Soft You Now...

Two posts ago I quoted an online study guide that called the character of Hamlet "one of theater's greatest enigmas of all time." 

I don't know, perhaps there's something to that. 

But I would argue that Hamlet is not even the most enigmatic character in the play named for him.

You see, Hamlet is an open book. In his roughly 1,500 lines, the lion's share of which he bears his innermost soul, it's as if he were on the couch with us the audience collectively serving as his therapist. Consequently, there are few secrets left with him, very little to be enigmatic about.

On the other hand, Shakespeare gives us little to grasp onto with the only character in the play who comes close to the title character, perhaps even eclipsing him in having captured the public's imagination for over 400 years.

After all, how many songs about Hamlet do you think Taylor Swift has written? 

In that regard, at the moment the score is Ophelia 1 - Hamlet 0. If popular music is any indication of the public's imagination being captured, then the score's not even close when you take into account all the songs written about Ophelia compared to the handful written about Hamlet. Actually, are there any?

That's pretty impressive considering Shakespeare gives Ophelia less than 200 lines to work her magic on us.

Like Hamlet's, Ophelia's public image has evolved over the centuries. 

In the years shortly after the play was written, before the influence of literary critics, psychoanalysts and scores of independent commentary, the public must have considered Ophelia, despite being moved by the pathos of her story, to have been a relatively minor character, the perfunctory love interest of the protagonist, just another predictable element in a revenge tragedy genre play. 

I can only guess that the public of Shakespeare's time would have taken for granted her obedience to her father Polonius, as that would have been expected of young women and to a lesser extent, young men of that era. They probably would not have questioned her loss of sanity after the horrific death of her father. After all, four characters in the play lose their fathers violently, and all of them reacted in the extreme, albeit quite differently. 

The idea that Ophelia may have had an intimate relationship with Hamlet probably wouldn't have shocked many people as in the day, a good number of brides, including Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare's wife, showed up to the altar pregnant. It was another story for children born out of wedlock which may have played a role in Ophelia's actions.

What would have scandalized Elizabethan/Jacobian society was Ophelia's likely suicide. To give an idea of the zeitgeist regarding suicide, which was regarded as a punishable criminal offense in Shakespeare's time*, at the outset of Hamlet's first soliloquy, (Act I , Scene ii, lines 129-134), the character flatly rejects the idea of killing himself because of God's steadfast law against "self-slaughter." Then there is Gertrude's ambiguous description of Ophelia's death (IV, vii, 64-181). Finally, not one but two gravesite conversations take place before and during Ophelia's funeral, (V, i,1-31) and (V, i, 215-231), about the appropriateness of a Christian burial for someone who took her own life.

Flash forward to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and values had flip-flopped. Suicide began to be discussed as an issue of mental illness rather than as a crime and at least within the realm of the arts, a certain mystique developed around the act, especially when committed by women. In this macabre comment written by the master of 19th Century macabre, Edgar Allan Poe wrote: 

The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.

Throw suicide into the mix, and its causes such as depression, melancholia, erotomania, you name it, and you had an irresistible mix whose poster child was Ophelia. The character's stock rose in the Victorian era not only in the form of her character in the play, but in her image as well, most famously (but not exclusively) portrayed by the English Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais, and his model, a young woman named Elizabeth Siddal.

In the painting, Ophelia is captured in her last moments before she sinks into eternity, surrounded by flowers of the same species (except one) as those she handed to members of the Court and to her brother during her "mad scene".

The following is a beautiful description of the painting I found online, written by James Lucas, a man of many talents: 

Every flower in the water is real, painted with the obsessive botanical precision the Pre-Raphaelites were famous for, and almost every one carries a hidden meaning. The pansies floating on her dress stood for love in vain. The violets around her neck meant faithfulness. The daisy near her hand, innocence. The weeping willow leaning over her was the old symbol of forsaken love. And bright against her gown, one red poppy: the flower of sleep and death, which Shakespeare never mentioned, and which Millais added himself. He built the whole tragedy into the foliage, in a language his Victorian viewers could read like text, and which we drift right past today...

And here is the detail that turns this painting into something almost unbearable to look at: ten years later Elizabeth Siddal died of an overdose of laudanum, the opium drug that Victorians took by the spoonful. She was thirty-two. Look again at that single red poppy Millais slipped into the picture, the flower that has always meant both sleep and death, and that opium is made from. He painted a beautiful young woman playing a girl who drowns. He could not have known he was also depicting her fate.

In this case of life imitating art, you simply can't get more Romantic and Victorian than this: 

John Everett Millais, Ophelia, c.1852. Photo: © Tate, London, 2017.

