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All Site ContentHamletAct 4Scene 7
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"Let shame say what it will"
Context and Language Videos
Act 4,
Scene 7
Lines 160-166

A discussion of Laertes's reaction to Ophelia's death in Act 4, Scene 7 of myShakespeare's Hamlet. 

myShakespeare | Hamlet 4.7 “Your sister’s drowned, Laertes”

Laertes

Too much of water have thou, poor Ophelia, 
And therefore I forbid my tears. But yet,
It is our trick; nature her custom holds.    
Let shame say what it will. 
[He weeps.]                            
                                            When these arethese are gone,
The woman will be out. Adieu, my lord.
I have a speech of fire that fain would blaze,
But that this folly douts it.    
Video Transcript: 

SARAH:  From Laertes' initial words, his reaction would not necessarily be clear to the reader.  It's only from his subsequent lines about his tears that we understand he's devastated by this account of his sister's death.

RALPH:  That's right, Sarah.  And what he says is beautiful — he forbids himself from crying because, as he puts it, Ophelia has already had too much water.

SARAH:  But even as he says these words, he's unable to stop his own tears, shameful though it is for a young man of the court.

RALPH:  He vows that, once he stops crying, the woman will be out of him, meaning he'll be purely masculine from this point on.  Presumably this means he'll also be ready to take revenge on Hamlet for the fate of both his father and his sister.

SARAH:  Laertes says goodbye to Claudius, claiming that he is full of a speech of fire — that he is full of rage — but that his weeping keeps overcoming, or drowning his rage.

RALPH:  Laertes's lines here almost unwillingly borrow the metaphors of water and drowning from Gertrude's account of Ophelia's death — it's as if he can't stop that language from creeping into his speech, just as he can't stop his own tears from falling.