer. It sticks out to him. It leers at him; it’s the difference between the idolised good and damned evil in his mind. It might re-contextualise some of the things he says, but it’s not like he hasn’t been nasty to other types of people (like women) before.

Let’s say he ends up in, I don’t know, some kind of fencing match. One where his opponent wields a blade secretly sharpened past what’s safe, for the sake of this hypothetical. If this opponent had the intent to wound him, and hadn’t had luck in the actual fencing part of duel for the past two rounds, he might be tempted to strike at Hamlet while he was unaware, and not facing him. But if Hamlet, upon hearing something slice through the air behind him, turned around; well, he might be a little too late to stop the blade’s interception, but he might be able stop the rapier from wounding his shoulder by unknowingly shielding it with his face.

And if the blade were to make contact, and one of his eyes were to go red as blood leaked into it from a fresh wound, a shallow but clean slice lengthwise along the right side, he might have a number of things running through his mind. Pain, blinding anger, shock, realisation. He might hear Horatio’s gasp from somewhere nearby, which he could take as a sign that it looked bad-

If he didn’t already know exactly how it looked. What he looked like.

Who he looked like.