As for Act III, Scene I, this scene starts off in a room within the castle, where King Claudius, Queen Gertrude, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern are in play. To start thinking off, King Claudius had asked Rosencrantz and Guildenstern if they had found any sort of information that they can use to find out what is wrong with Hamlet. Though gentlemanly, the two sadly did not have much information to figure out what is wrong with Hamlet, due to his cryptic questions and answers. If anything, they do know now that he is truly insane. However, they were able to reveal that when he was told about the players’ arrival, he felt excited, and actually wishes to the King and Queen come to the play, in which they would. After that, the
To summarize this famous speech, he basically asks the famous question if it is better to live or die. To bring in a comparison, he compares death as sleep, in which doesn’t seem that bad when you think about it. Not only that, but he also believed that we would escape a lot of suffering, such as love. However, the catch is that we may end you have dreams, more specifically a nightmare. And having those nightmares wouldn’t be pleasurable, thus stating that it may be better just to put up with the bad things you know about in life than to die. However, at that time, Hamlet then spotted Ophelia reading book, thus ending his speech. The two begin to have a small conservation, and then Ophelia took action. She had tried to return some letters that Hamlet had written to her when they were hanging out. However, Hamlet’s reaction was a surprise to her as he claimed that he never gave her anything. After that, he began to ask her the question that if she was honest and beautiful, and so, then she should be wary. As he claimed, beauty corrupts honesty, in which a great puzzle for him to finally solve this was revealing that he indeed loved her once, but was a lie. However, things got way worse as he stated men should have no place in the world, for they are all criminals, as well as giving advice onto locking her father in. She began to pray to
At first, I didn’t really expect much as they continued to spy on Hamlet and see what the cause of his condition is. Only this time they were going to use Ophelia as volunteered bait, which would have seemed strange, but then I remember she is the daughter of Polonius, always sucking up to the king just for his own gain. However that is not was makes this play so depressing, in my opinion. In fact, it was because of Hamlet’s actions and speech that made it so depressing. For one, he gives off a famous speech in which debated on whether it is better to life or die. And yet, I believe the conversation with Ophelia was even worse. Knowing that they both clearly love each other, this felt very heartbreaking as Hamlet basically dissed on Ophelia. In a way, I can actually feel this sort of sadness as my girlfriend recently broke up with me. Even though it wasn’t a long term relationship, I will say that she was my first girlfriend I ever had and the first that broke up with me. Sure that’s life for you, but still, it was heartbreaking, and that’s what I believe Ophelia had felt. However, even though it may have ended in a bleak way, I am a person who still thinks that it isn’t too late for the two to be a thing. Nevertheless, time can only tell, and all I can do is like Ophelia, and
By not speaking anything, Hamlet at once strengthens his image as a madman, as well as shrouding his real intentions towards those around him. Just following this passage comes a place in the text where we can see how the character of Ophelia has been manipulated by Polonius. After his "hint" that he might be doing this out of frustrated love, Ophelia says that that is what she truly does fear. (87) Her feelings of pity and concern are shaped by her father in order to fit his case of madness against Hamlet.
During the first act, Prince Hamlet meets the ghost of his father, King Hamlet. His father's ghost tells Hamlet that Claudius poured poison in his ear while he slept. The spirit also explains that he wishes for Hamlet to avenge his death, but not to punish Queen Gertrude for marrying Claudius. He tells Hamlet that she will have to answer to her conscience, and eventually God for her incestuous actions (absoluteshakespeare.com 1 of 4). It was believed during these times that when a person died, especially in such a tragic fashion, that their spirit lingered about while suffering in Purgatory. This could cause a normally virtuous person's spirit to become filled with malevolence and begin to meddle in living men's affairs (en.wikipedia.org 4 of 9). This belief caused Prince Hamlet to want to investigate his father's spirit's claims to ensure that they were indeed true. In order to do this, Prince Hamlet feigns madness in order to remain hidden from members of the court's suspicions while he plots his revenge on King Claudius (www.sparknotes.com 1 of 3). He also takes advantage of a group of actors who come to Elsinore Castle to perform by rewriting a play to recreate the scene of his father's murder. He does this with the hope of flushing a confession out of Claudius' guilty conscience. When Claudius sees the play, he stands up and leaves the room (en.wikipedia.org 5 of 9). After many more events, Claudius' guilt becomes more obvious. Claudius then begins to change his focus towards killing Hamlet, as he is beginning to become aware of the Prince's plans to kill him. Claudius then arranges a fencing match between Hamlet and Polonius' son Laertes and has Laertes poison the blade of one of his swords to be used in the match (Hamlet).
