You Know, If You Really Loved Me

“Claudius: 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 in deed your father’s son

More than in words?

Laertes:  To cut his throat i' th' church.”

Page 231

With death being a constant figure in Hamlet, it would make sense that mourning would shadow behind it. In this passage, Claudius takes advantage of Laertes’s grievance as persuasion to work with him against Hamlet. We also see a return of the son being expected to revenge his father and kill his father’s murder. The King’s sudden change in view on the proper duration for mourning shows his manipulative character and his lack of true empathy toward others.

In the beginning of the play, Claudius gave an entire speech to Hamlet about how death happens to everyone and at some point you are expected to move on. He complained that Hamlet was grieving too much and that it seemed childish and immature. However, suddenly now when Laertes’s sadness could prove beneficial, Claudius begins talking about how Laertes’s seems to recover too quickly from his father’s death and isn’t showing true love or sympathy to him. He uses a metaphor of candles with “There lives within the very flame of love a kind of wick or snuff that will abate it.” Using a candle makes his love seem fragile to begin with, as they can extinguish with a small breeze rather than comparing it to a large fire as love sometimes is. Then he goes on to say that time could be the cause of its extinguish, as if that is a crime rather than a good thing as he had been preaching to Hamlet. Claudius also begins his statement with “Not that I think you did not love your father” which implies that he thinks the opposite. He then antagonizes Laertes by saying he doesn’t have the courage to defend his father’s memory with “show yourself in deed your father’s son more than in words?” All of his statements are carefully worded to manipulate Laertes’s into getting angry at Hamlet and acting out his own revenge.

Claudius displays his lack of empathy through his careless use of other people’s emotions and his inability to properly mourn. Though I’m sure Claudius might have found him annoying, Polonius was close with him in some ways. However, at the time of his death, he is not expressing any mourning at all. Instead, he uses Polonius’s death to his advantage. He shows no remorse in abusing Polonius’s memory by warping his son’s grievance into  a weapon. Claudius also doesn’t believe in what he is telling Laertes, as shown by his contradictory speech to Hamlet. He doesn’t truly think that a person needs to mourn death very long. Other people’s emotions are a viewed as a tool by Claudius rather than something to sympathize with.

In plotting Hamlet’s murder, Claudius reveals his manipulativeness and heartlessness. He shows that he does not grieve and is willing to use sensitive topics like a father’s death to convince people to work with him. He uses specific wording to goad Laertes in a way that would make it seem that he is dishonoring his father’s memory if he doesn’t help him. Through his ability to argue the complete opposite of what he told Hamlet , and in doing so using people’s emotions in a way others would avoid, Claudius shows that his character is even more corrupt than previously thought.