#queen gertrude

Ophelia (2018) dir. Claire McCarthy

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There has been a half-complete version of post on my Dreamwidth journal under a “Private” filter (my eyes only) here since 9 December, 2018, just waiting for me to get the energy and mental focus to write an essay outlining all the textual evidence in Act 4, scene 1 (Ophelia’s “madness” scene). But at this point, I don’t think the required energy for that will ever come – at least, not for the long essay format.  

So I’m just going to post my conspiracy theory Thesis Statement here:

Ophelia did notcommit suicide – she was murdered. By Queen Gertrude (probably).

And I can’t help but wonder how this play would be taught and performed if this interpretation were the standard one

Here’s a bit of a presentation by Shakespearean actor and scholar, Ben Crystal, on his interpretation of the “To be, or not to be?” soliloquy, and how he no longer thinks Hamlet was suicidal at that point in the play, either (though he was, earlier on): Ben Crystal talks about Original Pronunciation, 20 July 2017 (it’s at a point about 40 minutes in to the whole thing).

So what if suicide is nota recurring theme of the play? How does that change things?

Reblogging myself already, because my brain won’t let go of it.

Just imagine how classroom discussions, and essays in literary academic journals would go if it were read that Ophelia did notbreak under the weight of a cruel world, but instead had to be eliminated because she knew too much, and was on the brink of inciting a rebellion against King Claudius (Yes, that’s actually alluded to in the text).

If, while the men of the play were scheming and faffing about, the play pivoted on the actions of a middle-aged woman on one side, and a teenage girl on the other.

Tell us more! Tell us more!

First off – my mistake: it’s Act 4 Scene 5, not scene one. And it opens thusly (lines that merit attention are bolded):

QUEEN GERTRUDE:  I will not speak with her.

Gentleman:  She is importunate, indeed distract:
   Her mood will needs be pitied.

QUEEN GERTRUDE:  What would she have?

Gentleman:  She speaks much of her father; says she hears
   There’s tricks i’ the world; and hems, and beats her heart;
   Spurns enviously at straws; speaks things in doubt,
   That carry but half sense: her speech is nothing,
   Yet the unshaped use of it doth move
   The hearers to collection; they aim at it,
   And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts;
   Which, as her winks, and nods, and gestures
   yield them,
   Indeed would make one think there might be thought,
   Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.

A bit later, Ophelia comes in, singing. Not of flowers, yet, but alternating between a mourning song, and a very bawdy song that a young noble lady of sixteen years should not be singing in public, just in time for Claudius to hear her.

KING CLAUDIUS:  Conceit upon her father.

OPHELIA:   Pray you, let’s have no words of this; but when they
   ask you what it means, say you this: [translation: You want to know what it means? I’ll tell you what it means!]

   Sings
   To-morrow is Saint Valentine’s day,
   All in the morning betime,
   And I a maid at your window,
   To be your Valentine.
   Then up he rose, and donn’d his clothes,
   And dupp’d the chamber-door;
   Let in the maid, that out a maid
   Never departed more.

KING CLAUDIUS:  Pretty Ophelia!

OPHELIA:  Indeed, la, without an oath, I’ll make an end on’t: [Let me finish!]

   Sings
   By Gis 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.
   So would I ha’ done, by yonder sun,
   An thou hadst not come to my bed.

[So here’s a song about a woman having sex out of wedlock because a guy promised to repay her… and then he reneges on his promise because she had sex with him]

And then Ophelia exits, spouting seeming madness, and Claudius says to Horatio:

Follow her close; give her good watch,
I pray you.

So Claudius suspects something – whether that’s a suicide watch, or to make sure she doesn’t inspire rebellion – isn’t explicitly stated in text.  But in any case,  Ophelia’s notalone.

Then, Leartes comes in, leading a mob of commoners, who  are chanting that he should be king (see the comment of Gentleman, above). And we have this exchange:

• Leartes: Where is my father?
• Claudius: Dead.
• Gertrude: But not by him.

That, right there, is a singleline of iambic pentameter. Which means that Gertrude literallydoes not skip a beat to defend Claudius before thinking of protecting her own son.

And now Ophelia comes in and sings her “mad flower song.” This Wordpress article outlines the symbolism of each flower and herb (It also spells out specific actions by Ophelia which are not spelled out in the original). The meaning flies right over our heads, but audiences of the time would have grokked it immediately; There’s “Grief” and “remembrance;” there’s also “flattery” and “deceived lovers” and an herb commonly used to induce abortions…

And the next news we hear of Ophelia is that she’s “Drowned herself.” Who delivers this news? Queen Gertrude – with an overabundance of minute detail of the scene as it happened.

Finally, there’s the fact that Ophelia was being hastily buried in the churchyard – even though that was strictly forbidden for suicides. The younger gravedigger thinks that’s because Ophelia was a privileged noblewoman, and getting special treatment. The older gravedigger reminds him (and the audience) that not all people who die by drowning are at fault…

AndthenI realized that Hamlet had to have the murder plot revealed to him by the ghost of his father, because he was away at school, but Ophelia was there at court, the whole time, and could have seen everything going down. But who pays attention to teenage girls hanging around the edges, or worries about what they see or don’t see, amirite?