While Ophelia was portrayed as a tragic object of beauty and desire, what the Victorians would not have gone for was any intimation of sexuality on her part. To that end, the play was edited to take out all the naughty bits such as the suggestive banter between Ophelia and Hamlet before and during the play within the play, and her not at all subtle recounting of a jilted lover during her mad scene.

But the tide began to turn as:

...a few Victorian actresses and women writers were revising Ophelia in feminist terms. Ellen Terry played her as a victim of sexual intimidation.

writes American feminist literary critic Elaine Showalter. She goes on:

20th-century Freudian interpretations emphasized Ophelia's own neurotic sexual desires, and hinted at her unconscious incestuous attractions to Polonius or Laertes. Around the 1970s, Ophelia on stage became a graphic dramatic study of mental pathology, even schizophrenia, sucking her thumb, headbanging, even drooling.

That's a far cry from Bernard Grebarnier's 1960 depiction of Ophelia:

Shakespeare's portrait of Ophelia is perhaps the most interesting depiction in world drama of a thoroughly uninteresting young woman.

It seems as if his interpretation, harsh and sexist as it may be, has been the basis for many of the portrayals of Ophelia in the last half century. At least that is, the Ophelia before her father is murdered. 

And according to supporters of this idea, the reason she is so uninteresting, (granted, most feminists would not use that term), is because she has been thoroughly repressed by the men in her life which has given her a complete lack of "agency" in her actions.

With her chief repressors gone, Polonius dead, Hamlet sent away, and her brother Laertes, mad as a hatter over his father's death, it is Ophelia's insanity that allows her to express who she truly is. Since the 1970s according to Elaine Showwalter:

...we have had a feminist discourse which has offered a new perspective on Ophelia's madness as protest and rebellion. For many feminist theorists, the madwoman is a heroine, a powerful figure who rebels against the family and the social order; and the hysteric who refuses to speak the language of the patriarchal order, who speaks otherwise, is a sister. In terms of effect on the theater, the most radical application of these ideas was probably realized in Melissa Murray's agitprop play Ophelia, written in 1979 for the English women's theater group “Hormone Imbalance.” In this blank verse retelling of the Hamlet story, Ophelia becomes a lesbian and runs off with a woman servant to join a guerrilla commune.

How cool is that?

If you are familiar with Hamlet but not the rest of Shakespeare, it may occur to you that the playwright was unwilling or unable to write parts for women who (at least while maintaining their sanity), had agency over their lives. The only other female character in Hamlet is Gertrude, who is also often thought to be an empty vessel.

But if Gertrude and Ophelia are submissive to the men in their lives, (in a moment I'll challenge that idea), they are definitely the outliers among Shakespeare's female characters:

The most obvious character who is not the least bit submissive is Juliet who defies her father and the rest of her family by falling in love with and marrying Romeo of the despised Montague Family.

Desdemona defies her father by marrying a black man, Othello.

Cordelia, daughter of King Lear, at great personal cost, refuses to play along with her father's game of forcing his three daughters to publicly declare their unlimited love for him.

Isabella in Measure for Measure, denies the chance of saving her brother's life by refusing to sleep with Angelo, deputy duke of Vienna who sentenced him to death.

There's agency galore among these Shakespeare heroines, and they are just the tip of the iceberg.

That's not to mention the lady villains who are certainly no shrinking violets, Lady Macbeth for example, need I say more?

The truth is, unless a character was meant to be nothing more than a comic prop, Shakespeare didn't create simple, one dimensional characters, and Ophelia and Gertrude are no exceptions. 

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So why is Ophelia considered to be so lacking in agency?

To address the question, we need to go back to Act One Scene Three. Ophelia's brother Laertes is about to leave Denmark to go back to school in Paris. He suspects that Ophelia and Hamlet are involved romantically and tries to dissuade his sister from carrying on the relationship because he believes Hamlet's intentions may not be honorable. Besides as prince, the choice of whom he marries may not be his own. Better according to Laertes, that she leave her honor (chastity) intact for Mr. Right.

Taking her brother's advice with a grain of salt, Ophelia chides him for his sanctimonious hypocrisy in a sentence that sounds as determined and defiant today as it must have 425 years ago:

But, good my brother,
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
Whiles, like a puffed and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads
And recks not his own rede.            (I, iii, 50-54)

Or as Madonna might say: 

Papa don't preach.

After Laertes' departure, their father Polonius picks up on the theme. Ophelia intimates there's indeed something going on saying Hamlet has:

...of late made many tenders
Of his affection to me.

Her father responds: 

Do you believe his “tenders,” as you call them?

Ophelia answers:

I do not know, my lord, what I should think.

(This line could be interpreted as either being submissive or ironically dismissive, take your pick.)

"Well, let me tell you what you should think" is essentially Polonius' response. 

Ophelia protests that Hamlet has been quite honorable in his actions.