With Ophelia death, this impacted Hamlet very much because he loved her. Stated in Suicide on the Stage of Hamlet and Shakespeare, “Ophelia’s is the only one widely accepted as suicide in the play. She drowns herself in a river as a means of escaping her ever worsening circumstances. Important factors surrounding her choice to end her own life include oppression from her family based on her romantic desires toward Hamlet . . .” (Joyner). With saying this, she was the different one in her family. Also said in the same article Suicide on the Stage of Hamlet, “. . . While her father and brother are welcomed into the court of King Claudius, Ophelia is not seen as an equal in this setting, and is constantly under their watch” (Joyner). This being stated, she needed an actual man to love her for whom she was and she was so use to having a male figure looking after her. Hamlet was that person who did so. Her love for Hamlet was strong and impacted her greatly. But, once her father is dead, her whole demeanor changes in the play. Some things that happen to her is that she becomes paranoid in a way and cries more often than before, then ending her own
He calls her a “breeder of sinners” (3.1.132) and suggests that she “get thee to a nunnery” he says these out of anger at her, that she would betray him for her father. (3.1.131) Ophelia becomes heartbroken at this, both by the pressure of her family wanting her to break up with Hamlet, always constantly doing what they want and never making decisions for herself, and her relationship with Hamlet, “And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, that sucked the honey of his music vows” (3.1.13) She is saying here that she was susceptible to his words and deceit. Hamlet becomes so consumed by grief and the desire for revenge that he kills Ophelia’s father Polonius, and this is when Ophelia takes a turn for the worse and goes insane. She gives away flowers to her loved ones, “There’s fennel for you, and columbines. There’s rue for you, wear your rue with a difference… I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died.”(4.5.205) I believe this is her way of saying goodbye, giving flowers to her loved ones, and showing them representations of how she feels and what they mean to
Even though Hamlet is a prince, he has little control over the course of his life. In that time many things were decided for the princes and princesses such as their education and even who they married. This was more or less the normal way of life for a child of the monarch. But in the case of Hamlet, any of the control he thought he had, fell away with the murder of his father. Having his father, the king, be killed by his own brother, sent Hamlet into a state of feeling helpless and out of control. Cooped up in a palace with no real outlet, he tries to control at least one aspect of his life. Hamlet deliberately toys with Ophelia's emotions in order to feel in control of something since he cannot control the situation with Claudius.
In the play Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, we observe Hamlet as an incredibly complex and bewildering character that upon first glance, seems to undergo a plethora of predicaments. Upon identification of such obstacles, we begin to wonder about whether his entirely fictitious existence in the play classifies him as sane while the world around him is in a way, insane or vise-versa. In addition, one of the main problems that superficially seems to be at the root of his conflicts is his melancholy. This is a condition that has always identified with him throughout the entire play, even still presenting itself up until the very end of Act V. In conclusion, the cause of his affliction is generally simplistic but drawn-out, serving to impact his actions significantly.
First there is the killing of Polonius. When he kills Polonius, the father of his girlfriend, he shows no sign of regret. No guilt. He is so caught up in his own little world of revenge, he doesn't even think of the fact that he just killed an innocent old man and the father of Ophelia. In fact, there is no point in the entire text in which he even mentions Ophelia. This just goes to show that he doesn’t truly care about Ophelia, which as state is the necessary component of love. The second deciding scene is that of Ophelia’s funeral. Hamlet has gone the whole text since the play in act three scene two without a word about Ophelia. Then *bang* Ophelia is dead and he's seeing her funeral. He observes as a distraught Laertes, Ophelia’s brother, throws himself into her grave in grief. Hamlet’s response to this is not a of shared sorrow but of competition. He starts by saying to Laertes “I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers could not with all their quantity of love make up my sum” (5.1.284-287). Rather than just grieve for her, he fights with her grieving brother about who loved her more. While this may seem like a loving gesture, there has been no other proof of his love for her throughout the play which make this seem a bit strange. It is as if he wants to have loved her so that he can have emotions that are more important than everyone else’s. Hamlet even accuses Laertes of just trying “to outface” him “with leaping in her grave” (5.1.295). Hamlet would actually be grieve the lose of Ophelia and not fighting over whose emotions matter more if he had truly loved
Upon learning that Ophelia has allied herself with Polonius and Claudius, he loses his head and has an incredibly dramatic episode. He is initially honest and open with Ophelia, but his mood quickly changes when he learns they are being spied on. He questioned Ophelia’s motives by asking whether she was honest and fair. He breaks her heart upon the realization she is not on his side. He tells her that he once loved her, then their conversation spirals into nothing more than Hamlet hurling insults at his former love before storming out.
