Case Study Fortinbras

Fortinbras is a stronger political leader then Hamlet, and his actions to avenge his father’s death show Hamlets cowardly behaviour. Fortinbras is a strong political leader and takes rapid action to seek revenge for his father’s death. Fortinbras is willing to risk not only his life but also the lives of two thousand soldiers to fight for his father’s vengeance. The captain says to Hamlet, “ We go to gain a little patch of ground/That hath in it no profit but the name.” (4.4.18-19). Fortinbras is willing to fight for worthless land if it is in his father’s name. The land may not be worth anything, but to Fortinbras it is worth the battle to honour his father. This proves Fortinbras is a strong political leader because he is showing his

Fortinbras is a manly warrior and shows the ability to take action. Similarly, Laertes is known for being a good fighter, a man of action, and having the ability to lead. During the play Laertes states, “To cut his throat i’th’ church”(IV.vii. 98). Laertes here says he would go as far as to kill Hamlet in the church, something almost unheard of. This portrays Laertes’ manly characteristics as being a rash and a well known fighter. The young Prince Hamlet, however, denies a chance to take his own revenge, as shown when he

In the play, Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, the character of Fortinbras, has been used as a foil for the main character, Hamlet. Hamlet and Fortinbras have lost their fathers to untimely deaths. Claudius killed Hamlet's father, King Hamlet, and King Hamlet killed Fortinbras' father. Both Hamlet and Fortinbras have vowed to seek revenge for the deaths of their fathers. Since the revenge tactics of Hamlet and Fortinbras are completely different, Hamlet perceives the actions of Fortinbras as better than his own and the actions of Fortinbras, then, encourage Hamlet to act without hesitating.

Throughout Hamlet, not only does the audience gather information about Hamlet’s hamartia through Laertes, they also gather information from the character of Fortinbras and how he acts. The main reason that Fortinbras is such a strong foil for Hamlet’s character is also due to the similarities in both his and Hamlet’s lives. Fortinbras and Hamlet are both princes whose father’s were killed and are now seeking vengeance to achieve justice for their father’s deaths. Due to the deaths of their fathers, they also both now have their uncle’s sitting on the thrones of Denmark and Norway.

It is inspiring to Hamlet and it pushes him forward in carrying out his plan to kill Claudius. Hamlet’s last lines, “How all occasions…my thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth!”(4.5, 34-69) say that Fortinbras has won him over from any further doubts and Hamlet, too, wishes to become a man of action who is ready to take his revenge at any cost.

In Shakespeare’s famous tragedy, Hamlet there are similarities between Hamlet, Fortinbras, and Laertes. They do have some character differences but they face many of the same challenges and are put in similar situations. All three of the men have lost their fathers and are seeking to avenge their deaths in some way. Hamlet is contemplating killing Claudius, Fortinbras has gathered an army to reclaim lands that his father lost, and Laertes will do whatever it takes to get revenge for Polonius’ death. The main difference between the three men is that Fortinbras and Laertes are willing to do whatever it takes to reach their goal while Hamlet spends the majority of his time in thought trying to decide the right thing to do.

In his play Hamlet, William Shakespeare frequently utilizes the word “revenge” and images associated with this word in order to illustrate the idea that the pursuit of revenge has caused the downfall of many people. He builds up the idea that revenge causes people to act recklessly through anger rather than reason. In Hamlet, Fortinbras, Laertes and Hamlet all seek to avenge the deaths of their fathers. Hamlet and Laertes manage to avenge their father’s deaths and in doing so, both rely more on their emotions rather than their reasoning, which eventually leads to their downfalls at the end of Hamlet.

Laertes escapes the death of his father by indulging himself with thoughts of vengeance. His eagerness to revenge his father is exemplified in the following passage: "My lord, I will be ruled; / The rather if you could devise it so / That I might be the organ" (4.7, 67-69). His feelings of emotion are so intense that it consumes every molecule of his being. But revenge is in no way a means of living the good life, for revenge is nothing but channeling thoughts of loss and hatred into the action of killing the murderer, a truly uncivilized action. Fortinbras is in a way uncivilized, in that his actions are based upon revenge, but he has the good sense to bide his time for great opportunities. His statement, "Go, Captain, from me greet the Danish king. / Tell him that by his license Fortinbras / Craves the conveyance of a promised march / Over his kingdom," (4.4 1-4) suggests that he is driven by emotion but knows well enough to not let it consume him. His use of the word "craves" shows that he would like nothing more than to fight this war, while the fact that he is taking the time to greet the Danish king demonstrates that he is thinking about things other than revenge. Fortinbras' feelings are the feelings that most people in the same situation should have: wanting to do something about a wrongful death, but not so consumed in that emotion that one cannot act, and not so angry that a barbaric sense of justice is the overriding goal in

