themes of election & rebellion in laertes's uprising

DF ¹ Claudius has talked at length about how Denmark is an electoral monarchy, sort of, in theory, but in practice, elections are very controlled and the results are rarely unexpected. In that context, the rebellion is really interesting, because the mob uses that language of election and choice, while actively disrupting the electoral process:

The rabble call him lord;
And, as the world were now but to begin,
Antiquity forgot, custom not known,
The ratifiers and props of every word,
They cry 'Choose we: Laertes shall be king:'
Caps, hands, and tongues, applaud it to the clouds:
'Laertes shall be king, Laertes king!'

(Gertrude gets one of her most vicious lines in response to that, and I always love to hear her say it: How cheerfully on the false trail they cry! / O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs! I love it, but it’s also a deliberate swipe to delegitimize something presented with the legitimacy of an election. Hence the emphasis on falseness. Gertrude’s salty.)

And I just! Think that’s interesting! It suggests interesting things about the purpose of this rebellion. For Laertes, it’s very personal. His dad’s dead. He’s mad about it. He’s particularly mad Polonius wasn’t given a proper burial with the rites and services due to him. It’s something that dishonors Polonius and his surviving family, despite all the years of service Polonius gave to the crown – not just to Claudius, but to all the kings before him. And so even if Polonius is a tool and we all know it, he’s kind of a powerful symbol for the public. He was a useful tool, so why did the royal family throw him away like he was garbage? What rewards are there for serving the current monarchy, if there’s no proper honor in death? And hey, how did he die, by the way? Also serving that same monarchy? Is this what the electors of the nobility are choosing? And if so, why shouldn’t the common rabble get to choose something different? Why follow the traditions of antiquity when Laertes is right here and he’s making good points? It’s a rebellion that has this interesting populist slant, something I think Enjolras would really dig tbh ².

And I think the foils are interesting, because Laertes is such a multi-purpose foil and I love him. Claudius made sure he was elected properly. He hewed to tradition as much as possible while secretly killing his brother. That’s why it had to be so secret! He could’ve done the Laertes thing and gathered a rebel army, or found a contingent of nobles to decry the current king and go against tradition but you know. Ceremony. Ceremony is how he establishes control, that’s what we see in his opening statecraft scene.

Laertes appeals to the public because he’s like ‘yeah well you know who ceremony fucked over, me and my family personally, who didn’t even get the ceremonies they were owed sooo.’ Which was such a mistake on Claudius’s part, and he’s well aware of it. It’s the primary mistake he fixates on in his ‘When sorrows come, they come not single spies / But in battalions’ speech, that ‘we have done but greenly, / In hugger-mugger to inter him.’ People are talking, ‘muddied, / Thick and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers, / For good Polonius' death’ and Laertes ‘wants not buzzers to infect his ear / With pestilent speeches of his father's death.’ (The lattermost quote contains an unfortunate metaphor that shows how much Claudius is losing his chill.)

from the very small speech claudius gives after ophelia's mad scene -- i really like it, because i think the chapel scene is the first time the audience gets to see what it's like inside claudius's head (constantly self-castigating, trying and failing to bargain with himself with a stream of negative self-talk,

'O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
O limed soul, that, struggling to be free,
Art more engaged!'

and in this speech, you get to see him that way with another person in the room! because it's gertrude, and he can unburden with her, but also because he's spiraling so hard -- it's a rare moment where he admits having fucked up something and it's polonius's funeral, which he rushed to cover up hamlet's whole murder thing (which is something! claudius shouldn't even have to care about! he could just have hamlet executed in public! but it's gertrude's son)

O, this is the poison of deep grief; it springs
All from her father's death. O Gertrude, Gertrude,
When sorrows come, they come not single spies
But in battalions. First, her father slain:
Next, your son gone; and he most violent author
Of his own just remove: the people muddied,
Thick and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers,
For good Polonius' death; and we have done but greenly,
In hugger-mugger to inter him: poor Ophelia
Divided from herself and her fair judgment,
Without the which we are pictures, or mere beasts:
Last, and as much containing as all these,
Her brother is in secret come from France;
Feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds,
And wants not buzzers to infect his ear
With pestilent speeches of his father's death;
Wherein necessity, of matter beggar'd,
Will nothing stick our person to arraign
In ear and ear. O my dear Gertrude, this,
Like to a murdering-piece, in many places
Gives me superfluous death.

