guys i can't do this anymore. i have to speak my truth. hamlet is not the emo goth kid lounging around in hot topic clothes and laertes is not the varsity jacket-wearing jock. it's the other way around. before the events of the play, hamlet was very much a jock (4.7.111-114), enough so that his lack of exercise is noticeable (2.2.319-320) and was well-liked and popular by the common people (4.7.20-24). polonius implies to reynaldo that laertes is in france to study music specifically (2.1.81). laertes is easily agitated, provoked, and sensitive, which is arguably more likely to be a pre-existing condition of teenage angst hot topic-ism than hamlet's legitimate grief (open your eyes and look). i can't stress enough that hamlet's transformation into the person we see in the play is so jarring from his real self that he almost isn't the same person anymore, and laertes has similarly been pushed to be the volatile, violent person he is by his circumstances. hamlet is literally the popular athletic golden boy and laertes is, like, the kid lugging around a huge cello case every day to and from school who gets high as fuck behind the bleachers and picks fights with anyone who says anything about his sister
