Thoth Tarot (Aleister Crowley and Frieda Harris):
The Knight of Cups
(image used by permission of the Ordo Templis Orientis, Secretary General/ International Headquarters,
Berlin, Germany)
Thoth Tarot (Aleister Crowley and Frieda Harris):
The Knight of Cups
(image used by permission of the Ordo Templis Orientis, Secretary General/ International Headquarters,
Berlin, Germany)
[NOTE: If you haven't already read the disclaimer on this section's introductory page with regard to any and all actor names mentioned in this section of the website, please do so before proceeding here.]
"Laertes, was your father dear to you?"
Imagine you are Polonius's son, freshly returned to Denmark from a prolongued stay in France, now having rushed back upon the news that your much-honoured father, the King's chief Counsellor – indeed the kingdom's most powerful man besides the sovereign himself – was brutally slain, and yet received only a most secretive funeral; without "trophy, sword, nor hatchment o'er his bones, no noble rite nor formal ostentation." You instinctively blame his violent end on the country's new King. Not only that, upon your return you also find your country much changed, as if labouring under a heavy hand; and people are clamouring for a new ruler. That, too, can only be the fault of this King who so recently ascended the throne, and who had nothing better to do than, first thing, to have the next person in line for succession in his own family, your childhood friend Prince Hamlet, declared mad and sent away. But your own family has royal succession rights as well, and people quickly begin to see you as a liberator – a new hope. An army assembles around you, probably without even requiring you much of an effort. Skilled and valiant swordsman that you are, however, you don't find it difficult to assume that army's command. "Laertes shall be King! Laertes King!" The cry, first come from only a few throats here and there, grows louder and louder wherever you go. Nasty rumours begin to spread about the illegitimacy of your birth, tainting your family's name and your claim to the throne; but even those rumours can't stop the momentum in your favour. You finally get to Elsinore, storm the castle, and forcefully confront this "vile King" whom you hold responsible for so much grief.
But then you see your sister, whom you had left a hopeful, beautiful, innocent young woman only a few months ago. Now you find that she has gone mad; her wits "as mortal as an old man's life." Grief-stricken, you break down. Just a moment earlier, the King had explained to you that he is "guiltless of your father's death, and [is] most sensibly in grief for it." Now he promises you a hearing of your cause before "your wisest friends," and you yourself are to select the composition of their counsel. "If by direct or by collateral hand they find us touch'd," he continues, "we will our kingdom give, our crown, our life, and all that we call ours, to you in satisfaction." The only thing he demands – or rather, requests – in return is that you accept his help in your revenge if he should indeed be found innocent. Sounds fair, doesn't it? You accept.
And at that promised hearing, you learn that your father was indeed neither killed at the hands of this new King nor on his orders but rather, by your own childhood friend Prince Hamlet, whose intent was actually to kill this very King, and who has been declared mad and dispatched to England with no other purpose than to downplay this particular affair. (What you're of course not told is that the Prince killed your father in the Queen's bedchamber, while the venerable Counsellor was hiding behind an arras and about to listen in on a conversation between Hamlet and his mother, pursuant to a plan also hatched with this same King.) Hamlet, too, is responsible for driving your sister into lunacy, you are told. All of this comes as a tremendous shock to you – but there doesn't seem to be any way around it. Hamlet is guilty.
Well, then, to hell with friendship, if this is what it does to you.
A short while later, when in private conference with this King whom you have come to accept as your souvereign again after all, the two of you learn that Hamlet likewise intends to return to Elsinore, and even very soon. Recognising your undiminished need for revenge, the King asks whether you will be "ruled" by him. "Ay my lord, so you will not o'errule me to a peace," you grimly bite back; and when he responds, "To thine own peace," and explains that he has devised a scheme after which, if it works out alright, "for [Hamlet's] death no wind shall breathe but even his mother shall uncharge the practice and call it accident," you add that you "will be rul'd; the rather, if [the King] could devise it so that [you] might be the organ." "It falls right," your souvereign comments, almost more to himself than to you, with a note of satisfaction; and he begins to lay out his plan before you, demonstrating how it would capitalise on your swordsmanship; a skill in which you are far superior to Prince Hamlet.