Speaking it seems from personal experience, Polonius tries to convince his daughter that all men are pigs and that the prince is just using her until his Princess Charming comes along.

He closes his catechism by insisting his daughter have nothing to do with the prince:

This is for all:
I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth
Have you so slander any moment leisure
As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet.

To which she responds:

I shall obey, my Lord.             (I, iii, 108-145)

Let's pause here for a moment. It's that one sentence, "I shall obey my lord" that defines Ophelia's character for so many; to them she's just a good girl who does what she's told, even if it means giving up the love of her life. 

Ophelia is not the first person in the play to pledge obedience to a parent. When the subject of Hamlet returning to school in Germany comes up in the previous act, Gertrude, Hamlet's mother beseeches him:

Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet.
I pray thee, stay with us. Go not to Wittenberg.

To which Hamlet replies: 

I shall in all my best obey you, madam.             (I,, ii, 122,124)

He keeps that promise and does not return to school. He probably should have, but that would not have made for a very interesting play.

 

Despite that, no one ever has accused Hamlet of lacking agency. 

 

OK, back to the story:

 

After the next scene ending Act I, Act II  picks up two months later. **

Those two months correspond with the time between Hamlet meeting his father's ghost (which happens in the scene after Ophelia's pledge to her father), and his staging of the play to trap his uncle. Shakespeare leaves it up to us to imagine what went on during that time between Hamlet and Ophelia, but the text suggests she cuts off all communication with him.

After the two months, Ophelia reports to her father that a disheveled Hamlet acting very peculiarly has just paid her a visit. He grabs her by the wrist, stares intently into her face all the while grunting and sighing. Finally he walks away without uttering a word, glaring back at her as he walks out the door.

Now could this encounter with Ophelia be merely an act, part of the "antic disposition" he promised Horatio and Marcellus after his encounter with his father's ghost?

Or, as Polonius suggested, could Hamlet be acting out of "love sickness" for Ophelia?

Again, we're not given an answer; it's up to us to figure it out.

Hamlet's erratic behavior certainly attracts the attention and concern of the Court. Upon hearing this report from his daughter, in order to prove his theory that Hamlet's behavior is caused by love sickness, Polonius arranges a "chance" encounter between Ophelia and Hamlet, while the king and Polonius hide behind the curtains to observe the couple's every move.

Polonius brings his daughter to a place Hamlet often frequents and instructs her how to act when they meet. 

What follows is the famous "Get thee to a nunnery" scene where Hamlet goes ballistic at Ophelia.

The scene begins innocently enough when the two lovers exchange pleasantries, but it goes downhill fast.

So why all the drama?

Ophelia announces that she'd like to return the "remembrances" Hamlet had given her over the course of their relationship. At first, Hamlet denies ever having given those things to Ophelia.

She replies incredulously: 

My honored lord, you know right well you did,
And with them words of so sweet breath composed
As made the things more rich. Their perfume
lost,
Take these again, for to the noble mind
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.         (III, i, 106-112)

At this point Hamlet, pardon the expression, starts to lose his shit. 

Here's a link to the text of the entire scene, Hamlet's confrontation with Ophelia begins at line 96. 

Now remember, this is their first actual conversation in two months, or so we're led to believe. During that time, Hamlet's world has crumbled around him as he desperately looked for answers surrounding the death of his father. Meanwhile his girlfriend without explanation, has cut off all communication with him.

With that act of returning his love letters and other effects of his devotion, at least to Hamlet's mind, Ophelia is breaking up with him. 

At some point in the scene, the text never states explicitly when, Hamlet becomes aware that they are not alone in the room.

The tension ratchets up exponentially when Hamlet asks Ophelia where her father is. 

She lies to him:

At home my Lord  (III, i, 106,)

At that, Hamlet's response to Ophelia is devastatingly cruel. 

Are his words justified? 

Probably not. 

Are they understandable? 

Have you ever had someone you love break up with you AND simultaneously betray your trust during the most devastating and vulnerable time in your life?

If not then no, you probably wouldn't understand.

Or maybe it's all an act as some people suggest, but I don't think so.

Here's why:

In the play as written, line 96 mentioned above happens to contain the last line of the soliloquy that begins with the words, "To be or not to be" (you may have heard of it), where Hamlet contemplates the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" that we all suffer in our minds. Mid-speech he enumerates things that make our lives unbearable, and coming in at number three, right after "the proud man's contumely" (now there's a good Scrabble word for you), he mentions "the pangs of despised love", in contemporary speak, unrequited love. Clearly, his troubled relationship with Ophelia is on his mind before he encounters her in the scene.***

Hamlet's words to Ophelia in the "nunnery" scene are so piercing and vicious, they leave an indelible imprint on our minds leading many of us to understandably assume it is Hamlet who is rejecting Ophelia and not the other way around. 

