Laertes and Ophelia’s relationship is clearly one of mutual love. They both appear to care greatly for each other as shown by their terms of address for each other. Ophelia refers to Laertes as ‘good my brother’; and Laertes to Ophelia as his ‘dear sister’. This increases the emotiveness of the exchange due to the strong feelings, and in turn keeps the audience hooked. The whole extract is based upon the relationship between Ophelia and Hamlet, and Laertes concern relating to the relationship. Ophelia appears slightly upset by her brothers take on the situation and reveals her feelings to Hamlet through this; ‘Do you doubt that?’ suggests to the audience she does not doubt Hamlet‘s apparently strong feelings for her, and therefore increases the drama attached to the situation. Laertes feels Hamlets feelings are ‘a fashion’ and the audience will later examine the relationship of Ophelia and Hamlet with his opinions at the back of their mind and this will, therefore add to the following scenes’ drama.
The conversation is highly co-operative. The scene moves at a relatively fast pace and this is aided by Shakespeare’s use of stichomythia.
LAERTES But let me hear from you.
OPHELIA Do you doubt that?
As the conversation is co-operative the ideas within the extract can be depicted to the audience more clearly than in a highly charged exchange, and this aids the dramatic effect from the audiences reaction.
Shakespeare uses the theme of nature throughout this extract, with a semantic field relating to that. ‘winds’, ‘nature’, ‘spring’ and ‘liquid dew’ create a calming mood and the theme of nature reflects Laertes natural affection and caring attitude towards his sister. It also reflects the naivety of Ophelia in her attitudes to Hamlet, and may suggest to the audience this could be Ophelia’s downfall.
Rhyme is used by Shakespeare to create emphasis on the major feelings of his characters. Laertes and Ophelia use them at the end of each of there largest dialogues in this extract. Laertes on line 44-45 with ‘fear’ and ‘near’ and Ophelia on lines 50-51 with ’treads’ and ‘rede’. This therefore makes clear to the audience the prominent emotions of the characters. Shakespeare also uses rhyme traditionally to signal the end of a long section of dialogue or soliloquy.
Shakespeare creates in Laertes a character with a very authoritative lexis and vocal. The use of iambic pentameter places a stressed syllable at the end of each of Laertes spoken lines in the script, and places emphasis on a range of highly emotive lexis including ‘fear’, ‘desire’, ‘affection’ and ‘birth’. This will keep the audiences attention with great effect. His authority over Ophelia is further enforced by the sheer amount of speech ordained to Laertes. Laertes also has a large amount of pauses throughout his dialogue ‘Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear…’ relaying to the audience his passion for informing Ophelia and his strong beliefs in his take on the relationship between Ophelia and Hamlet.
Shakespeare’s use of characteristics of everyday talk create a dialogue between two characters which is emotive, thought-provoking and above all, due to the extracts position in the play, engaging for the audience.
