And a million academic dudes cream their pants for this straight up counterpoint between Laertes and Hamlet. It feels like 99% of Hamlet analysis lives in this territory. Hamlet is a coward; Laertes isn’t. Hamlet hesitates. Laertes doesn’t. Hamlet fails to get revenge; Laertes tries more. And then you see how faulty this is. Laertes, yes, kills Hamlet, who killed his father. Which, I guess, in the revenge scales is right on point.

But Hamlet kills Claudius in the same scene. Effectively doing the same thing.
Laertes is no paragon. And yet so much of the academic literature of this play LOVES to compare how much more effective Laertes is at this revenge thing.

But he’s not any more effective than Hamlet.
He’s more emotional certainly. More impulsive, for sure. He starts shouting and creating a coup immediately.
But he ends up just as dead as Hamlet.
So there’s not, like, a better strategy for revenge.
MAYBE the whole notion of revenge is faulty.
MAYBE anyone who pursues revenge ends up getting his own sword turned on him.

I’m writing in November of 2016. It’s a moment of reckoning here in my country. Women and people of color have been thrown under the bus. And next to me, the news is playing. Channel 7 is attempting to be objective but being objective in this climate is to tacitly accept that fascism is an acceptable choice. I feel compelled to watch the horrors unfold, to mitigate the disaster where I can (support the Southern Poverty Law Center, the ACLU, Standing Rock and Planned Parenthood) but every encounter with the wider world triggers anxiety and renewed despair.
There’s a world of madness and a world of outrage and somehow we must continue between them. I plant myself on the ground of imagination, of art and transformation.
And normally, I’d be fine to neglect all other worlds, like Laertes here. But – the conditions demand a kind of vigilance. So I stand on imagination and reach out to make a difference when I can.

And I post here two years later. Two years have gone by in this madness. It feels different than it did but also the same. It is both worse than I imagined and also not as bad.

Yeah, damnation. I dare you. What’s it take? Some pleasurable moments with my body? With someone else’s body? That can’t really damn you, can it? If so. I dare you.
Some bad language? I dare you.
Some unkept vows? Some cursing?
The real tempting of damnation would be the raping and murdering. That’s really asking for it. The other stuff. Maybe to the real big believers…but….

I understand this impulse. When shit gets bad, it feels like it’s time to start knocking heads, to let go of niceties.

But when things got especially tough for me last week, I felt the slide toward horror. I was freaking out. My body locked up like a series of knots. I did not know how we were going to proceed. I didn’t know how we were going to get it all done. And I didn’t know how I could stay calm.

But I took a step back and examined my own values. I asked myself what was really important to me. Luckily, I had previously articulated my values. I had written them down. I knew what was most important to me because I had clarified it in calmer times. And all it took for me to find my calm was to re-commit to my previously held values and commitments. I didn’t send grace to the profoundest pit, I held it ahead of me to light my way. And it made all the difference.

For some reason, Laertes usually seems the sexiest at just this point in the play. He’s vibrating with the power he’s gained by bursting into the king’s chamber. He’s ready to be king or kill one or just start laying waste to whatever comes into his path. He’s pure machismo.
Hamlet – Hamlet we love. We want to marry Hamlet. We want to have deep conversations late at night, under the covers, at the kitchen table, snuggled up on a rainy night.
But Laertes – well, with all that raw strength – you sort of want him to pick you up and ravish you. You want to be swept up in that devil be damned energy.
It’s like that Fuck, Marry, Kill game.
Hamlet, you marry.
Laertes, you fuck.
Claudius? That’s the obvious one. You kill.