Although she isn’t the main focus of this blog entry, I just wanted to spare a moment to mourn the loss of yet another favorite character. Ophieeee :’(… Guess she’ll never learn that her beloved Hamlet is the one who killed her father. Perhaps it’s for the best…

ACT IV SCENE VII

Wow. Claudius is a sneaky fox. I think I’ve been so preoccupied with my extreme dislike for Hamlet that I’ve never really noticed how villainous Claudius can be until now.

Maybe I shouldn’t say “villainous,” since it’s a word that condemns him to be 100% pure evil. We know that he has a guilty conscience – unlike most fictional villains – in Act III scene iii, where he tries to repent for his sins. But he certainly is extremely ambitious, to the point that he’ll even kill off his own relatives in order to get what he wants.

In this scene, we find him smooth talking Laertes into his side. Claudius has this skill of making himself out to be the innocent victim. In order to shift the blame of Polonius’ death from himself to Hamlet, he calls himself Laertes’ friend, places himself on Laertes’ side by mentioning that Hamlet has been trying to kill him as well (“Enemy of my enemy is my friend” after all), and subtly compliments his father, calling him “noble” (4).  Once establishing that they are both, indeed, on the same side, Claudius conjures up excuses as to why he never made Hamlet’s violent pursuit publicly known by portraying himself as a thoughtful and weak man – saying that he didn’t want to hurt his wife, who’s quite attached to her son, and that he didn’t think the public would believe him because they loved their prince so much. How can Laertes not pity the distressed & kind king, who’s a victim just like his own father?

Once the letter from Hamlet arrives, Claudius reads it out loud – an action which might be seen as an indication of trust by Laertes. From that point onward, Claudius switches gears from a friendly & meek king, to a clever and confident one, as he assures Laertes that he has a plan to make it so that “no wind of blame shall breathe” (74) on anyone for Hamlet’s death; even “his mother shall uncharge the practice and call it an accident” (75-76). By this time, Claudius has secured Laertes’ trust, which is shown when the boy readily responds, “My lord, I will be ruled, / The rather if you could devise it so / That I might be the organ,” offering himself to be the main component of Claudius’ plan. I can just imagine Claudius inwardly smirking at this comment before launching into more tactics to keep Laertes on his side.

He goes on to really, and I mean really, flatter Laertes, saying that his ability to sword fight is so great that even Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, is envious of it. This probably gets Laertes excited, as he suggests that he will douse his sword in poison so that when he engages the prince into a “friendly” match, if he leaves so much as a scratch mark on the prince, it’ll be a wound fatal enough to lead to Hamlet’s death.

Mission almost accomplished.

Before Claudius can actually end the discussion, he confirms that Laertes loves his father a lot, and therefore, won’t back out of the plan. The theme of people altering according to circumstance arises once again as Claudius mentions how as time passes by, people change their mind. In a way, he, himself, prevents such a thing from happening with Laertes, saying that if Laertes sticks with the plan, it will “show [himself] indeed that [he is his] father’s son / More than in words…” (142-143)

Advertisement