Explore Shakespeare's presentation of justice and retribution in Hamlet (paragraph on honour and masculinity)

In Hamlet, ideas about justice and retribution are often articulated through the language of honour and masculinity. Many of the characters are clearly seeking retribution as well as justice. Laertes and Fortinbras both want to punish those who they feel have wronged them. For Fortinbras this goes as far as ‘to find quarrel in a straw // When honour’s at the stake’, he chooses to fight, even when there is no reason to maintain his honour. Similarly Laertes on hearing of his father’s death proclaims: ‘I dare damnation’. The difference between Laertes and Fortinbras, and Hamlet highlights a tension in the honour codes of Elizabethan England. Maintaining honour involved conflicting tensions, on the one hand to be governed by reason and rationality, and on the other to take action on any perceived slight, as it is the appearance of the deed rather than the deed itself which must be avenged. It feeds into the medieval idea of blood feuds which had their legacy in Elizabethan England in honour codes. Hamlet’s ‘splits’, as named by Marcella McCarthy, show the action based side of maintaining honour, Fortinbras’ ability to ‘find[] quarrel in a straw’ and Laertes resolution to ‘cut [Hamlet’s] throat i’th’church’. Hamlet’s honour however, is more known for his ‘noble and most sovereign reason’. Notwithstanding this, he wishes that he could be an example of ‘warrior masculinity’ as this would enable him to take revenge and so ‘searches for models on which to construct his own masculine identity’ as explained by Michael Mangan. They enact the kind of revenge that Francis Bacon calls ‘a wild sort of justice’. Hamlet struggles between these two opposing aspects of honour, he wishes to reason out his decision to kill Claudius, and then how and when to kill him as discussed above. The honour represented by Laertes and Fortinbras is admired by Hamlet, as is shown by his admiration of another figure, Pyrrhus. Hamlet recites part of Virgil’s Aeneid which describes Pyrrhus as ‘like th’Hyrcanian beast’, ‘hellish’ and covered with ‘coagulate gore’. This speech in formalised, elevated diction contrasts with the blank verse which characterises most of the play. This change in speech mirrors the change in character that Pyrrhus represents to Hamlet, the epitome of masculinity, decisive, strong and unreserved in his pursuit of revenge. Pyrrhus acts out the personal act of retribution that Hamlet professes to want to carry out.