Laertes Quest For Vengeance In Hamlet And The Count

However, through Laertes’s subsequent charge to avenge his own father’s death, Shakespeare suggests that even planned revenge does not necessarily warrant the intended result. When Laertes returns from France to seek retribution and conspires with Claudius to kill Hamlet, the two come up with a ‘surefire’ plan to eliminate Hamlet by poisoning the tip of Laertes’s blade, which would kill Hamlet should it pierce his skin, and poisoning the goblet that Hamlet would drink from should he win the first round. Although, in practice, this plan both succeeds and backfires. While Hamlet is wounded by the poisoned blade, he manages to kill both Laertes and Claudius with it before dying himself. Additionally, not knowing that it is poisoned, Hamlet’s mother Gertrude drinks from the goblet instead and is killed almost instantly. While this thought-out plan did succeed in killing Hamlet, it killed the planners and an innocent as well. Here, Shakespeare suggests that even reinforced planning cannot ensure a completely successful outcome and can cause harm, and, in this case, death to innocent people.
Overall, it can be understood that, in their quests for vengeance, Hamlet and the Count each undergo significant personality and behavioral transformations. Both protagonists end up distancing themselves from
Initially, from the audience’s perspective, Hamlet seems to be a contemplative and brooding character, who can be pensive to the point of obsession which he seems to achieve as he seeks certain confirmation of the Ghost’s claims. In order to conceal his investigation into his uncle’s crimes, Hamlet decides to feign madness, in hopes of diverting Claudius and others around him from his true intentions. He confides in his friend Horatio, who also saw the Ghost, and