Hamlet: Fortinbras - the king is dead, long live the king

Hamlet, the play, begins with Denmark preparing to repel an invasion led by Fortinbras, a Prince of Norway.  This is soon dealt with and the audience sits back to enjoy the twists, turns and complication resulting from Hamlet’s meeting with the Ghost of his murdered father.  It isn’t until Act 4, scene 4 that, to everyone’s surprise, the matter of Danish sovereignty re-emerges.  However, it goes away again so quickly as to be thought dispensable by some directors and is cut - I think wrongly.  The audience needs a reminder of the initial threat to Denmark’s sovereignty to fully appreciate what happens at the very end when the crown falls into the Fortinbras’ hands almost, one might say, by sheer chance. I think this is a play about the succession to the throne and how rottenness, ghostly visitations, uncertainty, murder, piracy, madness, and villainy, fades into insignificance under the steady guiding hand of heaven - an idea that is easy to lose sight of in a secular world.

Claudius’ act of diplomacy towards Fortinbras yields a rich harvest for the state, if not for his court. It sets in train a sequence of events, for the most part played off-stage, that finally puts the right man at the top. Since the Norwegian Prince sheds no Danish blood, strictly observes protocol when setting out with his army to cross peacefully Danish land, and is elected to the monarchy by Hamlet, he succeeds to the throne squeaky clean. Although we are told very little about Fortinbras, what we are able to glean shows him to have ‘a little
touch of Harry’ about him. Like his famous prototype, Henry V, he is warlike and headstrong, nevertheless obedient to those in authority over him and, when it matters, an opportunist. Hamlet has this to say:

    Witness this army of such mass and charge,
    Led by a delicate and tender prince,
    Whose spirit, with divine ambition puff’d,
    Makes mouths at the invisible event,
    Exposing what is mortal and unsure
    To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,
    Even for an eggshell.
                                               (IV.iv.7)

I am interested by the phrase ‘divine ambition puff’d’.  If Shakespeare is not using the word ‘divine’ loosely, and I think he is not - divine, and the idea of things divine, is used seriously in other parts of the play, ‘puff’d’ is a straightforward description of a man buoyed up by heaven’s will.   Divinity and Heaven are important in this play. Fortinbras is portrayed as a man of high mettle - and a very proper person to win the Danish throne.