And discussions of the scene often lead to what can be only described as an exercise in circular logic:

Q: Why does Hamlet treat Ophelia that way?

A: Because she returns his love letters.

Q: Why does she do that?

A: Because she feels he has treated her unkindly. 

Q: Why is he unkind to her?

A: Because she returns his love letters...

And so on.

Since Shakespeare doesn't tell us what transpired between Ophelia and Hamlet in those two months, something indeed could have taken place during that time, (or even before) that led Ophelia to feel betrayed by him. Some productions suggest that the two continued to see each other on the sly, but there is no evidence of that in the text of the play.

Maybe Ophelia is taken aback because Hamlet didn't make enough of an effort get together with her during those two months when she was playing "hard to get". 

Maybe as some suggest she returns the remembrances not as a gesture of breaking up but rather as a bit of reverse psychology, trying to remind him of the deep love he once had for her. And being a very literal minded man, Hamlet simply misunderstood her intentions.

Or maybe Ophelia took her brother and father's words to heart when they suggested Hamlet was just using her. She does make that graphic, pointed reference in the mad scene about a man promising to marry a woman before they have sex only to refuse her afterward because she is no longer a virgin. (IV, v, 63) Could she be referring to personal experience? 

There are dozens of possible explanations for Ophelia's actions in that scene but whatever the reason, Ophelia was not doing her father's bidding as many suggest, by returning Hamlet's gifts.

She does that completely on her own.

To explain, we need a few words on Polonius:

Insufferable, meddling, an "officious, garrulous and impertinent" busybody, and a "dotard of the most limited horizons" are just a few of the descriptions critics over the years have made regarding Ophelia and Laertes' father. In the play, Shakespeare often casts Polonius as the butt of a joke, such as when he has him declare that "brevity is the soul of wit" then go on ad nauseam to prove a point that could have been made in a few words. 

Beyond that there is something truly sinister about Polonius. Scholars believe the character is based upon the real-life William Cecil, the Lord High Treasurer and Chief Councilor to Queen Elizabeth I. A political operator par excellence, Cecil was the chief spymaster to the Court of the Queen. Audiences in Shakespeare's time, at least those with some political savvy would have recognized the resemblance immediately and understood that Polonius' proclivity for eavesdropping represented the surveillance culture of the Court of Claudius, which led Hamlet to comment that "Denmark is a prison" (II, ii, 62) to Rosencranz and Guildenstern. Polonius was indeed an integral part of what was rotten in the State of Denmark.

But as they say: "even a broken clock is right two times a day", and as we already know, Shakespeare never created uncomplicated characters. 

Despite being on the whole a foul character, I see no evidence in the text indicating that Polonius did not love his children and did not have their best interests in mind. His methods of showing that love may have been (check that, were) heavy handed and suspect, but I believe his intentions were not.    

Which is why I reject the idea many have, that Polonius uses Ophelia to advance his own position in the Court. If that were the case, it would stand to reason that he would do everything in his power to encourage the relationship between his daughter and Hamlet. After all, what could be a bigger feather in his cap than have the Crown Prince and future King as his son-in-law?

I can't help but think that Polonius was primarily concerned for his daughter's best interests when he discouraged her from pursuing a relationship he felt was destined to fail and which would no doubt leave her in the lurch, especially given the attitudes of the time if the relationship resulted in a pregnancy and illegitimate birth. Heavy handed as his words to her were, it's hard to say they were not prudent.

When he discovers two months later that Hamlet really is broken up over losing Ophelia, Polonius  has a change of heart and admits the error of his ways, first to Ophelia in this exchange after she reveals Hamlet's strange appearance to her::

POLONIUS

This is the very ecstasy of love,
Whose violent property fordoes itself
And leads the will to desperate undertakings
As oft as any passions under heaven
That does afflict our natures. I am sorry.
What, have you given him any hard words of late?

OPHELIA

No, my good lord, but as you did command
I did repel his letters and denied
His access to me.

POLONIUS

That hath made him mad.
I am sorry that with better heed and judgment
I had not coted him. I feared he did but trifle
And meant to wrack thee. But beshrew my jealousy!
By heaven, it is as proper to our age
To cast beyond ourselves in our opinions
As it is common for the younger sort
To lack discretion.             (II, i-114-130) 

Then to the King and Queen:

...I went round to work,
And my young mistress thus I did bespeak:
“Lord Hamlet is a prince, out of thy star.
This must not be.” And then I prescripts gave her,
That she should lock herself from his resort,
Admit no messengers, receive no tokens;
Which done, she took the fruits of my advice,
And he, repelled (a short tale to make),
Fell into a sadness, then into a fast,
Thence to a watch, thence into a weakness,
Thence to a lightness, and, by this declension,
Into the madness wherein now he raves
And all we mourn for.            (II, ii, 148-160)

The "chance meeting" was intended to bring the couple back together and "cure" Hamlet's bizarre behavior, not to throw a wedge between them and drive Hamlet even more crazy. That is made clear by this exchange between Queen Gertrude, whom we will find out much too late, would have been more than happy for the two to be together, and Ophelia just before the encounter:

QUEEN  

...And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish
That your good beauties be the happy cause
Of Hamlet’s wildness. So shall I hope your virtues
Will bring him to his wonted way again,
To both your honors.

