Character Analysis: Sorting Hamlet & Horatio
using the @sortinghatchats system
PRIMARY = MOTIVE. WHY DO YOU DO THINGS?
LION Primary’s sense of morality and ethics comes from inside. Things just feel right or they feel wrong.
BIRD Primary gets their morality and ethics from the world outside them. They decide what they think is right.
BADGER Primary is focused on the good of the group. Who cares if something is technically “moral” if people are getting hurt?
SNAKE Primary is a lot like Badger, but instead of protecting the group, their highest law is the well-being of the individual people they love.
SECONDARY = METHOD. HOW DO YOU DO THINGS?
LION Secondary gets their power from being direct, honest, completely themselves. Their “plan” is just keep going until someone stops them. If they see a locked door, they kick it in.
BIRD Secondary collects tools and skills. They build things, find things, learn things. If they see a locked door, they go through their box of keys until they find the right one.
BADGER Secondary is fair, hardworking, and shows up. They’re good at getting people to trust them, and good at getting people to help them. If they see a locked door, they knock.
SNAKE Secondary knows the right mask to wear for each situation. They’re adaptive. They go in the back way. They find the third option. They’re the ones who know how to pick the locks.
HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK has one heck of a Bird primary. He’s a philosophy student who “consider[s] too curiously,” thinking over the morality of his actions while playing thought-experiment games with Horatio. He knows his uncle is guilty, he suspects it from the beginning, but he can’t act on that gut feeling until he has some real proper outside evidence. He gets a bad feeling about the duel, but dismisses it as “foolery… such a kind of gain-giving as would perhaps trouble a woman.” Then decides that he can’t allow himself to suspect a trap behind every corner, and goes in to fight.
This is why sticking him in Elsinore Castle is such a good dramatic set-up. Everyone there is basically gaslighting him - treating the fact that his uncle married his mother and became the new king (instead of Hamlet, the old king’s son) as totally and completely normal. To stay sane, he needs Horatio standing there reaffirming his version of reality - yes, you’re right, the funeral and the wedding were weirdly close together. I believe you.
The other thing that makes me think Bird primary is the way Hamlet’s worldview changes. At first he’s lost, tortured by indecision (a very Bird primary problem). But then he talks to the Norwegian soldier and has the epiphany that people kill “even for an eggshell” [read: “for one corn chip”] all the time. He says “from this time forth / my thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth” and then they are. From then on, Hamlet’s the perfect Revenge Protagonist. Kills Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, zero guilt, doesn’t back down from the duel, stabs and poisons Claudius. In the last act he looks really Lion, because he’s adopted a more Lion-flavored personal philosophy.
Hamlet definitely models Snake secondary. But he’s very bad at it and fools no one. A short rundown of the critiques of Hamlet’s acting:
POLONIUS ~ “though this be madness/yet there is method in it”
CLAUDIUS ~ “what he spoke, though it lacked form a little/ was not like madness”
HORATIO ~ “these are but wild and whirling words my lord.”
(Arguably Hamlet fools Ophelia. Arguably.)
There’s also the Bird secondary model he uses to stage the elaborate psychological trap that is the play-within-a play, and forge the letter that kills Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Good penmanship, knowledge of plays, just some of the tools in Hamlet’s toolbox.
But, neither of those methods seem to be especially healthy for him. Hamlet is most comfortable, and most powerful, when he can just stare someone down and say the true thing. “I know not ‘seems’” is pretty much the first thing we hear him say. Again, it’s kind of cruel that this character is stuck in Elsinore, forced to wear so many alternate models.
So, when Hamlet is stressed he gets abrupt and he gets direct. He does that on/off thing which is very Lion secondary. (Do nothing… do nothing... do a bunch of stuff, all at once.) That climatic sword fight at the end is pure charging lion. He seemed to get along well with the pirates? And since Shakespeare is a writer who finds lion secondaries particularly tragic, it makes sense he’d give one to his most iconic tragic hero.
This also means Hamlet house-matches Ophelia, which is ultimately why I think they don’t work. They’re too alike. I’m not going to speculate much on which sortings are compatible with each other (hell if I know) but I will say this: being in a romantic relationship with your exact match is probably a bad idea. You are just going to double down on the weaknesses and have trouble coming up with alternate solutions when things go wrong.
Also, the way the Closet scene plays out makes me think that Gertrude and Hamlet both have to be Lion secondaries. Gertrude starts off using her snake secondary model, trying to deflect and maneuver around her son, but he uses that Lion to just be threateningly honest until she starts giving him real answers. Basically they scream true things at each other until they both calm down. Lion secondaries… are comforted by cathartic fights, in a way that I don’t think the other secondaries are. For Gertrude and Hamlet, it’s actually a wholesome bonding experience.
HORATIO is a really clean example of a Snake primary, and I love that for him. The only reason he does anything is because of Hamlet. That’s only thing in his life that matters, or possibly even exists. (“I do not know from what part of the world / I should be greeted, if not from Lord Hamlet.”) When Hamlet asks him why he’s come to Elsinore, the place so terrible it will drive you to alcoholism, Horatio says, “I came to see your father’s funeral.” I came because I thought you needed me. That’s it. Horatio stays in an incredibly dangerous and precarious situation because he doesn’t want Hamlet to be alone. He kind of needs to be a Snake primary, he doesn’t make sense otherwise.
As for secondary - Badger. He’s a badger. Horatio is the kind of solid, dependable guy who you call if you’re having ghost problems. And even though the guards think he has special ghost-busting knowledge (being a graduate of Wittenberg and all) that’s not how Horatio handles the situation. He talks to the ghost, he wants to know where it is coming from. Wants to know how he can help.
Horatio, possibly uniquely (since everybody else is a snake or lion secondary) has a really good grasp on the interpersonal dynamics of both the court and Denmark as a whole. When he needs to make Gertrude listen to him - make her take the Ophelia problem seriously - he talks about how her ravings are going to sew social unrest, that people are going to listen to her and hear what they want to hear. And at the end, he completely takes the reins from Fortinbras. Get me up on a stage, let me talk to the people, I know exactly hoe to calm them all down. Horatio’s got the courtier secondary.
He’s got such a correct and such an elegant mask (“custom hath made it in him a habit of easiness”) that I do think there’s a strict Badger performance in there as well. But nothing underneath it except more Badger. I don’t see him use the skills of any other secondary, and it’s Badger that he falls back on when he’s under pressure.
Horatio grounds Hamlet with his combination of solid Snake primary and solid Badger secondary. The prince is so much more stable and leveled out when he’s in a room with Horatio. It’s also very funny that Snake Badger has been identified as the love interest sorting, and like - well - I see it.
Hamlet - Bird primary / Lion secondary, unhealthy Snake and Bird models
Horatio - Snake primary / Badger secondary, Badger performance