O Gertrude, come away!
The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch,
But we will ship him hence: and this vile deed
We must, with all our majesty and skill,
Both countenance and excuse.
[...]
Come, Gertrude, we'll call up our wisest friends;
And let them know, both what we mean to do,
And what's untimely done. O, come away!
My soul is full of discord and dismay.

anyway i just love my melodramatic murder king who creates so many problems for himself by trying to fix the problems also his habit of just stating the facts of his life so you can appreciate how insane they are is canon 'yeah! yeah and now there's a rebellion i have to deal with' also love that when claudius is spiraling he just lets himself casually make poison metaphors he lets himself casually make poison metaphors and talk about infecting ears, dude please get it together

So how did he fuck up this badly? The irony, I think, is that Claudius is losing control of his image because of how carefully he’s tried to manage his image. He’s so aware of the optics of every situation, so concerned about how things look. And he has this conviction, that he never questions, that Hamlet is just too damn popular. Hamlet’s ‘loved of the distracted multitude, / Who like not in their judgment, but their eyes; / And where tis so, the offender's scourge is weigh'd, / But never the offence.’ He says the same thing to Laertes, that there’s a ‘great love the general gender bear him; / Who, dipping all his faults in their affection, / Would, like the spring that turneth wood to stone, / Convert his gyves to graces.’ That’s what a good public image does for you. It doesn’t matter who Hamlet killed, people won’t blame Hamlet. They’ll blame Claudius, ‘whose providence / Should have kept short, restrain'd and out of haunt, / This mad young man.’

here's another speech that varies a lot from production to production --

O heavy deed!
It had been so with us, had we been there.
His liberty is full of threats to all—
To you yourself, to us, to everyone.
Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answered?
It will be laid to us, whose providence
Should have kept short, restrained and out of haunt,
This mad young man.

it's possible to read it as self-serving and scheming, but my favorite reads are when claudius is in a state of panic, because he wasn't planning on killing hamlet from the beginning! he wasn't going to a richard iii where he kills the one on the throne and then the heir and then all the other competition! he was going to leave hamlet alone in his court after cajoling or menacing him into staying, and now he's sincerely regretting it because

1) hamlet knows his secret obviouslybut also

dangerous

killing people behind curtains without looking

and claudius could've stopped that from happening so now he feels responsible and overwhelmed (and when he feels responsible and overwhelmed, he does wild scheming)

Which, you know. Put that together. People will forgive Hamlet because they love him. People won’t forgive Claudius. Even after everything he’s done to manage his image (even with people out there paying a ‘hundred ducats a-piece for his picture in little,’ ahem) he still doesn’t believe he’s loved. And then there’s the fact that someone just put on a play that suspiciously mirrored his secret crime! So fuck Claudius, I guess.

All the decisions Claudius makes, he makes with the presumption that he can’t be honest or open with the public because his image can’t take it, so he has to be subtle and secretive ‘[t]o bear all smooth and even.’ But, as you can see by the armed rebellion Laertes managed to whip up, this just made Claudius’s image and the image of the royal family worse.

I think it’s neat that Laertes forces Claudius into a position where he really has no option but to tell Laertes the truth. And telling the truth, shockingly, does get Laertes on his side! Laertes isn’t immediately on Hamlet’s side over Claudius’s, he just cares who killed his father. (He asks the very reasonable question of ‘Why you proceeded not against these feats, / So crimeful and so capital in nature’ but he doesn’t blame Claudius for the murder itself.) It’s like the truth matters more than the optics! It’s like Laertes cares more about justice than what looks good.

Now did Claudius learn? Absolutely he did not. He just roped Laertes into Plan Lies and Poison with a strong focus on optics and ceremony and a whole-ass duel and a union thrown into a cup. Claudius, you should’ve just let Laertes cut Hamlet’s throat in a church. He would’ve done it. The Danish public would’ve gone ‘that’s why I voted for Laertes, he gets things done.’

² (yes, indeed Enjolras is part of the literary roleplay collective)