Idothink Ophelia was having a mental breakdown, triggered by grief and shock. But I think it was more of the “loss of situational awareness” and “blind to the danger” variety, instead of “no longer have the will to live” variety.

And that’s my analysis. And I’m sticking with it.

Oh, this is splendid!

*bows*

Thank you.

And then there are these lines from Queen Gertrude, after she agrees to talk with Ophelia, and Horatio exits to go fetch her:

To my sick soul, as sin’s true nature is,
Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss:
So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.

I’ve always liked that line about spilling something because you’re trying too hard not to (because RELATABLE). But I only just now realized that Shakespeare was putting underlines and circles and arrows around the whole issue of the queen’s quilt (and activerole in the whole scheme with Claudius), by making those lines a pair of rhyming couplets, when  nothing else in that scene rhymes.

I think the common interpretation of Ophelia has been handed down to us by literary critics and theater directors, who have all been men, and idealized the manic pixie dream gilrl, so they’ve always cast Ophelia as the tragic and doomed version of that.

When really, she was the brightest candle in the chandelier – and had she lived, she might have led the revolution to put her brother on the throne – so she had to be snuffed out.

Okay – I’d like to post a CORRECTION to this paragraph, that I wrote, above:

Finally, there’s the fact that Ophelia was being hastily buried in the churchyard – even though that was strictly forbidden for suicides. The younger gravedigger thinks that’s because Ophelia was a privileged noblewoman, and getting special treatment. The older gravedigger reminds him (and the audience) that not all people who die by drowning are at fault… 

I went back and reread that bit (which really should be included in the list of evidence thatHamlet is a black comedy – in the script, the two gravediggers are named “First Clown” and “Second Clown.”

Anyway, it’s the eldergravedigger who argues that Ophelia committed suicide, but in the process, reminds the audience that it shouldn’t be counted as such. I’ll just quote that bit:

Give me leave. Here lies the water; good: here
stands the man; good; if the man go to this water,
and drown himself, it is, will he, nill he, he
goes,–mark you that; but if the water come to him
and drown him, he drowns not himself: argal, he
that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life.

So, he’s arguing that because Ophelia went into the water, she must have committed suicide – but we, in the audience, who’ve just witnessedOphelia’s madness just a few scenes earlier (even ignoring Queen Gertrude’s suspicious behavior), know that Ophelia did not“Wittingly” go into the water, because she was (at the very least) so lost in madness that she fell in accidentally.

Now, I’m not one of those people who stan Shakespeare in everything he wrote (a few of his plays are just hot messes), but here, I do agree that he’s at his peak, with what characters know which, (or should that be which know what?), and telling us the story of what happened, not through some Authorial voice on High, but many different limited points of view.

Reblogging to add a link to this postfrom@bisexual-evanhansen about re-imagining the “Get thee to a nunnery!” scene wherein Ophelia plays an active role in directing the “stage fight” between herself and Hamlet, and it’s played for laughs.

Because I really think it adds to my pile of evidence that Ophelia was murdered.

That warm, fuzzy feeling when a mutual reblogs a post that you were debating about whether to reblog, yourself.

(Instead, I opted to post something new, to put fresh thoughts in my brain)

But this still deserves to be signal boosted. ‘Cause Ophelia was done dirty. First, in-story, by Gertrude, and then, in the centuries after, when Literature teachers and theater directors shape how her story is interpreted.

As someone who first suggested Hamlet is not a tragedy in my tenth-grade English class (I didn’t know the phrase “black comedy” at the time but yeah, it totally is), I would agree with all this, and IN ADDITION:

I would suggest Ophelia’s murder didn’t start with the drowning, and that it wasn’t even entirely related to Laertes.

So first, we have her song about sex out of wedlock. It’s worth noting that much earlier in the play, when she and Laertes speak right before the “to thine own self be true” speech, there are hints that she herself is already “a maid no more,” at Hamlet’s hand. Now keep in mind the rest of the play takes place over the course of, at a minimum, several months, and:

If that’s true, and if perhaps Ophelia has a Little Problem, that little problem–legitimate or not–is heir to the throne.

So if it gets out that Claudius might have been responsible for the death of Hamlet, Sr–and Hamlet, Jr gives us plenty of reasons to be suspicious even before the ghost appears–then he’s almost certainly going to die at the hands of a mob. In which case Hamlet would ascend to the throne, but–oh, what’s this? Hamlet’s dead? Well, then the next in line is–

–a commoner’s child.

Yikes.

So Gertrude offers Ophelia some help with her Little Problem. All of the plants mentioned in the “mad flower song” could be used, in conjunction with each other, as abortifacients, but there’s one very important thing to note about them:

They have to be very, very precisely measured. Or they can cause sudden severe mood swings, hemorrhaging, excessive bleeding, disorientation, lack of focus, muscle weakness, difficulty breathing, unconsciousness, and death.

You know. As might be implied by “singing small snatches of songs” and laying in a creek apparently unaware you’re doing so and unable to pull yourself out. And, as noted above, Gertrude knows one hell of a lot about this scene; as my high school English teacher pointed out, why didn’t anyone help Ophelia, if they could see her so damn well they could describe the whole thing?