OPHELIA 

Madam, I wish it may.            (III, i, 42-47)

Finally, here are Polonius' instructions to his daughter just before the encounter:

Ophelia, walk you here.—Gracious, so please you,
We will bestow ourselves. Read on this
book,
That show of such an exercise may color
Your loneliness.—We are oft to blame in this
(’Tis too much proved), that with devotion’s visage
And pious action we do sugar o’er
The devil himself.            (III, i, 48-55)

So if Ophelia thought she was carrying out her father's will by returning the remembrances, thereby inciting Hamlet, she completely missed the boat.  

I simply can't believe that was the case, there had to have been something more to it.

Which is why I believe Ophelia has far more agency than people give her credit for.

Again, being Shakespeare, it's up to us to figure what that something more was. 

Shakespeare's failure to paint a more complete picture of her character is why Ophelia has been such a compelling and adaptable figure for over four hundred years. 

Thanks to that, Ophelia has been portrayed over the centuries as among other things a pure and tragic object of beauty and melancholia, a victim of sexual intimidation, a woman with neurotic sexual desires including incestuous feelings for her father and brother,  a woman succumbing to male oppression who is only permitted agency after she goes mad, a lesbian guerilla, and even as Taylor Swift walking out of a Pre-Raphaelite painting in a museum.

Did Shakespeare have any of this in mind when he wrote the play?

Probably not.

Should we care?

Probably not, because in my opinion anyway, it's all fair game.

When I think of the question, "why should we care about Shakespeare in the 21st century?", I hesitate to use the term relevant, because that implies other works of art from the past are irrelevant to us. What I think sets the work of William Shakespeare apart from that of his peers is the way his work speaks to us from across the ages, not as a relic from a bygone era, but as a living, breathing reminder of what it means to be a human being. 

Since I began writing this Hamlet tetralogy, yes folks you can expect one more post, there have been no fewer than five personal experiences that have either informed, or have been informed by some part of the play.

Over the ages, values, principles, morals, ethics, ideals, standards, ideologies, customs and norms have adapted or outright changed, which is why Ophelia can be depicted reflecting the values, principles morals, ideals, etc. of any particular era. 

But...

Love, death, loss, grief, sex, mental illness, loyalty, jealousy, betrayal, hopelessness, joy, loneliness, arrogance, oppression, generosity, greed, injustice, and on and on are all essential themes common to the human experience throughout the ages, themes we can all understand. 

Which is why we continue to be moved and touched by Ophelia's story, regardless of the way she is depicted. 

I'll close this post, (whew, about time!) again with the words of Elaine Showwalter from the closing of her piece Ophelia, Gender and Madness, written in 2016, which perfectly reflects the values of our current time. 

Ophelia has become a heroine. Plot devices of pretended madness, feigned death, and amazing rescue have allowed her to survive the trauma of dating Hamlet, and to choose her own path. Ophelia may have no usable past, but she has an infinite future.

As for the values of tomorrow, one never knows;  the only thing for certain is that Ophelia will be there in all her tragic glory, taking on whatever form the era imposes on her.

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After three long posts I still don't feel I've scratched the surface of the play. Next up, the real nitty gritty of Hamlet, I hope.

Stay tuned.

NOTES:

* In Shakespeare's time it was not unusual for the courts to try people suspected of committing suicide, in absentia of course, and if found guilty would seize their assets, often times leaving their survivors high and dry.

** How do we know it's been two months between Act I and Act II? At the opening of the play it is established that Hamlet's father has been dead two months. Then in the play within a play scene which takes place a day or two after we resume action in Act II, Hamlet says to Ophelia:

...look you how cheerfully
my mother looks, and my father died within ’s two
hours.

To which Ophelia responds:

Nay, ’tis twice two months, my lord.  (III, ii, 133-136)

If my math is correct, twice two months equals four months, then minus the two months that King Hamlet died before the start of the play makes two months between ACT I and ACT II. 

*** Some productions move the soliloquy to other parts of the play so as not to interfere with the dramatic flow between the setup to, and the meeting between Ophelia and Hamlet. When this is done, this important connection between Hamlet's bemoaning unrequited love, and his confrontation with Ophelia is lost.  

