ColorSet-1ColorPos-1StyleSet-1StylePos-1 Krista Wallover
4/03/05
Humanities
ACT 5 Scene 1
Hamlet: Woe is me. I miss my dear Ophelia. Where is my beautiful maiden? I cannot believe I will never see her again. Well, at least not until I am dead and buried.
Ophelia: Hamlet what are you babbling about? I’m right here. I’ve been waiting for you for like an entire hour. I was really beginning to think you stood me up. Did you totally forget we had a date tonight?
Hamlet: Wait, wait, I thought you killed yourself in act four? If it wasn’t you who died who was it?
Ophelia: No it was me that everyone thought tried to kill herself. But to tell you the truth, I was just going for lifeguard certification and wasn’t as good at swimming as I t thought. Gosh, it’s like just because a girl flails around in the water a little bit that she must not be able to be a good lifeguard. Whatever, I’ll just be something else. How do you feel about me being a Pilates instructor?
Hamlet : Yeah, um, hun that’s great and all but you are kind of ruining this whole misery/ death persona I have going on here. So if you could just do me a favor and jump off the top of this building, that would be great. Seriously though, you have to die because you really are ruining this for me.
Ophelia: Hamlet! Why are you being so mean. (Sarcastically) Sure I’ll jump off this building for you. I mean, why not? Looks like a ton of fun.
(CRASH)
Hamlet: (Looking down from the building) That looks like it’s going to take a long time to clean up. Well now that she is finally out of the way, what should I do?
(Horatio enters)
Horatio: Hamlet, why are you standing so close to the edge of the roof? That’s kind of dangerous man. Wait what are you staring at down there? (Peering over edge) Oh my god, Hamlet is that her?
Hamlet: Yes it is, but please keep your mouth shut.
Horatio: Wait didn’t she die in act four? I could have sworn she was supposed to be buried in this act. Hamlet, what’s going on.
Hamlet: Look at her again Horatio and tell me what you see. (CRASH) Two dead in one day. Wow this story is getting changed too much. Hopefully, no one else will notice for a little while. As long as it will be enough time for me to straighten some things out.
However much Horatio’s philosophic skepticism may limit his own ability to perceive those “things in heaven and earth” that Hamlet would have him observe, Horatio remains the companion from whom Hamlet has most to learn. Hamlet can trust his friend not to angle for advancement, or to reveal the terrible secret of royal murder. Best of all, Horatio is “As one in suff’ring all that suffers nothing, A man that Fortune’s buffets and rewards Hast ta’en with equal thanks.”[. . .] Like Hamlet, Horatio believes that death is a felicity, and even tries to take his own life. Yet he accepts his duty “in this harsh worldly success as well ...
The scene then cuts to Hamlet walking into the theatre and Gertrude asking him to sit by her. Hamlet says no because he would rather sit next to Ophelia who is more attractive. Hamlet then jumps over a row of seats to get next to Ophelia and asks if he can lit on her lap. She says no and then he says no and Hamlet says “my head upon your lap” and Ophelia says that he can. I feel that this sequence shows a lot about Hamlet. First off, wh...
While Hamlet may still be feeling depressed Hamlet moves into the stage of denial and isolation. Hamlet feels the effects of denial and isolation mostly due to his love, Ophelia. Both Hamlet’s grief and his task constrain him from realizing this love, but Ophelia’s own behavior clearly intensifies his frustration and anguish. By keeping the worldly and disbelieving advice of her brother and father as “watchmen” to her “heart” (I.iii.46), she denies the heart’s affection not only in Hamlet, but in herself; and both denials add immeasurably to Hamlet’s sense of loneliness and loss—and anger. Her rejection of him echoes his mother’s inconstancy and denies him the possibility even of imagining the experience of loving an...
She loves hamlet, so when he treats her badly within the same scene she retreats back to the side of her family. This primarily happens when Ophelia says “At home my lord” upon Hamlets inquiry as to where her father is (3.1.132). This choice affects her, through the idea that Hamlet is bad for her, which due to her love for him she is torn between loving him and obeying her family’s guidance. Her hostility to Hamlet, “you are naught you are naught” becomes evident the next scene she is around him and he shows his poor behavior (3.2.152). Ophelia now believes that Hamlet no longer loves her, and comes to the idea that her father and brother were right in warning her of Hamlets evil intentions. This is where she begins to lean more on their guidance mentally, as she does not know how to go about behaving around
This famous soliloquy offers a dark and deep contemplation of the nature of life and death. Hamlet’s contemplative, philosophical, and angry tones demonstrate the emotions all people feel throughout their lifetimes.