Fortinbras, as Hamlet describes, is able to act without any fear of death “When honor’s at the stake.” (55) Everything that Fortinbras is seems to be the opposite of Hamlet, even though they are both seeking revenge and have lost a father. Thus Fortinbras’s presence reminds Hamlet of his own goals he originally set out for. It was due to Fortinbras and his army of “twenty thousand men” who “Go to their graves like beds” that allowed Hamlet to question his own courage and thus see his flaw. His fear of his own death which was supposedly decided in his fourth soliloquy is now once again troubling his own mind. Should he risk his life and face the unknown afterlife in his quest of vengeance? His intellect portrayed in the fourth soliloquy steered him into the belief that he should choose life over suicide, for fear of the “undiscovered country” (81) in which “no travelers return” (82). Though the image of “twenty thousand men” marching to their deaths and fighting for a piece of land which is not even “tomb enough and continent/To hide the slain” gives reason for Hamlet to doubt his courage as he is afraid of death whereas Fortinbras and his army is not. In Hamlet’s book, this is a suicidal attempt, the act which he decided against in the fourth soliloquy. Hamlet’s intelligence thus portrays his madness as it is not his ability

In Hamlet, Shakespeare uses revenge as a major theme present throughout the work. Revenge plays a crucial role in the development of Fortinbras, Prince of Norway, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, and Laertes, son of Polonius. All three men seek revenge for the murder of their fathers. Revenge can be interpreted as a separate character in Hamlet. Revenge is set to overcome anyone who seeks it. Initially, after each of the murders, every son had a definite course of action to obtain vengeance. Or in Hamlet's case the choice was to seek no vengeance. As the play unfolds, each young man approaches the desire for revenge and chooses a different path towards gaining it based on the guidance of another character in

Although this plan is shown to possibly be a ruse to take Denmark at the end of the play, the fact that Fortinbras is able to act in such a matter for something of little worth to him contrasts with Hamlet’s lack of ability to act upon his desire for revenge for his father’s death, a motive of high importance to him. This is comparison is again emphasized later in the play when Hamlet is sent off to England and meets members of Fortinbras’ army. When he is told that these men are marching for reasons that have little to no importance to them, Hamlet has a moment of agnoriasis in which he realizes that his moments of indecisiveness are at fault for his misfortunes. Without Fortinbras and his army, Hamlet would not have been able to see the errors of his inaction and would not have started acting in a more passionate manner, as Fortinbras acted through his plans. Through this, Fortinbras works as a foil character for Hamlet, allowing Shakespeare to emphasize certain aspects of Hamlet without explicitly stating them through dialogue or Hamlet’s actions.

Hamlet’s motivation throughout the play is to kill Claudius and avenge his father’s death, so every action he makes works to accomplish that goal. On the other hand, Fortinbras’ motivation toward action does not lie exclusively for the sake of revenge. Fortinbras, like Hamlet or any other proud prince, feels a certain obligation to exact revenge on his father’s killer. However, whatever he decides to do it would not entirely be accepted as revenge because King Hamlet is already dead when the play starts. Although it is unclear if Fortinbras desires to kill Hamlet in the name of his father, killing Hamlet would not be the same as killing his father, the true murderer. Rather than act as if responding to a vendetta, Fortinbras is motivated to restore honor to his father by reclaiming the parcel land in Norway that is seized after King Hamlet kills King Fortinbras.

Most notably, Hamlet admires Fortinbras ability to invade another country for “Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats”(4.4, 24). This contrasts heavily with Hamlet’s own inability to avenge something as important as his father’s murder, which he feels makes him seem cowardly. Hamlet understands that “Rightly to be great Is… to find quarrel in a straw when honor’s at the stake.”(4.4, 53-56) Although Hamlet has been influenced by another’s actions here, he is deciding that he wants to protect his honor and stand up for something in which he believes. This reveals why Hamlet decides to take such harsh actions of revenge, since he is trying to prove to himself that he is capable of murder in the first place. Hamlet’s admiration for Fortinbras’s abilities demonstrates his respect for the other prince and helps to illustrate the notion that Hamlet may want to be similar to Fortinbras (and eventually gain his own independent stature). Additionally, Hamlet realizes that man’s “capability and godlike reason”(4.4, 38) is a sacred gift which he feels cannot be wasted. For this reason, Hamlet is able to convince himself that he must act on his wishes to murder Claudius, and demonstrates his individual desire to act in a way that demonstrates his own abilities. This leads him to continue his pursuit of murder. Hamlet finally

In William Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet, Laertes, Fortinbras and Hamlet find themselves in similar situations.  While Hamlet waits for the right time to avenge his father's death, Laertes learns of his father's death and immediately wants vengeance, and Fortinbras awaits his chance to recapture land that used to belong to his father.  Laertes and Fortinbras go about accomplishing their desires quite differently than Hamlet.  While Hamlet acts slowly and carefully, Laertes and Fortinbras seek their revenge with haste. Although Laertes and Fortinbras are minor characters, Shakespeare molds them in order to contrast with Hamlet.  Fortinbras and, to a greater extent, Laertes act as foils to Hamlet with respect to their motives for

Revenge. Revenge causes one to act blindly through anger, rather than through reason. It is based on the principle of an eye for an eye, but this principle is not always an intelligent theory to live by. Young Fortinbras, Laertes, and Hamlet were all looking to avenge the deaths of their fathers. They all acted on emotion, and this led to the downfall of two, and the rise to power of one. Since the Heads of the three major families were each murdered, the eldest sons of these families swore vengeance, and two of the three sons died while exacting their acts of vengeance. Revenge is a major theme in the Tragedy of Hamlet.