Then, out of nothing, he breaks off and asks whether your father was dear to you. And as if to add insult to injury, he continues, "Or are you like the painting of a sorrow, a face without a heart?"
You can hardly believe your ears. "Why ask you this?" you snap in profound indignation, almost forgetting the respect you owe to your liege.
"Not that I think you did not love your father," he responds calmly. "But that I know love is begun by time, and that I see, in passages of proof, time qualifies the spark and fire of it." And he reminds you that "that we would do, we should do when we would."
You, tardy or relenting in your father's revenge? Never! You dare damnation. "Hamlet comes back. What would you undertake to show yourself your father's son in deed more than in words?" the King inquires. There is only one answer to this: "To cut his throat i' th' church!" – You won't be juggled with, haven't you told him that before? To hell, allegiance! vows, to the blackest devil; conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit! Let come what comes; only [you'll] be reveng'd most throughly for [your] father. – So when by chance you do encounter Hamlet on the hallowed ground of the churchyard where Ophelia is to be buried the very next day, it doesn't take much provocation from him at all for you to go for his throat, and to exclaim, "The devil take thy soul!" And you absolutely mean it. But this is not what you had agreed on with your King; and so, reluctantly you let him hold you back just a little longer.
Alas, enraged as you were by the King's words on that previous day, you had missed that tiny whiff of triumph flashing over his face as he had commented on your willingness to commit sacrilege for the sake of revenge. ("No place indeed should murther sanctuarize; revenge should have no bounds.") Had you seen that expression, and had you not disregarded the hint of satisfaction in his voice a little earlier, you might have been put on your guard. You're no fool, and you've grown up at court – you know that such things as conspiracies exist, and that it is in a conspiracy's very nature to go against the innocent, not the guilty. But you're overcome with grief for your father and your sister; and besides, you have had your hearing ... a hearing before a group of judges that you yourself have had the opportunity to hand-pick, and even they have confirmed Hamlet's guilt. There can be no doubt: he is the man to be requited for your loved ones. Thus, you have willingly acceded to the King's plan; and in fact, you have told him you can do him one better – your sword will not only be, as he had suggested, unbated (i.e., not blunted, as is the custom in duel fencing), it will also be envenomed with a poisonous unction that you yourself have bought for the purpose.
Thus, only when it is too late do you realise how ruthlessly your own sorrow and pain has been exploited. "I am justly kill'd with mine own treachery," you now bitterly comment, and with your last remaining powers you accuse the truly guilty party for all around to hear: "The King, the King's to blame." You still draw breath just about long enough to see Hamlet, who is not yet overcome by the poison that is about to kill you all, put that "venom to [its] work" against the true villain, and you exchange forgiveness with the Prince. But then "the rest is silence" ... first for you and, very shortly thereafter, also for him.
There are characters in literary and theatrical history whom you just want to shake and yell loudly into their ears, "Hello?? – Hello??? – Wake up!!!" And Shakespeare was particularly prone to creating these; there's one of them in almost everyone of his plays. Laertes isn't quite as bad as King Lear and Othello (or actually, pretty much every character save Iago in the Moor of Venice's tragedy). But, boy, Polonius's son sure comes close. Because Laertes – at least the way I see him – isn't just a naïve young hotspur who easily lets his emotions get the better of him and who is thus equally easily manipulated. He is young, certainly, and his father sends him off to France with all those "precepts in [his] memory [to] look [his] character" – but I'll wager that most of us who have left home on a few extended trips during those years when we were starting out into the world on our own have heard that kind of speech on every single occasion, and exactly the same things every single time, too, regardless whether they were in fact warranted or not. And we know from what Laertes had told his sister only a minute earlier that he hardly would have needed this kind of admonition – indeed, he had handled what he saw as the risks in Ophelia's growing attachment to Hamlet with considerably more delicacy, decorum and understanding than the old politician and diplomat, their father. This in itself speaks to a certain maturity. And upon his return to Denmark, Laertes quickly assembles what I think we must assume is quite a massive following among the malcontented; a following, thus, that would be hard to control for anybody without any significant leadership experience. Yet, literally within minutes of his return to Elsinore he is putty in Claudius's hands, and mere days later, Claudius has so thoroughly corrupted his brain that he is not only willing to kill his childhood friend, but even to commit sacrilege in doing so. Why, in God's name – why?!
