Paternal revenge is a recurring idea throughout William Shakespeare’s classic revenge play, Hamlet. Revenge is not only taken by Hamlet for his father’s honor but also Laertes.

Hamlet is one of the famous Elizabethan Revenge Tragedies. It follows the Senecan model of a revenge tragedy. The Senecan model is as follows:

• A secret murder, usually of a good king by a bad one

• The visit of the ghost of the murder victim to a young man who is generally the son

• A part of the story in which there is plotting and deception in which the number of dead slowly rise

• The avenger becomes mad or fakes his madness

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  Chaos towards the end of the plot ending in the murder of several of the main characters including the avenger

Hamlet is a Senecan revenge tragedy as it has the secret murder of King Hamlet by King Claudius, the visitation of King Hamlet’s ghost to his son, Hamlet, and a period of plotting and deception in which a few characters die (Polonius and Ophelia). Hamlet fakes mad throughout the play, and the end of the play is chaotic, with the death of several main characters, including Hamlet, the avenger.

Hamlet focuses on paternal revenge. Hamlet seeks to take revenge on King Claudius for his father’s honor, while Laertes seeks to take revenge on Hamlet for his father’s death. The honor of both Hamlet’s and Laertes’ fathers are being avenged. Seeking revenge on the murderer of one’s father was considered a filial duty of the son of the murdered. As this is a Senecan tragedy, Hamlet and Laertes ultimately die. They take vengeance on their father’s murderers, but they fail at doing so without

loosing more than what was expected.

Hamlet begins the journey as the Tragic Hero of the Senecan revenge tragedy, when he receives an ultimatum from his dead father’s ghost, “If thou didst ever thy dear father love/ […] Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder” (1.5.29-31). Here Hamlet discovers that his father was murdered by the new monarch, King Claudius. King Claudius was Hamlet’s uncle, making the marriage almost incestuous. The prior relationship that Hamlet had with the new King Claudius only made Hamlet’s desire for revenge for his father greater. He argues that the marriage is wrong as he argues with the king, “My mother. Father and mother is man and wife,/ man and wife is one flesh, and so, my mother.-/ come, for England” (4.4.60-62). Hamlet says the marriage is blood related since King Claudius is the brother of King Hamlet, so Gertrude and Claudius are of the same flesh and blood.

Hamlet even wished to take revenge on his mother for marrying King Claudius. He points out that for marrying Claudius she has “sense […] else [she] could not have motion; but [her] sense/ is apoplexed” (3.4.81-83). In this pun on the word sense, he means that she was like an apoplectic person, because she was crazy enough to marry King Claudius, when King Hamlet was incomparably better.

After the players perform, Hamlet becomes upset that the first player cares more about Hecuba than he feels about his own father. He starts to build his anger towards Claudius when he realizes his tragic flaw as he complains, “O vengeance!/ Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,/

That I, the son of a dear father murdered,/ prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,/ must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words/ and fall a-cursing like a very drab, /a scullion! Fie upon ‘t! Foh!” (2.2.610-616). He finds that he talks and but does not commit to action. His hesitance to act causes his failure in the end. Though he realizes this, he still wishes to find out whether the ghost is honest before he continues.

When the opportunity to kill King Claudius was knocking on Hamlet’s front door, Hamlet once again hesitated and lost it. He sneaks up behind King Claudius, who is not praying, but Hamlet believes he is, draw his sword and then hesitates, “And so he goes to heaven,/ and so am I revenged” (3.3.79-80). Here, Hamlet decides not to kill King Claudius, since he is praying and will go to heaven if he kills him, and if Claudius dies he will go to heaven, and Hamlet, on the other hand, will be ‘revenged’ and be sent to hell.

Finally, Hamlet decides to act. Sadly, Polonius is the one to cry “O, I am slain!” (3.4.30) rather than King Claudius. This is the turning point of the play in which things begin to fall apart. The queen finds out that she married with who had “[killed] a king” (3.4.35). She had felt guilty for the crime she had committed to King Hamlet by marrying his murderer, and she secretly joined Hamlet in his plot to kill the king. Laertes, on the flip side, had joined the King Claudius determined that his “revenge will come” (4.7.31) for his “noble father lost” (4.7.27).

King Claudius instigated Laertes new found hate for Hamlet more, by forcing the image of Polonius into Laertes mind, angering him more by asking questions like “was your father dear to you?/ or, are you like the painting of a sorrow,/ a face without a heart?” (4.7.122-124).

The anger King Claudius caused in the play through revenge caused the chaotic, final scene of the play in which several of the main characters die including Laertes, Hamlet, and himself. Hamlet’s hesitance caused the disaster of his vengeful goal. If he had killed King Claudius when he had an opportunity, complete triumph would be his. Not only would he be triumphant, but he would have also prevented the death of those dear to him, such as the queen and Ophelia. Claudius, poisoning Laertes mind, caused Laertes to become sinister. Laertes would lie that he is “satisfied in nature” (5.2.259) with Hamlet, but would go on to stab and poison Hamlet anyways. Laertes, successful in his venture, dies from a poisonous blow from Hamlet, having bestowed back the honor to his father. Hamlet then kills the King Claudius. Ironically, Fortinbras, whose venture was to avenge his father by defeating the people of Denmark, obtains monarchy of the country from Hamlet before Hamlet died having avenged his father.

The fathers were ultimately avenged in the end, but in order for all of the fathers to be satisfied, the play ended in chaos leading to the death of several characters, like most Senecan revenge tragedies. Paternal revenge is the cause of the chaos and death throughout the play. The sons had stayed true to their word and had all sought and won vengeance for their fathers, though two of them had lost their lives doing so.