Foils And Foils

With all due respect to the Spanish Department, I am about to mention a characteristic of Don Quixote in my AP English Literature blog entry. Ooh, devious. I hope they don’t read it, because then, I might be in big trouble…

Note from the Spanish Department:
Durante el transcurso del día de ayer, una fuente confiable nos informó que uno de los estudiantes del profesor Jesse Tangen-Mills violó el estatuto que separa al departamento de Literatura Hispanoamericana del departamento de Inglés. Éste utilizo referencias al texto Don Quijote de La Mancha en uno de sus trabajos para la clase de AP Literature & Composition. Esperamos que esta aberración no vuelva a repetirse.

Anyways, ouch, in Cervantes’ Don Quixote, the absentminded and unrealistic Don Quixote is contrasted with realistic Sancho Panza, without noting that the latter is fat in contrast to the prior’s thin contexture. This drastic difference between the two makes Sancho one of the most prominent foils in literature. As I write this, my memory dates me back to one of the first lessons in Pre AP ELA 9th Grade:

September 2, 2008
Topic: The Story of Him Who Knew
Aim: Who is Enkidu?
Does Gilgamesh have a foil?
WRITE NOW
Copy the following definitions
Hamartia: A tragic flaw i.e, Achilles’ heel
A negative character trait that leads to a character’s demise
Foil: Contrasts with the protagonists attributes i.e, Don Quijote’s foil is Sancho Panza.

A foil. And now I’m back from my walk down the memory lane, back to reading Hamlet, back to thinking how to make this blog entry more interesting to read. Is there anything about Hamlet that there hasn’t been said? Let’s give it a try.

I think of Fortinbras as being Hamlet’s foil. His minor role is the first difference with Hamlet, who enhances the audience into deep and long soliloquies. Fortinbras’ appearance at the end of the play is deliberate, not accidental, due to the fact he is determined to avenge his father’s slain (by King Hamlet prior to the play). Hence, Hamlet’s uncertainty and indecisiveness is clearly contrasted with Fortinbras’ impetuous action. Consequently, the appearance of Fortinbras acts as a deus ex machina due to three reasons:

1. Marcellus’ statement in Act I, scene iv: “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” (100), and the image of the Gertrude, Claudius, Laertes, and Hamlet laid dead upon the appearance of Fortinbras lead the audience to believe that Fortinbras will eventually cure Denmark’s disease.

2. Hamlet’s lines, “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends” (V,ii,11) and “the rest is silence” (V,ii,395) might refer to the ending of the play itself. The first one implying that the end of the play will be wrought by the appearance of a God-like figure (by definition, dues ex machina is “god out of a machine”), which in this case is Fortinbras. Meanwhile, the second line might refer to silence as a metaphor of peace or death, which hence alludes to the fact that Denmark will, as the epitaph says, Rest In Peace.

3. Fortinbras’ final lines, also being the play’s final lines, “Such a sight as this / Becomes the field but here shows much amiss / Go, bid the soldiers shoot” (V,ii,447-49) resemble hope in the future, contrasted by the present scene of death, which he compares to a battlefield.

Besides Fortinbras, various other characters also serve as Hamlet’s foils. And a curious coincidence is that all of them appear in the final scene: Horatio, Laertes, and Claudius. I’m not going to talk about the three, you should understand why each one serves as Hamlet’s foil. But fine, choose one, I’ll explain one for you, but later, let me finish my point. As I was saying, these foils appear altogether in the last scene. In addition to that, the main event of this last scene is what? Yes, fencing, and what do we use in fencing? Yes, foils! Wow, now I’m going to be optimistic and assume that Shakespeare did that on purpose. A paronomasia, as we might infer.

And as I promised you a foil, choose one. Horatio? Fine. Let’s see… Horatio, for example, is like Hamlet’s Sancho Panza, where his serenity and sanity is contrasted to Hamlet’s bustle and madness. Also, Horatio’s loyalty to Hamlet is clearly contrasted with Hamlet’s variable state of mind. Besides being the foil, Horatio is an interesting character if we consider one of Hamlet’s last words: “If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, / Absent thee from felicity awhile / And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain / To tell my story” (V,ii,381-84). Here, its quite amusing how Hamlet refers to death as “felicity”, and hence pleads Horatio to avoid suicide, or death, but instead wait to tell his story. Hamlet’s final wish makes me wonder, can Horatio be interpreted as Shakespeare? Is Shakespeare self-inserting himself in Horatio to tell the story of Hamlet?

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Oh, one last comment. The death of all the characters, who in some way or another, played with treachery or villainy, and the survival of innocent Horatio and Fortinbras at the end of the play serves as a clear example of poetic justice: a twist of fate in the characters’ ends.