The Manipulator and the Manipulated

"KING:
Laertes, was your father dear to you?
Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,
A face without a heart?
LAERTES:
Why ask you this?
KING:
Not that I think you did not love your father,
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.
There lives within the very flame of love
A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it,
And nothing is at a like goodness still;
For goodness, growing to a pleurisy,
Dies in his own too-much. That we would do
We should do when we would; for this "would" changes
And hath abatements and delays as many
As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;
And then this "should" is like a spendthrift sigh,
That hurts by easing. But to the quick of th' ulcer:
Hamlet comes back; what would you undertake
To show yourself indeed your father's son
More than in words?
LAERTES:
To cut his throat i' th' church."
(4.7.122-144)

Among the themes that we have discussed so far in Hamlet are the relationships between father and son and the deceit employed by many of the characters. In this passage, Claudius uses both Laertes' love for his father and his own knack for emotional manipulation to his advantage. In order to use Laertes' struggles to suit his own needs, Claudius pushes Laertes into defiant grief and exaggerates the need for revenge against Hamlet.

In this passage, Claudius discusses the relationship between a person's grief and their natural inclination to let it go. He first states that he does not think that Laertes "did not love his father," but he goes on to speculate that "love is begun by time / And. . . / Time qualifies the spark and fire of it" (126-129). He is saying that love happens between two people because of how much time they spend together, and, once they are no longer spending time together, the love fades. He continues in this fashion, saying that it is only natural that Laertes' fire and outrage at the murder of Polonius will fade. "Nothing is at a like goodness still," he claims, meaning that nothing will stay at its prime forever (132).

Claudius is not saying all of this to appease or comfort Laertes; he is trying to manipulate him into taking revenge on Hamlet. By asking Laertes, "Was your father dear to you? / Or are you like the painting of a sorrow, / A face without a heart?", Claudius is luring Laertes in (122-124). He is asking him if he is truly grieving, or if he is simply putting on a show because grief is expected of him. All of his talk of the "wick or snuff that will abate" the flame of love (130-131) is to make Laertes indignant and to increase his feeling of devotion to the cause of revenge. Once Claudius finishes and casually returns to "the quick of th'ulcer" , which is him asking Laertes "what [he] would undertake / To show [himself] indeed [his] father's son / more than in words" and in relation to Hamlet (140-143). This is Claudius' purpose: to make Laertes angry and then to place in front of him the idea of revenge against Hamlet.

Laertes, for his part, falls directly into the ploy. He is already mad because of the death of his father and the madness of his sister, and Claudius asking him if he truly loves his father angers him further. He grows more and more furious as Claudius suggests that he is faking grief, or that he is going to shed his grief quickly, or that his plans of revenge "hath abatements and delays as many / As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents" (137-138). By the time Claudius asks him what he is planning on doing to get revenge on Hamlet, Laertes is so furious that he replies that he will "cut his throat i' th' church" (144). This is exactly the kind of dramatic statement of fury that Claudius was looking for.

Claudius uses Laertes' grief and anger against him, in order to get Laertes to not only swear vengeance against Hamlet, but to swear it on a dramatic scale. This plays into the theme of deceit and the theme of father-son allegiance. It also shows Claudius' character and motive, as well and Laertes' gullibility when incensed.