Similar to Mac Duff and Mac Beth, Fortinbras plays to Hamlet as one of Shakespeare’s many foils. While Hamlet is for the most part superior to Fortinbras, he does reveal in one of his soliloquies envy toward the Norse prince. Before the soliloquy begins, Hamlet has been informed by one of Fortinbras’ captains that Norway is venturing to Poland to wage battle over a “little patch of land”, more so that 20,000 men are willing to fight for this worthless piece of land just for the honor of young Fortinbras. In this last soliloquy, Hamlet is reflecting upon Fortinbras’ determination to go against the Polish army and bring power to his crown, while he himself has done nothing to avenge the murder of his father and the disgracing of his mother.
How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.
(Hamlet 4.4. 32-35)
This to Hamlet is a cry of disgust for all the delay and waste he has spent. The ghost of his father who fixed Hamlet on revenge, whether it be a demon or not, is still the demon of his dearly departed father; and up until this point he had done nothing to absolve his father’s dying wishes. Then, comparing himself to Fortinbras, Hamlet’s envy is strikingly apparent.
Witness this army of such mass and charge
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puf’d
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death and danger dare,
Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour’s at the stake.
(4.4. 49-58)
This passage shines Fortinbras in a bright light compared to Hamlet. He is willing to risk everything for a mere chunk of land, for his honor. But Prince Hamlet is willing to risk nothing, to avenge his father’s crown, and his mother’s incestuous marriage. Fortinbras is able to lead a great army of 20,000 men, while Hamlet is still a schoolboy. Hamlet realizes, through the eyes of jealousy and zeal that he has no time to waste in planning his revenge and taking action. His words seem to hint towards a tragic ending. “O, from this time forth, My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing more.” (65-66). In his last soliloquy, Hamlet’s personality is revealed through comparison to Fortinbras. The reader sees how at a mere suggestion of failure he commits to do nothing but seek revenge. This line reveals that Hamlet will vie to avenge his father at all costs to himself and others. His last quote, referring to nothing but bloody thoughts, seems to be a reassurance that Hamlet will take revenge; to more effect, it also foreshadows what lays ahead for Hamlet himself, and nearly everyone else.
So it can be seen that Fortinbras is the perfect foil to Hamlet. They are two men, completely opposite of each other in nature, befuddled in the exact same situation. Hamlet does not necessarily hold Fortinbras in contempt or hate, but more in envy. Although his mind and madness seem to scar him more than anything, Hamlet’s tragic flaw, his hamartia, is his inability to act; his unwillingness to get things done lies in sharp contrast to that of Fortinbras. Another of Shakespeare’s fabled characters, Brutus of Julius Caesar, is not at all unlike Fortinbras, and certainly a contradictory figure when compared to Hamlet. Brutus, one of the main conspirators against Caesar, accomplished tasks; hence Caesar’s murder. And while Brutus ended up killing himself, he made no haste in killing one of the greatest men in the history of Rome, a man to whom Hamlet’s uncle Claudius, the subject of Hamlet’s would-be revenge, pales in comparison to. Hamlet’s ability to be great is never questioned; in truth, his mind is probably superior to that of Fortinbras and Brutus. In fact, his mind is at such a high, complex level that it is actually a weakness of his. It’s not that Hamlet thinks too much, he possesses a self-madness stemming from his father’s death and his mother’s incestuous marriage. In line with most Greek and Shakespearean tragedies, the main character, Hamlet, focused on one thing, “bloody thoughts” of revenge, that ultimately led to his demise.
After reviewing Hamlet’s envy of Fortinbras, a question whole-heartedly arises over whether or not Fortinbras is one worthy of envy, especially from Hamlet and from Shakespeare’s readers of the Elizabethan Age. Why should a man whose sole conquest is to attack the wanton lands of Poland, be a subject of envy in Hamlet? It’s with little thought that one would believe Shakespeare to envy him, for nearly all of the rulers he writes about are involved in tragedies. Consider this, it is right to envy Julius Caesar’s epic conquests of Gaul and Britannia and his military might, but not to covet his murdering of innocent women and children, his insertion of the Roman bloodlines, or his needless destruction of towns. Is it even correct to envy military masters then, for do their conquests rarely stand the test of time? The downfall of Rome is legendary. Also, by the age of twenty-six Alexander the Great had conquered most of the known world, but he saw his might only to be fought over after his death and eventually lost. Look at Italy and Macedonia today, do they hold any might? Shakespeare, who has stood the test of time, is more envious than all of these men. However, it was not wrong of Hamlet to envy Fortinbras, for he had accomplished so much. In fact, young Hamlet was not unlike Julius Caesar, who in his travels to Spain wept at the sight of great Alexander’s statue, weeping over the fact that he had accomplished nothing in his time on Earth, while Alexander, at his time in life, had been a near deity. It may not be without coincidence that both Caesar and Alexander are alluded to in Hamlet.
In ancient Greek plays, most notably in the works of Euripides (one of the three great Greek tragedians, along with Aeschylus and Sophocles), a god would descend upon the stage to straighten out the mess humans had gotten themselves into. This god was known as the deus ex machina. While Shakespeare did not read Greek, Fortinbras’ character draws a similarity to that of Euripides’s god. He is a character with little prior action in the play who comes to the Danish land to claim his throne and apparently fix everything.
For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune.
I have some rights of memory in this kingdom,
Which now to claim my vantage doth invite me.
Let four captains
Bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage;
For he was likely, had he been put on,
To have proved most royally; and for his passage
The soldiers’ music and the rites of war
Speak loudly for him.
Take up the bodies. Such a sight as this
Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.
Go, bid the soldiers shoot.”
(Fortinbras 5.2. 419-435)
So now, why exactly did Shakespeare have Fortinbras appear on stage? Fortinbras, first and foremost, was a foil to Hamlet. He represented what Hamlet had not achieved. Secondly, to add to the tragic revenge of Hamlet, Fortinbras brought tragic irony and vain to Hamlet’s efforts to serve his father and become king. Lastly, while Shakespeare probably did not intend it, Fortinbras came on the scene of the play with little mention, to seize the crown of Denmark and give Hamlet a proper showing. He also attained what Hamlet could not; vastly not superior to Hamlet in many ways, Fortinbras avenged his father’s death and became the king that Hamlet could not be. Life, therefore, is not without a sense of irony.
