Hamlet Fortinbras Character Analysis

Of all the characters in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Fortinbras is perhaps the strangest. He is barely seen and speaks little. Other characters often speak of him in low tones. Oddly enough, though, Fortinbras is a stabilizing force in the action of the play and he also functions as a framing device for the play itself. He makes his presence known only at the beginning, middle and end.

First and foremost, Fortinbras is a soldier from Norway. Early in the play, the reader learns there is a history of violence between Denmark and Norway. Horatio, when he sees the ghost of the old king, says:

Our valiant [old] Hamlet

(For so on this of our known world esteem’d him)

Did slay this Fortinbras, who, by a seal’d compact

Well ratified by law of heraldy,

Did forfeit (with his life) all [those] in his lands

Which he stood seiz’d of, to the conqueror[.] (1.1, lls 84-9)

Of course, Fortinbras was going to sit by after his father was killed; instead, he raises an army. Horatio guesses the Prince of Norway is going “to recover of us, by strong hand / And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands / So by his father lost” (1.1, 102-4). Horatio is concerned with Fortinbras’s army, and this concern colors the play since it is one of the foremost concerns on the minds of the characters.

Horatio is not the only one watching Fortinbras’s
His affinity for honor and glory makes him sound evenhanded or perhaps just. The idea of him as a law-bringer coincides with his final act as a framing device as the play closes. Here Fortinbras delivers edicts and sets right what has gone astray since the murder of the old King Hamlet. Though the weight of the action has been carried by Hamlet, it is Fotinbras who survives to see things continue to be restored to their right place. Likewise, Fortinbras knows the difference between death on the battlefield and murder. He