A Man of Infinite Jest

We left the last post and its superficial description of the plot of Hamlet at the part where the prince is about to be sent off to England by King Claudius. It is not clear if Hamlet is yet aware that he is due for un unpleasant appointment with an axe upon arrival, but he finds out soon enough en route when he opens the order written by Claudius, carried by his "friends" Rosencranz and Guildenstern that requests from the English officials that his nephew/stepson be executed upon arrival.

Thus, the hunter becomes the hunted.

Hamlet, who up to this point has failed to kill Claudius in retribution for the murder of his father, in the most chilling soliloquy of the play, mercilessly derides himself and vows that from this point further:

My thoughts be bloody, or they be nothing worth. (IV, iv, 69)

He lives up to those words as he takes Claudius' order and re-writes it, substituting the names Rosencranz and Guildenstern for his own. Then with his late father's official seal which he prophetically took along with him on his voyage (moral of story: always be prepared), he seals the letter making it appear official. 

This scene does not appear in the play* but is recounted by Hamlet after his return to Denmark to his friend Horatio. Much to Horatio's surprise, Hamlet does not express one bit of remorse for sending his former friends to their deaths. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch in Denmark, with her father Polonius' sudden death at the hands of her once lover Hamlet, not to mention his cruel treatment of her back in Act 3, scene 1 (we'll get to that in a bit), Ophelia has gone over the edge. Gertrude who was present at Ophelia's father's death, is so guilt ridden and filled with a sense of imminent doom (rightfully so), she instinctively refuses to see Ophelia. But ever the voice of reason, Horatio suggests to the queen that avoiding the stricken young woman in her time of need might cause her act to incite:

Dangerous conjectures in ill breeding minds (IV, v, 20).

People will talk after all. 

The queen reluctantly agrees to see Ophelia, then as an aside says:

Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss.

To my sick soul (as sin's true nature is),

So full of artless jealousy is guilt. 

It spills itself in fearing to be spilt. (IV, v, 22-25)

In most productions, Ophelia appears before the queen soon to be joined by the king with her hair down, wearing a white nightgown and barefoot, your traditional mad scene attire. She sings songs whose lyrics are filled with laments over her lost father and her lost love hinting not too subtly at the real, intimate relationship she and Hamlet once shared** tinged with not a little resentment:

   By Gis (Jesus) and by Saint Charity, 

    Alack and fie for shame, 

   Young men will do ’t, if they come to ’t; 

    By Cock, they are to blame. 

  Quoth she “Before you tumbled me, 

    You promised me to wed.” 

He answers: 

   “So would I ’a done, by yonder sun, 

    An thou hadst not come to my bed.” (IV, v, 63-68)

As Ophelia departs, the king says to his wife:

Oh Gertrude Gertrude, 

When sorrows come, they come not in single spies,

But in battalions: first her father slain;

Next your son gone, and he the most violent author 

Of his own just remove, the people muddied,

Thick and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers

For good Polonius' death, and we have done but greenly

In hugger-mugger to inter him; poor Ophelia...   (IV, v, 82-91)

As if that weren't enough, Claudius adds (in much more eloquent language), that Polonius' other child, Ophelia's brother Laertes has returned from France, 

and he's pissed.

In the play, Laertes serves as a foil of Hamlet; in this case, Shakespeare uses Laertes' rashness and impulsive behavior to contrast it to Hamlet's more deliberate nature.

And how. Laertes who blames Claudius for his father's death and hasty burial, has brought with him an angry mob who demand that Laertes be made king. The mob manages to overwhelm the guards and break into the castle.

Soon Laertes finds himself before the king, who remains steadfastly calm.

Claudius tells Laertes (truthfully) that it was Hamlet who killed his father, but as Hamlet is popular with the general public, and naturally with his mother, the king's wife, Claudius did not punish him so as not to cause public (and marital) unrest. Rather, he sent him on a "diplomatic" mission to England. He didn't mention the part about the axe. 

No good play would be complete without a deus ex machina and Hamlet's s a doozy. Hamlet's return to Denmark is made possible by pirates who raid his ship headed for England. ***  They take only Hamlet hostage and knowing who they had in their custody, agree to return him to Denmark in return for Hamlet doing 

a good turn for them. (IV, vi, 22)

News of Hamlet's cheating the Grim Reaper and his plans to return to Denmark reaches the surprised Claudius while he's still with Laertes. But the news works to the benefit of both men as Laertes will now have the opportunity to take revenge upon his father's killer and in doing so, Claudius will finally be rid of his troublesome stepson. Claudius proposes a scheme where Laertes will challenge Hamlet to a fencing match. The catch is Laertes' weapon would be unbated, (without the protective button positioned at the tip). To add insult in the form of death to injury, Laertes agrees then adds: 

And for that purpose I’ll anoint my sword.
I bought an unction of a mountebank
So mortal that, but dip a knife in it,
Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare,
Collected from all simples that have virtue
Under the moon, can save the thing from death
That is but scratched withal. I’ll touch my point
With this contagion, that, if I gall him slightly,
It may be death.  (IV, vii, 160-168)

But just to be on the safe side, Claudius will have a chalice on hand, spiked with poison for Hamlet to drink.

