In his amorous pursuit of Ophelia, Hamlet has written her a number of love letters. In one particularly gushing epistle, he even tries his hand at some love poetry, with pretty execrable results:
Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move, Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love. (act 2, scene 2).
On the face of it, these letters seem to express genuine emotion. Ophelia certainly seems to think so. But as well as being the object of Hamlet's affection, she's also a dutiful daughter. She betrays Hamlet by passing on his love letters to her father, Polonius. The letters are a valuable commodity to Polonius, as they will be used by him to determine the source of Hamlet's "antic disposition." Moreover, Polonius is keen to break off any incipient relationship that might be developing between his daughter and Hamlet for reasons of social propriety. Ophelia, though the daughter of a senior court functionary, is socially inferior to a prince of the blood.
Polonius shows the letter to Claudius and Gertrude, who are also keen to discover the reasons behind Hamlet's strange behavior. Neither they nor Polonius have any realization of the moral implications involved in getting Ophelia to betray Hamlet in this way. They're not genuinely concerned for Hamlet's welfare—or Ophelia's come to that; all they care about are the dictates of high politics. Ophelia will continue to play the dutiful daughter and allow herself to become ever more deeply embroiled in her father's cunning intrigues. The end result will be death for them both; tragic, in the case of Ophelia; somewhat less so in the case of Polonius.
Friday, June 22, 2018
What is Ophelia's reaction to Hamlet's letter?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Why is the fact that the Americans are helping the Russians important?
In the late author Tom Clancy’s first novel, The Hunt for Red October, the assistance rendered to the Russians by the United States is impor...
-
There are a plethora of rules that Jonas and the other citizens must follow. Again, page numbers will vary given the edition of the book tha...
-
The poem contrasts the nighttime, imaginative world of a child with his daytime, prosaic world. In the first stanza, the child, on going to ...
-
The given two points of the exponential function are (2,24) and (3,144). To determine the exponential function y=ab^x plug-in the given x an...
-
The only example of simile in "The Lottery"—and a particularly weak one at that—is when Mrs. Hutchinson taps Mrs. Delacroix on the...
-
Hello! This expression is already a sum of two numbers, sin(32) and sin(54). Probably you want or express it as a product, or as an expressi...
-
Macbeth is reflecting on the Weird Sisters' prophecy and its astonishing accuracy. The witches were totally correct in predicting that M...
-
The play Duchess of Malfi is named after the character and real life historical tragic figure of Duchess of Malfi who was the regent of the ...
No comments:
Post a Comment