Mark Moran

Prof. James Shapiro

English 3335x – Shakespeare I

November 28, 2000

Hamlet’s Foils

 

For the majority of Shakespeare’s plays, there is no single text which can be considered authoritative.  Sometimes two or three quarto versions and a later folio edition of a play exist, none of which were written by Shakespeare himself.  Often the differences between the versions are significant and yield distinct interpretations of the play.  Shakespeare was very much involved in the day-to-day business of running a successful theatre, and he does not seem to have been too concerned with publishing his scripts.  This does not mean, however, that the plays were not revised as they were performed, especially in later years.  I believe this is one of the main reasons for the differences between various printings.  A prime example of this are the differences between the 1604 second quarto and the 1623 folio text of Hamlet.  Although the folio is clearly based on this quarto edition, there are some 230 lines missing from it and 70 more inserted which are not in the quarto.  One of the most interesting of these changes is the folio’s removal of 60 of the 70 lines of scene 4.4, in which Hamlet has a conversation with the Norwegian Captain and delivers a memorable soliloquy, partly about Fortinbras[1].  This omission helps to direct the final scene’s emphasis onto Hamlet’s duel with Laertes, rather than on Fortinbras’s later entrance and ascent to the Danish throne.

Although some variation between printings may be due to the faulty memories of the manuscript authors, I believe Shakespeare and his company experimented with different versions of his plays.  These edits may have been for travelling purposes, or revisions as times changed, or an attempt to improve upon or focus the play.  One example of such a change is in scene 2.2 of the folio, in which Rosencrantz and Hamlet have a brief discussion about child actors replacing adult actors.  This exchange is missing from the earlier quartos and is almost certainly a reference to the War of the Theaters from 1599 to 1602,[2] which occurred after the first version of Hamlet was written.  Shakespeare or members of his company probably added the lines a few years later.  Further evidence that the changes in the folio text are deliberate is that the folio author clearly had access to the earlier quarto text, since it is nearly identical.  This suggests that the revisions, especially the significant cuts from 4.4, are intentional attempts to alter the dramatic structure of the play.  It is possible that the folio editor deserves credit for this change, but more likely he was simply using the notes or script from a later performance.  Either way, the overall effect is to downplay the role of Fortinbras in order to direct the dramatic focus of the play onto Laertes, who is arguably the more important foil to Hamlet.

In his earlier version, Shakespeare probably intended Fortinbras to be the main counterpoint to Hamlet.  Fortinbras, like Hamlet, is a young Scandinavian prince whose father has been murdered but who is blocked from becoming king by his uncle.  Moreover, because Fortinbras’ father was killed by the elder Hamlet, he has ample motive for revenge and he plays a critical role in the final scene.  When the Danes all kill each other through treachery and mishap in the violent final scene, the Norwegian prince emerges to ascend the throne and restore order to the beleaguered court.  With Fortinbras’s entrance, we know he will finally put an end to the “carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts, / of accidental judgements, casual slaughters, / of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause” (5.2.383-385)[3].  In the play’s final speech, Fortinbras praises Hamlet and orders a soldier’s funeral for him.  Yet there is a subtle irony implied when he says “[Hamlet] was likely, had he been put on, / to have proved most royal,” (399-400), since it reminds us of Hamlet’s ultimate inability to avenge his father and secure the throne for himself.  The quarto thus sets up Fortinbras as the personal and political contrast who succeeds where Hamlet has failed, by avenging his dead father (restoring Norway’s lost lands) and bringing political order to Denmark.

The dramatic problem with Fortinbras as Hamlet’s main analogue, however, is that he’s completely absent for almost the entire play.  He is alluded to a few times in the play’s first acts, but the only times we ever see him onstage are his brief entrance in scene 4.4, and then his return for the play’s closing moments.  In the first scene, we learn from Horatio that “young Fortinbras, / of unimproved mettle hot and full” (1.1.99-100) is raising an army to recover the lands his father lost to the elder Hamlet.  Then in 1.2, Claudius dispatches messengers to the enfeebled king of Norway “to suppress / [his nephew Fortinbras’s] further gait herein” (1.2.30-31), and in 2.2 they return to report their success and that Fortinbras will instead invade Poland.  Before 4.4, these second-hand references are our only exposure to Fortinbras, so we know nothing substantial about his character or what Hamlet thinks of him.  This scene thus plays a crucial role in our understanding of Fortinbras’s function in the story, and this distinction is the major difference between the second quarto and the folio.

With scene 4.4 essentially omitted, the folio removes Fortinbras as a foil figure in order to concentrate on Laertes in this role.  While Fortinbras may be an effective functional or circumstantial counterpart to Hamlet, Laertes is much more fitting as a character foil and antagonist.  Because we see so much more of Laertes and his interactions with Hamlet, he is a far more compelling contrast to him.  As a result, his hot-blooded impulsiveness has more opportunity to clash with Hamlet’s brooding inaction.  As an antagonist, Fortinbras’s motives for revenge against Hamlet are somewhat weak, since his father was killed in a fair duel and not by Hamlet himself.  Polonius, on the other hand, was violently and unjustly murdered by Hamlet, albeit unintentionally.  Laertes feels charged to take revenge for the murder, but like Hamlet, he is hesitant to act.  Just as Hamlet pauses when he has the chance to kill the praying Claudius, Laertes also seems reluctant to poison Hamlet in the play’s final duel, saying “it is almost against my conscience” (5.2.299).  Although using poison in a duel might seem unsporting, Laertes has a double motive for revenge against Hamlet, both for his father’s death and for his sister’s madness and suicide.  Furthermore, using the poison is no more cruel than Hamlet’s reversal of Claudius’s plot to have him killed in England, which results in the deaths of the innocent Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.  Thus, Laertes is the more equal rival and foil to Hamlet, and it is their dynamic that drives the success of the play.  Arguably this is the case even in the second quarto, but this tension is even clearer in the edited folio text, without the distraction of a scene about Fortinbras.

