#i'll be your foil laertes

[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.

[lizardrosen]

HAMLET 5.2 LOCKDOWN!!

this is my space for cryptic updates about my progress in this scene!

so far we've achieved:

Hey, you jackbooted sheep with your elephant caps I have come for my shit and I won't take less than that

Ready for blood, Laertes thinks, and then he regrets thinking it.

"I am satisfied in nature." Isn't that enough?

"I'll be your foil, Laertes!" "You mock me, sir." "No, by this hand."

In the shadow of truncheons with smoke in my eyes You will close in on madness and madness is not civilized

[yourlocal-lichen]

hey shut up Hamlet. I'LL be your foil, Laertes.

[verpaso]

I think that Ross naming the (partial) cure Formula X is similar to Hamlet saying "I'll be your foil, Laertes."

[theofficialpresidentofmars]

a marker i use to determine how ‘good’ an adaptation of Hamlet is is: how sympathetic is Hamlet as a character? Can they, despite all his flaws, mistakes, and occasional acts of cruelty, still make me genuinely empathise with a lost soul stuck in a vicious cycle of grief and loneliness? Is he humanised? Is he understandable? Do I grieve with him, for him?

The second marker i use is: how sympathetic is Laertes as a character? Is he portrayed as a self-righteous jerk, or is he portrayed as someone who’s completely right by the end of the play? Is he simply an opposing force sent to stop the protagonist or is his loss just as, if not more, heart-wrenching than Hamlet’s own? Between him and Hamlet do I view one or the other as either good or evil, or do I view them both as a contrast yet an exploration into the depth of the other? Are they merely enemies or foils?

Not that these factors are the end-all markers, but I do tend to find that my favourite adaptations will have me screaming biting banging my head into the wall all throughout Act 5

[verpaso]

I'll be your foil laertes