As their plan is finalized, Gertrude enters to deliver the news that Ophelia has just drowned in the most poetic fashion: 

There is a willow grows askant the brook
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.
Therewith fantastic garlands did she make
Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do “dead men’s fingers” call
them.

There on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds
Clamb’ring to hang, an envious sliver broke,
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,
And mermaid-like awhile they bore her up,
Which time she chanted snatches of old lauds,
As one incapable of her own distress
Or like a creature native and endued
Unto that element. But long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.  (IV, vii, 190-208)

Laertes leaves in tears of rage over his sister's madness resulting in her death and the ever-compassionate Claudius laments to his wife that this means he's going to have to calm Laertes down all over again.

The scene shifts to a graveyard. Hamlet has returned to Denmark where he and Horatio encounter two gravediggers at work. While engaging one of the men in some gallows humor banter, Hamlet discovers the skull of Yorick, the court jester who had in his childhood, carried the young prince "upon his back a thousand times". A rather subdued conversation ensues about the ultimate destination of us all.

Then a funeral procession arrives. It is Ophelia's. The grief-stricken Laertes jumps into his sister's grave. Hamlet announces his presence and all hell breaks loose. 

Later that day, a messenger arrives with the offer of the fencing challenge. Despte Horatio's warning that it may be a trick, duh, Hamlet accepts the challenge. 

The moment of truth has arrived. Before the match Hamlet tries to make amends with Laertes but to no avail. The match begins and Hamlet scores the first two hits. Claudius drinks to his stepson's initial success, then slips a mickey into the drink which he offers to Hamlet. He refuses but Gertrude drinks instead, despite a rather timid protest from her husband. Laertes then takes a cheap shot at Hamlet with the poisoned rapier. Gertrude swoons, realizing the cup she drank from was poisoned. In the commotion that follows, swords are exchanged and Hamlet wounds Laertes with the poisoned weapon.  

Realizing he is doomed, Laertes confesses his treachery, and implicates the king:

It is here, Hamlet. Hamlet, thou art slain.
No med’cine in the world can do thee good.
In thee there is not half an hour’s life.
The treacherous instrument is in thy hand,
Unbated and envenomed. The foul practice
Hath turned itself on me. Lo, here I lie,
Never to rise again. Thy mother’s poisoned.
I can no more. The King, the King’s to blame.  (V,ii,346-351)

Now mortally wounded but with the king's treachery out in the open for all to see, Hamlet forces Claudius to drink from the poisoned cup, then stabs him for good measure. 

In his last words, Laertes asks Hamlet's forgiveness:

He is justly served.
It is a poison tempered by himself.
Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet.
Mine and my father’s death come not upon thee,
Nor thine on me.  (V,ii,360-363)

Devastated at the turn of events, Horatio picks up the chalice to drink from it himself, but Hamlet insists he live as the last man standing, to tell the prince's story.  

Prince Fortenbras of Norway arrives on the scene with his army fresh from their campaign in Poland, more than ready to fill the new void in the Court of Denmark. His invasion of Denmark settles the score for him, avenging his own father's death years earlier at the hands of Hamlet's father. 

There in one fell swoop, three men successfully avenge their fathers' deaths but only one, Fortenbras, lives to tell about it.

And there in a nutshell, is the plot of Shakespeare's famous revenge tragedy, one of a boatful of popular plays, truly a dime a dozen from the late 16th and early 17th centuries, that share similar plot devices**** 

Why then, more than four centuries after its creation, do we still speak reverently and endlessly of Hamlet, while the other works of that genre are all but forgotten? 

One thing that sets Hamlet apart is that a summary of its plot doesn't begin to scratch the surface of the work. Saying that Hamlet is a play about revenge is like saying the film Citizen Kane is about finding the meaning of the name Rosebud. 

In Hamlet, Shakespeare starts with the theme of revenge, then uses it as a springboard to take the work to loftier places, much like a composer might take a piece of music and compose a whole cycle of variations around it. The Diabelli Variations is one example of such a work where Beethoven took a trivial waltz and expanded it into one of the greatest works in the canon of keyboard works. 

Of that work, my favorite pianist, the late Alfred Brendel wrote this:

The theme has ceased to reign over its unruly offspring. Rather, the variations decide what the theme may have to offer them. Instead of being confirmed, adorned and glorified, it is improved, parodied, ridiculed, disclaimed, transfigured, mourned, stamped out and finally uplifted.