It is widely believed that “Living life without honor is a tragedy bigger than death itself” and this holds true for Hamlet’s Ophelia. Ophelia’s death symbolizes a life spent passively tolerating Hamlet’s manipulations and the restrictions imposed by those around her, while struggling to maintain the last shred of her dignity. Ophelia’s apathetic reaction to her drowning suggests that she never had control of her own life, as she was expected to comply with the expectations of others. Allowing the water to consume her without a fight alludes to Hamlet’s treatment of Ophelia as merely a device in his personal agenda. Her apparent suicide denotes a desire to take control of her life for once. Ophelia’s death is, arguably, an honorable one, characterized by her willingness to let go of her submissive, earth-bound self and leave the world no longer a victim.
Hamlet has the disillusion that women are frail after his mother’s rushed remarriage as shown by “Frailty, thy name is woman!” He also believes women do not have the power to reason. (“O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason.”) Ophelia has the power to change his view but her unexplained rejection of him only adds to Hamlet’s disillusion. The ghost’s revelation that Gertrude dishonored Hamlet’s father but also their marriage by the adultery with Claudius is contemplated by Hamlet until he goes into Ophelia’s room to look upon her. As Hamlet searches Ophelia’s face for some sign that might restore his faith in her, he instead believes her face shows guilt and thinks she is another false Gertrude.
Hamlet's relationship and actions towards Ophelia are not exempt from his dual personalities. In private, he is deeply devoted to her; but in public, he humiliates and belittles her...
“So shall you hear of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts, of accidental judgements, casual slaughters, of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause”, (Hamlet, Act V, Scene 2, Lines 381-384). Horatio, best friend of Prince Hamlet, says this in the final lines of the play. He says this after Gertrude, Queen of Denmark, Hamlet, Claudius, King of Denmark, and Laertes, son of Polonius all die in the battle between Hamlet and Laertes. Hamlet, King of Denmark, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, former friends of Hamlet, Polonius, councillor to the King, and Ophelia, daughter of Polonius are also dead. Death is a very important theme in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Inevitably, Ophelia falls off of a branch and drowns in the water. Again, when Hamlet returns from England and finds out about Ophelia dying he shows no attention to his actions as if he did not have any part leading up to her death. Hamlet exhibits a morose tone as he is deeply saddened by her death: “I loved Ophelia,” shows the expression to which Hamlet has when it comes to Ophelia. It was as if he did not want this to happen, but he does not indicate any means of claiming responsibility for her
Ophelia loves Hamlet; her emotions drive her to perform her actions. Some would say that Ophelia’s emotions could have actually been what ended her young
interest of Hamlet, but is driven crazy by Hamlet’s sudden disregard of Ophelia and her feelings.
Old Hamlet is killed by his brother Claudius. Only two months after her husband’s death a vulnerable Gertrude marries her husband’s brother Claudius. Gertrude’s weakness opens the door for Claudius to take the throne as the king of Denmark. Hamlet is outraged by this, he loses respect for his mother as he feels that she has rejected him and has taken no time to mourn her own husband’s death. One night old Hamlets ghost appears to prince Hamlet and tells him how he was poisoned by his own brother. Up until this point the kingdom of Denmark believed that old Hamlet had died of natural causes. As it was custom, prince Hamlet sought to avenge his father’s death. This leads Hamlet, the main character into a state of internal conflict as he agonises over what action and when to take it as to avenge his father’s death. Shakespeare’s play presents the reader with various forms of conflict which plague his characters. He explores these conflicts through the use of soliloquies, recurring motifs, structure and mirror plotting.
In Hamlet, Ophelia is unaware of the evil is spreading around her. She is an obedient woman, and is naive in that she takes what people say at face value, which makes her an innocent lady. "You should not have believed me, for virtue/ cannot so inculate our old stock but we shall relish of/ it. I loved you not." (III.ii. 117-119). Hamlet says these lines as a mask of his madness, but Ophelia does not understand his true motives and takes Hamlet's words very seriously to heart. The words that Hamlet says to Ophelia both confuse and hurt her greatly. Hamlet's lines are what eventually lead Ophelia to insanity, and Ophelia's insanity is what causes her death by drowning.
Hamlet is one of the most often-performed and studied plays in the English language. The story might have been merely a melodramatic play about murder and revenge, butWilliam Shakespeare imbued his drama with a sensitivity and reflectivity that still fascinates audiences four hundred years after it was first performed. Hamlet is no ordinary young man, raging at the death of his father and the hasty marriage of his mother and his uncle. Hamlet is cursed with an introspective nature; he cannot decide whether to turn his anger outward or in on himself. The audience sees a young man who would be happiest back at his university, contemplating remote philosophical matters of life and death. Instead, Hamlet is forced to engage death on a visceral level, as an unwelcome and unfathomable figure in his life. He cannot ignore thoughts of death, nor can he grieve and get on with his life, as most people do. He is a melancholy man, and he can see only darkness in his future—if, indeed, he is to have a future at all. Throughout the play, and particularly in his two most famous soliloquies, Hamlet struggles with the competing compulsions to avenge his father’s death or to embrace his own. Hamlet is a man caught in a moral dilemma, and his inability to reach a resolution condemns himself and nearly everyone close to him.