Hamlet, Laertes and Fortinbras are all reflections on each other Essay

The world is a looking glass. This synecdochic statement of nineteenth century English novelist, William Makepeace Thackeray, encapsulates the idea of considerations of ourselves being evident all around us in different aspects of the world. Whether in the voice communication, actions or attitudes of others, we tend to turn back something of ourselves.Shakespe ar employs this cornerstone of verbal expression in his works such as in Antony and Cleopatra where Caesar recognises that Antony is, as stated by Maecenas, a spacious mirror set before him and this glints to Caesar some(prenominal) the dimensions of he and his fellow triumvir, leading Caesar to the realisation that the world is not big enough for the two of them as can be interpreted from we could not dillydally together/ In the whole world. Reflection is thus a recurrent motif in Shakespeares works, and is a key issue which arises in the public life of the play Hamlet. Hamlet is a play which involves a lot of refl ection and mirroring in various ways.One of the most notable is the play within a play or The Mousetrap which mirrors the relationship female monarch Hamlet had with Gertrude as sound as the manner in which King Hamlet was scoreed. Hamlet him ego sees deed as a way of reflecting inner corruption holding the mirror up to nature. The idea of mirroring or doubling can further be seen in Shakespeares use of literary techniques like hendiadys such as in Hamlets reflective To be, or not to be soliloquy where he says, slings and arrows of give awayrageous fortune and whips and scorns of time or later in the play where Hamlet says to Horatio, Fortunes buffets and rewards. Shakespeares use of hendiadys helps to place emphasis on the message he is trying to get across as the words mirror separately other and act as a sort of parallelism, creating a balance in the phrases. But even more notable in the play with regards reflection, is the manner in which the characters of Hamlet, Laertes and Fortinbras reflect on each other. These three characters are all young men who, at some point, have disconnected or will lose a father.Hamlet has returned to Denmark from school in Wittenberg to bewail his fathers death and is so much in grief that he says, How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable/ Seem to me all the uses of this world The use of lists and exclamation marks emphasises the extent of his grief and make us sympathise with him. Young Fortinbras has also lost his father, Fortinbras, as we come to know from Horatios speech that King Hamlet Did slay this Fortinbras. Laertes, in the course of the play, also returns from France to Denmark to find that his father, Polonius has been killed.They thus reflect on themselves in that they have all lost their fathers, barely moreover in that they all seek to avenge the deaths of their fathers. Hamlet is charged by the ghost of King Hamlet to Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder The exclamation mark and use of striki ng adjectives high clarification that this is an order, a duty which Hamlet has to carry come forth, and he expresses his feelings about this in the heroic couplet, The time is out of joint O cursi d spite,/ That ever I was born to set it right. Fortinbras, likewise, is seeking to avenge the death of his father, King Fortinbras of Norway by regaining the land lost by his father in war, and waging war on Denmark. When Hamlet sees Fortinbras leading his army through Denmark to Poland, he draws parallels between his cause and that of Fortinbras. Similarly, Laertes, on finding out about his fathers death, declares, Ill be revenged/ Most throughly for my father. Hamlet recognises the similarity between his cause and that of Laertes and states later on in the play, For by the get wind of my cause, I see the portraiture of his. However, it is open to interpretation whether or not Hamlet was referring to revenge as his cause, for as Philip Edward argues, Harold Jenkins points out that Ha mlet but does not recognise himself as a proposed victim of Laertes revenge, and thus Hamlet simply meant, when he made that statement, that as a son grieving his father, he should have realised that grief makes one act strangely. Nevertheless, Hamlet does recognise an aspect of himself reflected in that of Laertes. Thus, Hamlet, Laertes and Fortinbras all seek to avenge the death of their fathers, but they each work towards this end with varying methods.Whilst Hamlet is the vacillating, hesitant one searching for proof and taking his time, and Fortinbras is the calculating but quick-acting, resolute one, Laertes is the more aggressive typical revenge hero. Hamlet spends so much time dithering and searching for proof that the ghost has to reappear to whet thy almost blunted purpose. The use of words associated with knives or daggers, that is whet