Double Identity: Hamlet's Avenging Sons

-
By Elspeth Sweatman

In Hamlet, Shakespeare uses doubling—the mirroring of characters, situations, plot points, themes, and rhetorical devices—to make his characters and the world of Elsinore more intriguing and explore the themes of identity, power, and truth at the heart of the play. One of the more noticeable uses of this device is that there isn’t just one man in the play avenging his father’s death; there are three.

Hamlet (John Douglas Thompson) presents a play about murder to the court. Photo by Kevin Berne.
Hamlet, Laertes, and Fortinbras all lose their fathers: Hamlet at the hands of his uncle Claudius, Laertes at the hands of Hamlet, and Fortinbras at the hands of Hamlet’s father. Although all three vow to avenge their fathers’ deaths, they go about accomplishing this task in completely different ways. Hamlet gathers evidence of his uncle’s guilt before acting. Laertes returns from France immediately and demands to know who killed his father; he is only stalled in his quest for vengeance by his grief at his sister’s death and Claudius’s urgings to wait for an opportune moment. And Fortinbras raises an army to reconquer the territory his father lost to Hamlet’s father before the start of the play. 

By surrounding Hamlet with other sons avenging their fathers’ deaths, Shakespeare intensifies the latter half of Hamlet, as the audience wonders which avenging son will accomplish his mission first. Will it be Fortinbras with his assembled masses marching on Elsinore? Will it be Hamlet, who has arguably had the most time and opportunity to exact his revenge? Or will it be Laertes, whose anger is profoundly mixed with grief? 

Hamlet (John Douglas Thompson) considers murdering
a praying Claudius (Steven Anthony Jones). Photo by Kevin Berne.
The addition of Laertes and Fortinbras also makes Shakespeare’s protagonist more multifaceted and emphasizes one important theme in the play: identity. Hamlet is Hamlet because of the choices he makes when confronted with the news of his father’s murder. Hamlet is a charismatic, dynamic prince; he could have raised an army, as Fortinbras does, and deposed his uncle through force and rhetoric. But Hamlet is not just driven by a desire to right a wrong, but by a desire for the truth. He wants to be certain that Claudius did in fact kill his father. Only then will he act. This choice—to seek the truth rather than take immediate action—sets him apart from the other two avenging sons and makes him a much more complex and nuanced character than the heroes of other seventeenth-century revenge tragedies. 

A.C.T.’s production of Hamlet ends this Sunday, October 15, at The Geary Theater. Click here to purchase tickets through our website. To read more about doubling in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, order a copy of Words on Plays, A.C.T.'s in-depth performance guide series.

Popular posts from this blog

“To Be or Not to Be”: The Iconic Speech’s Origins, Interpretations, and Impact

-
Image
By A.C.T. Publications Staff The opening line of Hamlet ’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy is theater’s most iconic, most referenced quote. What’s less known is the famous speech’s history, with Hamlet ’s earliest publications offering varying versions of its language. Also questioned is its meaning—is Hamlet contemplating suicide or is he weighing the consequences of murder? Though definitive answers are unlikely to arise, the questions “To be or not to be” asks have kept audiences, scholars, and actors engaged for centuries. Hamlet ’ s "To be or not to be" speech as it appears in the three original editions of the play. Photo by Georgelazenby. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons. The first edition, or First Quarto (Q1), of Hamlet was published in 1603. Because the text is much shorter than later editions and its language is less poetic, it is nicknamed the “Bad Quarto” by scholars. “To be or not to be” in Q1 reads as: To be, or not to be—ay, there’s the point. To die,
Read more

The American Sound: The Evolution of Jazz

-
Image
By Cecilia Padilla There is nothing so uniquely American as jazz music. In its simplest form, jazz embodies the essence of the American people: bold and inventive. The improvisation of the jazz ensemble can even be seen as a metaphor for the American democratic ideal: musicians playing solos have the liberty to express themselves as long as they adhere to the overall structure of the tune—individual freedom but with responsibility to the group. The evolution of jazz music also carries with it the social development of our nation from slavery to the swinging songs of World War II. Musically, jazz contributed immensely to the way contemporary musicians approach instrumentation, composition, and vocal arrangements. It is difficult to find a popular tune today that does not derive from such jazz icons as Joe Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Thelonious Monk. Jazz is the great equalizer; for more than a hundred years, it has been the common ground between blacks and whites, me
Read more

A Hell of a Businessman: A Biography of Joe Glaser

-
By Simon Hodgson Born in 1897, Joe Glaser was the son of a successful Russian Jewish physician in Chicago. He originally intended to follow a similar career and entered medical school, but after passing out in the operating room, he realized he wasn’t cut out to be a doctor. He started off in business selling used cars, but found better luck managing prizefighters. In his biography of Al Capone, Laurence Bergreen notes, “Glaser’s power to fix fights earned him a reputation as a sage of boxing, especially among reporters.” With advanced word as to which fights were fixed, Glaser could predict the results—and even the number of rounds—of many bouts in Chicago. His connections with organized crime continued in his next career change, when he began running nightclubs and whorehouses in the South Side for the Chicago Outfit, the powerful underworld gang led by Capone. Glaser’s tendency toward illegal action nearly ended his career. In 1928, he was sentenced to ten years in prison for
Read more