Hamlet. Of Course.?

Question

Consider the ways in which Ophelia, Laertes, and Fortinbras are able to accomplish what Hamlet cannot. Refer specifically to Hamlet's sililoquies and to the speeches of the other characters involved.

So pretty much what I have, is that they are all characters of action. Laertes and Fortinbras are able to avenge their fathers deaths, and take action. Ophelia, though I may have a tough time arguing this, could have sought revenge against Hamlet by killing herself.

Any ideas? Thanks!

Answer 1

i read it so long ago, i don't remember much. but one thing i do remember is that Ophelia is supposedly very courageous to have killed herself by lying face up in shallow water.

does that help?.. i think hamlet was not able to accomplish that... he wanted to commit suicide but had to question himself by asking,

"to sleep, per chance to dream.... "

Answer 2

You're pretty much on the money. The "To be or not to be" soliloquy demonstrates Hamlet's lack of willingness to even make a decision, let alone take action.

"To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of arrows and by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep, to sleep perchance to dream, aye, there's the rub, for in the that sleep of death what dreams may come must give us pause." He can't even decide if just giving up and killing himself is the way to go!

He can't even make up his mind as to whether he should kill Claudius for killing his father, since the only "witness" is a ghost. Hamlet considers the complexity of action and the impossibility of certainty (not knowing if whatever decision he makes is the right one), whereas Ophelia, Laertes and Fortinbras are not burdened with such mental depth.

Answer 3

Fortinbras is the young King of Norway. He doesn't have to avenge anyone. Fortinbras succeeded to the crown of Norway in a way that Hamlet did not. "Fort" = strong, in "bras" = arm. He is conquering everywhere. At one moment, Hamlet comes upon the Norwegian army and asks someone where it is going. "'Gainst some part of Poland, Sir," is the reply. Fortinbras comes in at the end to the pile of bodies in Elsinore castle, having conquered Denmark.

By the way, why did Hamlet not succeed his father as King of Denmark? He was his father's son. Claudius was a brother, not in the direct succession.

I am truly sorry to give this next explanation to women. Perhaps women posters can call me wrong. Ophelia (in my view) does not commit suicide. She lays herself down in the river, because that idea occurs to her. "Long could it not be, however..."

Laertes avenges his father because he is goaded to it and guided to it by Claudius. Claudius poisons the tip of the sword, poisons the drink between passes of swordplay. "The point envenomed too? Then venom do thy work!"

Answer 4

What did they accomplish that Hamlet did not? Self-destruction.

A unifying theme of Hamlet is "To thine ownself be true" (1,3,78). Of all the main characters, Hamlet is the only one who finally is true to himself. Consequently, of all the main characters, Hamlet is the only one who avoids self-slaughter.

Even Horatio is taught by Denmark to "drink deep" (1,2,175) and so tries to drink the last drops of poison from the cup. But Hamlet saves Horatio so that he can tell Hamlet's story and teach us all not to drink from the cup of self-slaughter (5,2,346).

Fortinbras Sr. and Fortinbras Jr. value land more than they value themselves. Fortinbras Sr "did forfeit his life" fighting for land (1,1,91). Fortinbras Jr goes to war, "exposing what is mortal and unsure to all that fortune, death, and danger dare, even for an eggshell" (4,4,51), "a little patch of ground that hath no profit in it but the name" (4,4,18), that is "not tomb enough and continent to hide the slain" (4,4,65).

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, willing spokes to the king's nave (2,2,30;3,3,15), are deliverers of their own death warrant (5,2,44-59).

Polonius is a busybody, minding everybody's business but his own. Thus he was killed by a sword-thrust meant for somebody else. (3,4,33)

Laertes subverts his own life so totally and unthinkingly to filial duty that he is willing to go to hell to revenge his father's death (4,5,131). Although he is satisfied in nature with Hamlet’s repentance, he continues the fatal duel until by some elder masters [Claudius] he has a voice and precedence of peace. Thus he is fighthing not for himself but for a cause borrowed from Claudius.

When Laertes allied himself with Claudius he dulled the edge of his husbandry. Then, in the subsequent duel with Hamlet, Laertes first wounded Hamlet with his poison-tipped sword, then accidently exchanged swords with Hamlet and was fatally poisoned with his own sword. Thus he was a borrower and lender of swords, and was killed by a lent sword while fighting for a borrowed cause. [We shall see later that Laertes symbolized Christopher Marlowe and that "go far with little" is a paraphrase of Marlowe’s "infinite riches in a little room." (The Jew of Malta,]

Gertrude cannot separate her too two solid flesh (this "solidity and compound mass",3,4,49) from the doomed flesh of Claudius. Her soul is grappled to his "with hoops of steel" (1,3,63) - wedding bands. So she drinks poison, extending her union into hell (5,2,331).

Ophelia lets her brother keep the key to her memory. She "does not understand herself so well as it behooves" Polonius's daughter, and so she lets her father tell her what to think (1,3,105). When she falls into the water, she makes no attempt to save herself because her true self has already been lost. She dies by falling into a mirror image of her father in the "glassy stream"

Both Claudius and Hamlet Sr are unable to separate themselves from their land. So they slaughter their own souls, dooming themselves to be dragged down into hell by their possessions. Hamlet Sr is "doom'd...to walk the night" (1,5,10) to "walk in death" for "extorted treasure in the womb of earth" (1,1,140). Claudius could save his soul by sincerely repenting, but he cannot repent because he won't give up his kingdom and he cannot "be pardon'd and retain the offense" (3,3,56), he finally drinks a poison "tempered by himself" (5,2,332).

In the end, Hamlet recovers his true self in time to save his soul, although not his life.