Rage, Rapiers and Revenge: The Legitimacy of Revenge in Hamlet.

Rage, Rapiers, and RevengeThe Legitimacy of Revenge in Hamlet

Fashion

I am an Englishman, and naked I stand here,

Musing in my mind what garment I shall wear,

For now I will wear this, now I will wear that,

Now I will wear I can not tell what:All new fashions be pleasant to me,I will have them whether I thrive or

thee…

“monstrous and outrageous greatness of hose”

-Statute of Apparel, 1562

Civil Courtesy

• Civil courtesy: gentry should “purchase worthy prayse of their inferiours: and estimation and credit amonge theyr betters”

• Italians created the code, but French were the ‘most civil’

• A gentleman’s reputation was paramount

• Horizontal honour: the right to membership of a social group

• “man bringeth [his reputation] from his mother’s wombe”; it cannot be regained if lost, only preserved

• Reflexive honour: an insult unanswered was an insult acknowledged

Rapiers and Duelling

• Duel: the formal refutation of an insult or injury through single combat with rapiers

• Final method of deciding a conflict of honour

• Fought until honour satisfied; frequently ended in death

“for the sharpe sworde makes a blunt blockhead beware how hee useth his tongue, and if bold babblers were not snibbed for their [lawlessness], this world would be full of talkative merchants, and no man would care what he spoke…”

“And to confesse the plaine truth in this point, it is not well done either of men or boyes to touch the weapons of another man that weareth them.”

Argument

The emotion of rage in Hamlet undermines support for the social institution of the duel with rapiers without damaging the legitimacy of justified revenge. Hamlet’s murderous impulses are identified with France and its duellists, but he finds redemption at the end of the play through an identification with chivalric England.

HORATIO: You will lose this wager, my lord.

HAMLET: I do not think so: since [Laertes] went into France, I have been in continual practice; I shall win at the odds.

Hamlet, 5.2.141-4

Chronology of Decline

•Pact of secrecy: “Swear by my sword.” (1.5.178)

•Claudius at prayer: “Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent” (3.3.91)

•Polonius behind the arras: a “rash and bloody deed” (3.4.27)

•Laertes: “The point envenomed too!” (5.2.206)

•Claudius: “venom, to thy work” (5.2.267)

=> Chivalric beginning

=> Self-restraint

=> Accident

=> Accident while enraged

=> Deliberate murder

• LAERTES: I will do’t,And for that purpose I’ll anoint my

sword…… I’ll touch my point

With this contagion, that if I gall him slightly,

It may be death.Hamlet, 4.6.121-30

The French Death

• Seeks “leave and favour to return to France”, where his “thoughts and wishes bend” (1.2.51-7)

• Laertes’ skill with the rapier given a “masterly report” from the “brooch… / And gem of all [France]”

• Laertes wages “six French rapiers and poniards” (5.2.110-3)

• the Norman, Lamord; the French Death

Across the Channel

“And whereas a usage is crept in, contrary to former orders, of wearing of long swords and rapiers, sharpened in such sort as may appear to the usage of them can not tend to defense, which ought to be the very meaning of weapons in times of peace, but to murder and evident death…”

-Statute of Apparel, 1562.

Chivalric England

• Nostalgic construction of English chivalry in the figure of Old Hamlet

• Old Hamlet, “Armed at all points exactly, cap-â-pie” (1.2.203)

• Representative combat: Old Hamlet and Old Fortinbras fought “by a sealed compact, / Well ratified by law and heraldry” (1.1.96-7)

• Younger Fortinbras returns with “th’ambassadors of England” and a “warlike volley” of gunfire (5.2.299-300)

• Control of anger

Marcellus Is it not like the king?

Horatio As thou art to thyself:Such was the very armour he had onWhen he the ambitious Norway combated;So frown'd he once, when, in an angry

parle,He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.Tis strange.

Hamlet, 1.1.58-63

“leaded / sledged pollaxe”

Hamlet’s National Identity

• Contrast to Laertes, Hamlet associated with England

• Departs “with speed to England” (3.1.167) at Claudius’ request, although does not make it

• Schooled in Wittenberg, home of Martin Luther & Protestant Revolution

• Regrets that he “cannot live to hear the news from England” (5.2.303)

• Scornful of the French fashions embodied by Osric

Redemption

• Estranged from England during his madness, Hamlet is reconciled with his chivalric roots at the end of the play

• England comes to Hamlet in the form of the Ambassador

• Fortinbras links Hamlet to the martial aspects of chivalry as the play closes, distancing him from the rapier’s civil murder

Fortinbras: Let four captainsBear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage,For he was likely, had he been put on,To have proved most royally: and for his

passage,The soldier’s music and the rites of warSpeak loudly for him.Take up the body: such a sight as thisBecomes the field, but here shows much amiss.Go, bid the soldiers shoot.Hamlet, 5.2.349-357

Conclusion

The emotion of rage in Hamlet undermines support for the social institution of the duel with rapiers without damaging the legitimacy of justified revenge. Hamlet’s murderous impulses are identified with France and its duellists, but he finds redemption at the end of the play through an identification with chivalric England.

Further Reading

• Markku Peltonen, The Duel in Early Modern England: Civility, Politeness and Honour, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

• Arthur B. Ferguson, , The Chivalric Tradition in Renaissance England, London: Associated University Presses, 1986.

• Frank Henderston Stewart, Honor, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994.

• Anna Bryson, From Courtesy to Civility: Changing Codes of Conduct in Early Modern England, Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1998.