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What happens in Act 4, Scene 3 of Hamlet?
Claudius questions Hamlet until he reveals the location of Polonius’s body. Claudius sends Hamlet away to England, accompanied by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and with secret orders for Hamlet to be put to death when he arrives.
What happens in Act 4, Scene 4 of Hamlet?
Hamlet encounters Fortinbras, a Norwegian prince leading an army into Poland to fight over a patch of land. Hamlet marvels that men will fight and kill over nothing, and yet he has failed to kill Claudius over a significant matter.
Read our Summary & Analysis of Act 4, Scenes 3 & 4. (2-minute read)
Are any important characters introduced in Act 4, Scenes 3 & 4 of Hamlet?
Prince Fortinbras of Norway appears in Scene 3. Like many of the male characters in the play, Fortinbras serves as counterpoints to Hamlet. Like Hamlet, he is driven to avenge the death of his father (who was killed in battle with Hamlet’s father when Fortinbras and Hamlet were very young). However, unlike the largely inactive Hamlet, he will not hesitate to go to great lengths, including a willingness to go to war, to achieve revenge.
Read more about he contrasts between Fortinbras and Hamlet. (1-minute read)
Who are some of the other characters in the play who contrast with Hamlet?
Horatio’s steadfastness and loyalty contrast with Hamlet’s variability and excitability, though both share a love of learning, reason, and thought. Claudius’s willingness to disregard all moral law and act decisively to fulfill his appetites and lust for power contrasts with Hamlet’s concern for morality and indecisive inability to act. And as we will soon see, Laertes’s single-minded, furious desire to avenge Polonius stands in stark opposition to Hamlet’s inactivity regarding his own father’s death.
Interestingly, Hamlet, Laertes, and Fortinbras are all positioned to seek revenge for the murders of their fathers, and their situations are deeply intertwined. Hamlet’s father killed Fortinbras’s father, and Hamlet killed Laertes’ father, meaning that Hamlet occupies the same role for Laertes as Claudius does for Hamlet.
Revenge is the common thread ties together Hamlet, Laertes, and Fortinbras—as well as drives the plot of Hamlet, as you can read more about below.
Is Hamlet an example of the tragedy genre? Is it a revenge tragedy?
As you can read about more in our discussion of “Hamlet and the genre of tragedy,” the play displays the features traditionally associated with the tragic genre, but it also strays from the usual conventions of the genre.
Some of the ways that Hamlet differs from more traditional and straightforward tragedies (including Shakespeare’s own Othello and Romeo and Juliet) make it fit within the subgenre (popular at the time Hamlet was written) of revenge tragedy. In a revenge tragedy the hero suffers the murder of someone he loved, or some other great loss and the plot is driven by his desire for revenge. At the end of a revenge tragedy, the hero murders the person who has wronged him, and typically also dies as well. However, Shakespeare didn’t seem content to write just another typical revenge tragedy when he wrote Hamlet, so he included many twists on the typical revenge tragedy formula, to the point of where some have suggested he may have meant it to be a send-up or a parody of the then popular subgenre, as you can read more about in the link below.
Read about how Hamlet fits and tweaks the revenge tragedy subgenre. (3-minute read)