Well, as in the case of everybody else he so successfully instrumentalises, Claudius quickly recognises Laertes's weaknesses and finds a way to play on them. And among these are not merely the younger man's abject grief over the fate of his father and sister (which in itself must necessarily cloud his judgement); I also think that, although he has grown up in a court environment and certainly has seen the odd conspiracy or two, Laertes is simply too straightforward to see through Claudius's machinations, which are, after all, bottomlessly sinister indeed. And quite crucially, Claudius also realises that Laertes, himself a member of a family with considerable royal succession rights, will likely place a certain importance on such things as legal procedures and formalities. Since he – Claudius – is the only one who knows how and why Polonius was really killed, there is no great risk for him in offering Laertes a hearing on his cause, to even let him hand-pick the judges, and to further offer his (Claudius's) own resignation in the event he should be found to have had any hand in the death of Laertes's father. But he knows that the young challenger to his crown will certainly be swayed by the appearance of legality, and lo'n behold, it does appear that this, perhaps more than anything, does the trick. Now, the hearing doesn't seem to have answered all of Laertes's questions; there still remains the little matter why the King hasn't prosecuted Hamlet's crime with greater strictness before. But to that, too, Claudius has an answer ... and perhaps his greatest trickery besides the absolutely diabolical timing of his questions whether Polonius was dear to his son, and what Laertes will do "to show [himself] [his] father's son in deed more than in words" lies in the way he initially apologises for the alleged weakness of his "two special reasons, which may to [Laertes], perhaps, seem much unsinew'd, but yet to [him (Claudius)] they are strong." For even if we're talking about murder, who would not be tempted to be lenient if it's all in the family – if you might lose the love of your life by placing justice over clemency? Moreover – and this, again, is an argument that a would-be leader like Laertes is particularly likely to buy into – who would risk a popular uprising, even if "the general gender" don't have a clue what's really going on to begin with? (Of course, neither has anybody else at court, but let that go ...) No, this just couldn't be pursued with due resolve until now. Laertes is just the man Claudius has been waiting for. And so he falls for the King's evil plot.
Now, as far as casting goes, you'll doubtlessly accuse me of a certain family favoritism and ask whether we truly have to have both Colin and Jonathan Firth in this movie. Err, well, yes, if I had my say, we would. Granted, Jonathan Firth probably wouldn't be any more interested than his older brother – not in the part of Laertes, anyway, after having moved on to bigger and better things like Girolamo Aleander in "Luther" and Prince Albert in "Victoria and Albert." But I think there is something of Laertes in a lot of the characters building the foundation of his earlier career, such as young Joscelyn in the "Cadfael" episode "The Leper of St. Giles" (incidentally one of the series's best overall entries, thanks not only to its strong storyline but in no small part also to Mr. Firth's performance) and Fred Vincy in the BBC's "Middlemarch" dramatisation, and even now, he can still be found in similar roles on occasion (such as, for example, as the troubled Rhys-Jones in the "Inspector Lynley Mysteries" episode "Payment in Blood"); so he would definitely have the right touch for the role. And since I don't just see Laertes as the young hotspur as who he is portrayed way too often, but as an accomplished leader in the making, I actually do think Mr. Firth's more recent experience would add a considerable amount of texture to his performance. But, well as for the prospect of actually seeing this coming to fruition ... (and fear me not, I won't even say it again.)
Copyright 2002 – 2009: Ulrike Böhm, all rights reserved.