This is not to suggest that there is less merit to the older version of the play and the additional insight its scene 4.4 provides into Hamlet and Fortinbras.  In both versions, the first function of this scene is to finally, albeit briefly, introduce the audience to Fortinbras and his army.  However, we don’t really learn anything notable from the first ten lines because they are just simple instructions from Fortinbras to his captain.  At this point, the folio version ends, but in the quarto, the scene continues with Hamlet entering and meeting the captain, only to learn that Fortinbras is leading the Norwegian army to invade a worthless area of Poland.  When Hamlet tells the captain “two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats / will not debate the question of this straw” (4.4.26-27), he seems incredulous that Fortinbras is planning to fight such a huge battle over such a trifling piece of land.  One possible reading is that he doesn’t believe that Fortinbras actually plans to invade Poland but instead will use his forces against Denmark.  Another interpretation is that Hamlet, believing what he has just heard, is consequently baffled by the utter waste of life.  He then proceeds into a soliloquy which addresses both of these interpretations, as he admires Fortinbras for his force of action while questioning the outcome.

The monologue begins with Hamlet berating himself for his cowardice and lack of action when he sees “the examples gross as earth” (4.4.47) of Fortinbras’s proactive behavior.  Feeling weighed down by indecision, he muses that surely God has not “made us with such large discourse … and godlike reason … to fust[4] in us unused” (37-40), yet he blames himself for dwelling too much, for “thinking too precisely on the’ event— / a thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom / and ever three parts coward” (42-44).  Even though “I have cause, and will, and strength, and means to do ‘t”, “yet I live to say ‘This thing’s to do’” (45-46).  But then the soliloquy shifts directions and he questions whether Fortinbras is really such a great example to follow.  He seems appalled by Fortinbras’s disregard for life, as this “delicate and tender prince, / whose spirit with divine ambition puffed” leads an “army of such mass and charge, / … exposing what is mortal and unsure / to all that fortune, death, and danger dare, / even for an eggshell” (48-54).  The futility and fragility of life is a recurring theme for Hamlet (which he also contemplates in his famous Act III soliloquy).  True greatness, he decides, “is not to stir without great argument / … [or] to find quarrel in a straw / [except] when honor’s at the stake” (55-57).  But this reminds him of how much his own honor has been offended, and returns him to his initial self-chastising state of mind.  Now, however, his criticism of himself is combined with his revulsion at Fortinbras’s battle plans, and he wonders, “how stand I, then, / that have a father killed, a mother stained, / … and let all sleep, while to my shame I see / the imminent death of twenty thousand men / … for a fantasy or trick of fame” (57-62).  With this synthesis, he is finally resolved: “From this time forth / my thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth!” (66-67).

The quarto’s version provides the only indication that Hamlet will at last become proactive, and thus deepens the tragedy of his death, since he is finally a decisive protagonist. Yet Hamlet never gets a chance to employ the resolve he has finally found in the 4.4 soliloquy.  This is perhaps another reason why the later version cuts out most of this scene, since he is killed before his newfound determination is fulfilled.  The quarto version also contributes the play’s only substantial insight into Fortinbras’s character, and these lines serve to validate his return dramatically and to reinforce Hamlet’s dying endorsement of him (5.2.358).  However, this longer version of 4.4 is not enough to build up Fortinbras as a significant character, especially one who will play such an important role at the play’s end.  Rather than re-writing the entire play to provide a bigger role for Fortinbras, it seems that Shakespeare probably cut this scene short so that we instead concentrate on Laertes.  This works so well that most audiences consider the climax of the play to be Hamlet’s duel with Laertes, and not Fortinbras’ final return.

To support this shifted emphasis onto Laertes, the folio also makes several changes to the final scene.  For example, the folio adds 12 lines in which Hamlet compares himself to Laertes, for “by the image of my cause I see / the portraiture of his (5.2.77-78).  To avoid redundancy and not make him too sympathetic, it also cuts 33 lines in which Laertes is described as “an absolute gentlemen, full of most excellent differences, / of very soft society and great showing” (107-108) and in which Hamlet refuses to compare himself in excellence to him (138-139).  The folio further places the focus onto Hamlet as the failed protagonist by giving him the tragic dying line “O o o o” (360) and by having Fortinbras say “take up the body” rather than “take up the bodies” (401).  Finally, the folio changes the quarto’s “for no cause” (385) to the more purposeful “forc’d cause,” strengthening the implication of treachery over meaningless circumstance.

While the folio’s changes are certainly intentional, they are not necessarily any better or worse than the earlier version.  They do suggest a different ending, however, and productions should choose the version that suits the interpretation they are seeking, whether to focus on the personal struggle between Hamlet and Laertes or the more political conflict that Fortinbras represents.  Many modern directors find the redemptive Fortinbras epilogue unnecessary and cut it out entirely.  However, what doesn’t make sense is to conflate the two texts as many modern editors do in order to include as many lines as possible.  Each version is valid on its own, but conflating them often undermines both purposes because the end result is muddled, redundant, or dramatically diluted.

 

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