and blunted, remind us that Hamlets purpose is to kill to avenge his father, rather than his inactivity.Hamlet says of Fortinbras, on t he other hand, that his life is with divine ambition puffed and thus he is able to lead the Norwegian army to fight over a little patch of demesne. Laertes brutal, aggressive approach can be seen not only in the way he breaks into the Danish palace to confront Claudius over his fathers death but also how he says of Hamlet that he would cut his throat Ithchurch The aggressiveness in this statement is emphasised by the use of alliteration in throat and thchurch.Thus, their varying methods are comparable, so that we can identify from one to the other the preferent path or more successful path to have taken. Whilst Laertes and Fortinbras are thus more typical Aristotelian tragic heroes, in that they have harmony as once their personality and motivations are established, they continue throughout the play. Hamlet, on the other hand, falls short of this as he dithers and almost loses sight of his goal. This sheds light on a reason for which Shakespeare appears to have made use of refl ections in his work- that of revealing shortcomings.Hamlet, Laertes and Fortinbras reflect on each other in such a manner that they highlight the shortcomings of each other. As Shakespeare states in his Sonnet 77, Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear. The whole idea is that our reflections make us more aware(predicate) of our flaws, and this can be seen where Hamlet, having seen Fortinbras march his army through Denmark, says, How all occasions do inform against me,/ And spur my dull revenge He is reminded, by the reflection of his cause in that of Fortinbras, that whilst Fortinbras is active and resolute, his revenge is dull.This idea of reflections showing our flaws or shortcomings is also employed by Shakespeare in Richard 11 where the deposed king hopes to see his sorrows etched in his reflection and states, Give me that glass, and therein will I read. /No deeper wrinkles yet? The alliteration in give and glass as well as the use of rhetorical question help to high light the kings desperation to see his sorrows in his reflection. Reflections also act, in Shakespeare, as a trigger or a call to action.When Hamlet sees Fortinbras and his army, it spurs his revenge so that he is led to say in a rhyming couplet, Oh from this time forth,/ My thoughts be bloody or be nada worth. His use of the graphic adjective bloody emphasises his resolution and is rather reminiscent of the sort of decisiveness that we would expect from a typical revenge hero. Furthermore, when Hamlet sees the portraiture of Laertes cause in the image of his, he is led to regret his outburst to Laertes at their battle at Ophelias grave and to court Laertes favours.Ophelia, in the course of the play, refers to Hamlet metaphorically as The glass of fashion. He appears to have been the reflection of what noblemen should be the one to be emulated. completely noblemen in Hamlets Denmark, like the society of Shakespeares England, were expected to remark and imitate the manners of the prince. Thus, we can understand why Hamlet is, in the words of Claudius, loved of the distracted multitude and why Fortinbras speaks of him so highly.Nevertheless, following his act of madness and outburst at Ophelia, Ophelia mourns that this noble mind, this glass of fashion, is quite, quite downward(a) The repetition of quite relays to us how greatly Hamlet has changed from the reflection of nobility that he used to be. It is also interesting to note that Hamlet sees a reflection of his cause in that of Fortinbras and Laertes towards the end of the play in a form of anagnorisis. However, at the start of the play, he seems deeply sceptical about the ability of anything to reflect him truly.According to Philippa Kelly, he mocks verbal and physical display as having the incapacity to denote me truly. In his mocking summation of Laertes even in the last-place act of the play, he appears sure that nothing and no one could reflect Laertes he his semblable is his mirror, and who else would trace him, his umbrage, nothing more. His argument is that words fall short of describing Laertes greatness, but earlier on we know that he has declared that he sees a reflection of his cause in that of Laertes.Thus, although Hamlet, ab initio, comes across as one who feels that nothing can reflect him, nothing can denote him truly or body him forth as would the dissection of his organs, he comes to realise that reflections are indeed everywhere as can be interpreted from William Thackerays statement, The world is a looking glass. In the actions, words, causes and attitudes of others, particularly Laertes and Fortinbras, he sees a reflection of his own self and is, from these reflections, made aware of his shortcomings and spurred to action in eventually avenging the death of his father.