There’s a book that hinges on this line. I think it’s William Ball’s Backwards and Forwards but it could also be referenced in The Actor and the Target. The sense of it is that this line is the one that finally allows Hamlet to pull the trigger on killing Claudius. He’s been carefully trying to test the ghost’s theories, looking for the right moment but it is this evidence from Laertes that opens the door to direct action – to running a sword through him, not to mention forcing the king to drink poison.

It is the trigger line the whole play hinges on.

And yet I’d put money on the probability of some productions cutting it. Because everyone’s likely to cut everything at some point or another. I’m sure there have even been productions that cut the hot speeches. The one I saw most recently just did without the “how all occasions” speech, not to mention the entire Fortinbras plot. And most of the opening scene. Which was the gravest error, I thought. Graver even than cutting the Second Gravedigger.

I’d like for Gertrude to come back to life at this point and just sit up and say,

“I JUST said that. Like literally moments ago. I said, “I am poison’d.”

Can’t a woman even report her own death without having her words spoken and then taken more seriously by a man? I mean, what else do I need to say? Run a blood test; it will ALSO confirm that I am poisoned just like I said before. But you need it confirmed by this guy? This unreliable narrator here who has done such things as a) stage a coup in which he broke open doors b) jump in his sister’s grave c) whatever mischief he got up to in France and now d) this using an unbated and unvenomed sword in a friendly duel to kill the prince of Denmark and my son.

It’s a good thing I’m dead because I don’t think I could live like this anymore.”

Laertes, Drama Queen!

Except, of course, he’s right.

He’ll live long enough to ask forgiveness and then that’s it for Laertes.

It is such a beautifully dramatic line – but if I said it, like, in literally any context, it would be ridiculous. Even if I said it on my actual deathbed. But Laertes can get away with it.

This makes me think of the fact that guns are most dangerous for the people who own them. If you own a gun, you yourself are the person most likely to be injured or killed by it – followed closely by others who live with the gun. The person most likely to be killed with a deadly weapon is the owner of that deadly weapon – either by accident or by suicide. Foul practices do tend to turn themselves on their authors, too.

Before this scene, “treacherous” only appears once in the play (as one of Hamlet’s descriptors of Claudius in the rogue and peasant slave speech). But in this scene, treachery is introduced and then repeated several times. Laertes introduces it in acknowledging his ill deeds, Hamlet picks it up regarding Gertrude’s poisoning, and Laertes returns to it here with the sword. While all three instances refer to the same moments really – each treacherous mention refers to a different thing or person. Laertes relates to the treachery as his, Hamlet responds to a general treachery and now Laertes places the treachery on the sword.

Why does Hamlet last so much longer than Laertes?

(I mean, aside from dramatic necessity, of course.)

They wound each other at approximately the same time – though, Hamlet is, in fact, wounded first – and one assumes that Laertes’ cut of Hamlet is deeper than the one Hamlet gave Laertes, if only because Laertes intends to kill Hamlet.

I feel like I’ve seen productions wherein they answer this question by making Hamlet wound Laertes more intensely than he was wounded but I don’t love that as a solution.

I mean…it feels to me more that Hamlet has more reason to continue to live. He has a lot to do before he shuffles off his mortal coil. He’s got to find out what happened to his mom and take care of the treachery and that’s before he knows for sure how guilty his uncle is. I think Hamlet’s adrenaline is pumping.

Laertes knows he’s dead as soon as he gets hit and he has nothing to do but confess and die.

I’m a recent convert to medicine. After a lifetime of relative health, I had this idea that most medicines were just a corporate conspiracy. The whole idea of taking drugs to feel better seemed naïve. I’d take an Advil if I had to but I definitely tried to avoid it. I think I thought of taking medication as a kind of weakness.

But then I ran into a chronic migraine condition and after months and months of no improvement – suddenly with new medications, the environment improved by 80% and the magic powder could sometimes just make the migraine vanish. The magic powder worked better the sooner I took it – and it soon became clear that I could either take the medicine or look down the barrel of a day or two or three of abject misery. I came to understand that there was no benefit in resisting medication. Suffering through intense pain offers no rewards.

It would not make me stronger.

And so I became a believer. And I now understand how ableist and ridiculous I had been before. Medicine can be a miracle, it can be a literal lifesaver and it can also radicaly improve a quality of life. It can make the difference between rocking back and forth in the dark and going out into the world and participating in life.

I’m such a convert that now I think about Laertes’ declaration that no medicine in the world will do Hamlet good and I think – Really?

Not in the whole world? How much of the world have you seen, young man?

I’m certain this unction was sold to him as deadly – with no antidote – but I now have so much faith in medicine, I think “There must be SOME medicine that could forestall these young mens’ deaths.” But even if there was – they would not get their hands on it in enough time to save them.

I’m reading the new translation of The Odyssey (which is great, by the way) and it has reminded me of something I must have known before but somehow forgot: that Laertes is the name of Odysseus’ father. This is something that Shakespeare was surely aware of – given his education. It is also likely the reason he had the name Laertes at hand to give to Laertes.

It does make me wonder why Shakespeare gave an old man’s name to a young man. Laertes, in the Odyssey, meets his son in the underworld. He is the father of a hero. But not an uncomplicated one. Wilson has translated the first line of The Odyssey as “Tell me about a complicated man.”

What is Odysseus’ father’s story?

What might Shakespeare trying to evoke by naming Laertes thus?

Is it this sort of moment? This direct telling of difficult truths?

Laertes – our Laertes of Elsinore – has to tell it like it is. He has to say it this directly, because he’s already told Hamlet once and he clearly did not get it. Hamlet is running around  searching for treachery and such. Laertes has to directly lay it out – all the treachery – not just Gertrude’s murder.