The Theme of Revenge-- Hamlet

Hamlet's Revenge

How does Hamlet's idea of revenge differ from those of Laertes and Fortinbras?

"Here, thou incestuous, [murd’rous,] damnèd Dane,

Drink off this potion. Is [thy union] here?

[Forcing him to drink the poison]

Follow my mother"

~Hamlet (V.ii.356-358)

"KING Good Laertes,

If you desire to know the certainty

Of your dear father, is ’t writ in your revenge

That, swoopstake, you will draw both friend and

foe,

Winner and loser?

LAERTES None but his enemies.

KING Will you know them, then?

LAERTES

To his good friends thus wide I’ll ope my arms

And, like the kind life-rend’ring pelican,

Repast them with my blood"

~(IV.v.159-169)

O, I die, Horatio!

The potent poison quite o’ercrows my spirit.

I cannot live to hear the news from England.

But I do prophesy th’ election lights

On Fortinbras; he has my dying voice.

So tell him, with th’ occurrents, more and less,

Which have solicited—the rest is silence.

~Hamlet (V.ii.389-395)

"KING

Hamlet comes back; what would you undertake

To show yourself indeed your father’s son

More than in words?

LAERTES

To cut his throat i’ th’ church.

KING

No place indeed should murder sanctuarize;

Revenge should have no bounds"

(IV.vii.141-146)

"And so have I a noble father lost,

A sister driven into desp’rate terms,

Whose worth, if praises may go back again,

Stood challenger on mount of all the age

For her perfections. But my revenge will come"

~Laertes (IV.vii.27-31)

"This quarry cries on havoc. O proud Death,

What feast is toward in thine eternal cell

That thou so many princes at a shot

So bloodily hast struck?"

~Fortinbras (V.ii.403-406)

"I do not know

Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do,'

Sith I have cause, and will and strength, and means

To do 't. Examples gross as earth exhort me:

Witness this army of such mass and charge,

Led by a delicate and tender prince,

Whose spirit with divine ambition puffed

Makes mouths at the invisible event,

Exposing what is mortal and unsure

To all that fortune, death and danger dare,

Even for an eggshell. Rightly to be great

Is not to stir without great argument,

But greatly to find quarrel in a straw

When honor's at the stake. How stand I, then,

That have a father killed, a mother stained,

Excitements of my reason and my blood,

And let all sleep, while, to my shame, I see

The imminent death of twenty thousand men

That, for a fantasy and trick of fame

Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot

Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,

Which is not tomb enough and continent

To hide the slain? O, from this time forth

My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!"

~Hamlet (IV.iv.47-69)

"How came he dead? I'll not be juggled with.

To hell, allegiance! Vows, to the blackest devil!

Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!

I dare damnation. To this point I stand,

That both the worlds I give to negligence,

Let come what comes, only I'll be revenged

Most thoroughly for my father"

~Laertes (IV.v.148-154)

"Laertes, was your father dear to you?

Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,

A face without a heart?"

~King (IV.vii.122-124)

"I am satisfied in nature,

Whose motive in this case should stir me most

To my revenge; but in my terms of honor

I stand aloof and will no reconcilement

Till by some elder masters of known honor

I have a voice and precedent of peace

To [keep] my name ungored. But [till] that time

I do receive your offered love like love

And will not wrong it"

~Laertes (V.ii.259-267)

"Haste me to know ’t, that I, with wings as swift

As meditation or the thoughts of love,

May sweep to my revenge"

~Hamlet (I.v.35-37)

LAERTES

Hadst thou thy wits and didst persuade revenge,

It could not move thus.

OPHELIA You must sing “A-down a-down”—and you

“Call him a-down-a.”—O, how the wheel becomes

it! It is the false steward that stole his master’s

daughter.

LAERTES This nothing’s more than matter.

~(IV.v.192-198)

"Does it not, think thee, stand me now upon—

He that hath killed my king and whored my mother,

Popped in between th’ election and my hopes,

Thrown out his angle for my proper life,

And with such cozenage—is ’t not perfect

conscience

To quit him with this arm? And is ’t not to be

damned

To let this canker of our nature come

In further evil?"

~Hamlet (V.ii.71-80)

"Now, sir, young Fortinbras,

Of unimprovèd mettle hot and full,

Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there

Sharked up a list of lawless resolutes

For food and diet to some enterprise

That hath a stomach in ’t; which is no other

(As it doth well appear unto our state)

But to recover of us, by strong hand

And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands

So by his father lost."

~Horatio (I.i.107-116)

"GHOST

Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing

To what I shall unfold.

HAMLET Speak. I am bound to hear.

GHOST

So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear."

~(I.v.9-12)

"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.

Sure He that made us with such large discourse,

Looking before and after, gave us not

That capability and godlike reason

To fust in us unused"

~Hamlet (IV.iv.34-41)

Degree of Vengefulness

"’Tis sweet and commendable in your nature,

Hamlet,

To give these mourning duties to your father.

But you must know your father lost a father,

That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound

In filial obligation for some term

To do obsequious sorrow. But to persever

In obstinate condolement is a course

Of impious stubbornness. ’Tis unmanly grief"

~King (I.ii.90-98)

"Do you not come your tardy son to chide,

That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by

Th’ important acting of your dread command?

O, say!"

~Hamlet (III.iv.122-125)

"So you mis-take your husbands.—Begin,

Murderer. [Pox,] leave thy damnable faces and

begin. Come, the croaking raven doth bellow for

revenge"

~Hamlet (III.ii.276-279)

"Why wouldst thou be

a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest,

but yet I could accuse me of such things that it

were better my mother had not borne me: I am

very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offenses

at my beck than I have thoughts to put them

in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act

them in"

~Hamlet (III.i.131-138)

"O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!

Is it not monstrous that this player here,

But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,

Could force his soul so to his own conceit

That from her working all [his] visage wanned

Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect,

A broken voice, and his whole function suiting

With forms to his conceit—and all for nothing!"

~Hamlet (II.ii.577-584)

"’Tis heavy with him. And am I then revenged

To take him in the purging of his soul,

When he is fit and seasoned for his passage?

No.

Up sword, and know thou a more horrid hent"

~Hamlet (III.iii.89-93)

"Now might I do it [pat], now he is a-praying

And now I'll do't [He draws his sword]

And so he goes to heaven,

And so am I [revenged]. That would be scanned:

A villain kills my father, and for that'

I, his sole son, do this same villain send

To heaven"

~Hamlet (III.iii.77-83)

"O horrible, O horrible, most horrible!

If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not.

Let not the royal bed of Denmark be

A couch for luxury and damnèd incest.

But, howsomever thou pursues this act,

Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive

Against thy mother aught. Leave her to heaven

And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge

To prick and sting her"

~Ghost (I.v.87-95)

"The spirit that I have seen

May be the devil: and the devil hath power

To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps,

Out of my weakness and my melancholy,

As he is very potent with such spirits,

Abuses me to damn me. I'll have grounds

More relative than this. The play's the thing

Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King"

~Hamlet (II.ii.627-634)

Act I

Act V

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. New York:

Washington Square Press, 1992. Print.