The reader is left guessing on Hamlet’s true feelings for Ophelia through his various insults, sexual innuendos, and admitted desire. Hamlet’s claim, “God hath given you one face, and you / Make yourselves another.” (3.1.155-156) is laced with irony and hypocrisy given Hamlet’s own deception regarding true feelings. This proclamation comes at the end of a lengthy tirade against Ophelia and womankind in general for their conniving deceit leading men astray. The fact that Hamlet cannot see this duplicity in his very own actions shows the double standard he holds for females. Ophelia’s immediate reaction is one of shock and defense due to the aggressive nature of Hamlet’s attack. She calls out “O, woe is me!” (3.1.174) in distress to the ferocity of Hamlet and is unable to form a particularly coherent response akin to the ones seen against Laertes and Polonius. She does show her intelligence and rebellion from this assumption of power by Hamlet in her songs while Hamlet is gone. While many attribute her madness to the death of her father, a large portion of her instability should be attributed to Hamlet and his earlier actions. In her first introduction as insane she sings, “And I a maid at your window, / To be your Valentine. / Then up he rose and donned his clothes / And dropped the chamber door, / Let in the maid, that out a maid / Never departed more.” (4.5.55-60). Due to her references to sexuality and deceit the
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
While Prince Hamlet reflects, he contemplates life and death. Hamlet gives a verbalization that gives a sagacious foresight into how his grief overtook his thoughts. While Hamlet is giving this verbalizing there is a portrayal of darkness and solitude. In the play Hamlet is conspicuously verbalizing with himself, he does not want the other to know the extent of his thoughts. This is only the commencement of how Hamlet is portrayed as being a perturbed person. Hamlet spends the whole play recollecting his father, King Hamlet and then later in the play Ophelia.
Two of Ophelia’s difficulties arise from her father and brother. They believe that Hamlet is using her to take her virginity and throw it away because Ophelia will never be his wife. Her heart believes that Hamlet loves her although he promises he never has (“Hamlet” 1). Hamlet: “Ay, truly, for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness. This was sometime a paradox, but not the time gives it proof. I did love you once.” Ophelia: “Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.” Hamlet: “You should not have believed me, for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock ...
Ophelia’s betrayal ends up putting Hamlet over the edge, motivating him in his quest for revenge. Ophelia is one of the two women in the play. As the daughter of Polonius, she only speaks in the company of several men, or directly to her brother or father. Since we never see her interactions with women, she suppresses her own thoughts in order to please her superiors. Yet, however weak and dependent her character is on the surface, Ophelia is a cornerstone to the play’s progression.
...t his father and Ophelia are dead and he cannot accept the thought of his mother’s hasty marriage to his conniving and deceitful uncle. Hamlet regrets his previous actions which caused tremendous pain to Ophelia and her family. Just as his own family was destroyed by his uncle’s evil plans, Hamlet realizes that he caused the same pain and negativity on the family of the woman he loved.
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is a dramatic play, written by author William Shakespeare in the period between 1599 and 1601. The play has three acts and it is packed full of drama, betrayal, incest, revenge and demise. It is well written, and it best presented in live stage form. In the early 1600’s, elaborate theaters and stages were built for stories like Hamlet to unfold upon, and the audiences were not disappointed. Many writers wrote dramatic plays during this era, but Hamlet was different. Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a complicated, twisted story of some of the worst things that can happen and how those behaviors lead to difficulty in relationships, love and life.