With those words, Brendel could have been writing about Hamlet.

Harold Bloom, mentioned in my previous post, called Hamlet "A revenge on revenge plays."

Bloom insists that it remains, "the most experimental play ever written." He writes:

The play's subject … is neither mourning for the dead or revenge on the living. … All that matters is Hamlet's consciousness of his own consciousness, infinite, unlimited, and at war with itself.

That consciousness resides not within the plot of the Hamlet, but within the seven soliloquies and other speeches of the title character that form the heart and soul of the work.

Bloom insists that the character Hamlet is much too intelligent and multi-dimensional to be confined within the limits of a revenge drama. Not only is Hamlet smarter than everyone else in the play, he is smarter than us. And while he obviously cannot be smarter than the man who created him, Bloom suggests Hamlet has even escaped the grasp of Shakespeare.

Which is why it is so tempting to remove the speeches and soliloquies from the context of the play, as they exist on an entirely different level.

It is the inward war of consciousness within Hamlet that has made commentators through the centuries note the character's indecisiveness and lack of action, even though his outward actions as we've seen, lean in the opposite direction.

Like any great work of art, Hamlet leaves us with more questions than answers. When there are answers,  there are usually more than one of them to a single question, and more often than not, none of the answers are wrong. That is, if you pay attention to what Shakespeare actually wrote. 

The question of why Hamlet delays avenging the death of his father as we saw in the previous post, is probably the most frequently asked question about the play, and different eras have provided different answers. While none of them may be wrong per se, I believe that Shakespeare provided the best answer to probably the easiest question of the entire play.

That answer is not obscure at all, it is in fact, the money quote of the most famous speech from the most famous play ever written by the most famous playwright of them all:

Thus, conscience does make cowards of us all. (III, i, 91)

Yet even here what exactly does he mean? Is he referring to conscience as we use the term, the part of us that distinguishes right from wrong, or consciousness in terms of our ability to understand that our actions have consequences?

Being Shakespeare, both are correct.

Again Harold Bloom:

You can make of the play ‘Hamlet' and the protagonist pretty much what you will, whether you are playgoer or reader, critic or director, actor or ideologue; push any stance or quest into it and the drama will illuminate what you have brought with you.

And what you will have of the play depends on what questions you ask.

Here is but a small sampling:

• Is Hamlet a good or a bad person? 
• Is he a hero?
• Is he mad?
• Is he suicidal?
• Is he too smart for his own good?
• Is the ghost that Hamlet sees really the spirit of his father?
• What kind of king was Hamlet's father?
• What kind of father was he?
• Was Yorick a surrogate father to Hamlet?
• What kind of mother was Gertrude?
• Did she know the cup intended for her son was poisoned?
• What kind of king was Claudius?
• Is it possible for a morally bankrupt man like Claudius to be a good king?
• What was the true nature of the relationship between Gertrude and Claudius?
• What was the true nature of the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia?
• Why was Hamlet so cruel to Ophelia?
• How involved was Gertrude in Claudius' treachery?
• How about Polonius?
• Was Polonius ever right about anything?
• Is justice served at the end of the play?
• What speaks more to a person's true nature, the inner workings of the mind, or outward actions?
• What was actually rotten in the State of Denmark? 
• Could we draw any parallels between the political state of Hamlet's Denmark and our own country?
• What is truly worth fighting and dying for?
• Does life have meaning?

Feel free to add your own questions, there are as many of them as there are stars in the galaxy.

As you might imagine, there is no simple or right answer to any of the above questions. Don't worry, I'll only try to address two, as promised, the one's about Hamlet and Ophelia.

Unfortunately, that will have to wait until next time.

Stay tuned...

NOTES:

*The scene is included in Russian director  Grigory Kozintzev's  magnificent film adaptation of the play, with its translation by Boris Pasternak and score written by Dimitri Shostacovich. For my money, this version is vastly superior to the Lawrence Olivier adaptation mentioned in the previous post, despite some key scenes also being cut from the film.

** Some suggest Ophelia might be pregnant.

*** This scene was also not included in the play but recounted to Horatio by Hamlet after his return to Denmark.

**** Courtesy of Wikipedia, here are eight common elements of revenge tragedies, most if not all are found in Hamlet:

• A shocking murder has been committed, crying out for revenge.
• Person, or persons, take up the vengeful mission as a sacred duty.
• Ghost of murdered person provides further stimulus for retribution; alternatively there are omens and presentiments.
• Machiavellian villain who, acting on his own behalf or for other causes facilitates a pandemic of blood shed whilst introducing new-fangled tortures and horrors.
• Objects of revenge are often better than the avengers.
• Some characters grow mad or feign madness.
• Play within a play that often mimics the core of the main action.
• Use of imagery and language befitting the violence of the events.