'Consider Laertes's contribution to the theme of revenge.' Hamlet

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‘Consider Laertes’s contribution to the theme of revenge.’   -----Hamlet

   Of the various parallels between Hamlet and Laertes is one of the most telling. From the beginning of the play we see the two in comparable situations, each young men of the court, each seeking university, each spied on by Polonius, each (it would appear) loving Ophelia, in different ways. Therefore, when Laertes finds himself in Hamlet’s position of having a father murdered, the audience watches with interest to see how he will react, and how this will compare with Hamlet’s behaviour in the same situation.

   In fact, although Hamlet points out that:

‘by the image of my cause I can see

The portraiture of his’

Laertes reaction to murder of his father is very different from hamlet’s, and indeed he is everything which Hamlet rebukes himself for failing to b. He forms the very epitome of a traditional avenger, and almost everything he does forms a contrast with what Hamlet does not do.

   Immediately as he returns to the court ‘in a riotous head’, having recruited ‘a rabble’, to aid him in his revenge. Thus we see that he finds both opportunity and means to destroy his father’s supposed murderer as soon as he possibly can. It is sometimes argued that Hamlet has little opportunity, doing the first two acts of the play, at least, to confront Claudius and exact his revenge. However, it is clear that  - particularly since he is ‘loved by the distracted multitude’ – Hamlet might have actively created such an opportunity for himself, just as Laertes does.

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   Furthermore Laertes is determined that he will ‘dare damnation’ in order to revenge his father. This is very important when soliloquy beginning, ‘To be or not to be’, in which he confesses that ‘the dread of something after death’ is, in part, what makes him ‘lose the name of action’, for again we see hamlet’s attitude to his task differs radically from that of a traditional avenger.

   This is also apparent when Laertes says that he would ‘cut (Hamlet’s) throat I’ th’ church !’, since we are immediately reminded that Hamlet refused to kill Claudius, when given the ...

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