Hamlet 4.5 | Laertes - The Medieval Avenger

Question 1

4.5 “Laertes is like a hurricane, he rushes into the palace in an uncontrollable rage, roaring for blood”

Answer 1

Prosser

Question 2

4.5 “The ocean overpeering of his list”

Answer 2

Metaphor presents laertes with wrath unstoppable force threatening to spill over social boundaries

Question 3

4.5 “Where is this king”

Answer 3

Laertes use of ‘this’ rather than more appropriate ‘the’ conveys his questioning of Claudius legitimacy as monarch

Question 4

4.5 ‘Calm’

Answer 4

Lattes suggest that to be calm and not seek vengeance would be a betrayal of his father cheapening reputation of his mother

Question 5

4.5 ‘Blackest devil/profoundest pit’ / ‘I dare damnation’

Answer 5

The hyperbolic superlative forms convey how the extent laertes will go to gain vengeance , willing to forego relationship with God with emotional intensity of this underscored by hard consonant plosive sounds

Question 6

4.5 “Like the kind-rendering pelican, repast them with my blood”

Answer 6

In medieval Christian symbolism, the pelican was believed to wound itself to feed its young with its blood. Shakespeare uses this metaphor to demonstrate laertes’ willingness to go to extreme lengths - offering his own life if necessary - for his friends + his cause