On Some Of Shakespeare's Female Characters, Part 1 [pp. 246-253]

I
ON SOME OF SHAKESPEARE'S FEMALE CHARACTERS. 251
And so Ophelia, in her "weakness," fears to
tell the truth, lest, in this too terrible paroxysm
of madness which now possesses him, Hamlet
might possibly kill her old father. But this is
soon to follow, and proves to be the drop too
much in her cup of lonely anguish. When
Hamlet has left the scene, even then not a sob
is heard, no tears are shed: there is no time yet
for self-pity. Her soul's agony is too deep for
tears-beyond all utterance of the common kind.
First in her thoughts is the "noble mind o'erthrown," and "most sovereign reason, like sweet
bells jangled." At last, when she has gone
through the catalogue of his rare virtues, his
princely qualities, his noble attributes-" all quite,
quite down"!-at the end she looks at herselfshe who had "suck'd the honey of his music
vows." What is left for her?-for her "of ladies
most deject and wretched "? "Oh, woe is me!
To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!"
This is all she says, " still harping on" Hamlet.
In the usual stage arrangement Ophelia leaves
the scene with these words. But how much
more touching is Shakespeare's idea that she
shall remain! Her heartless father, knowing
nothing, seeing nothing of the tragedy that is
going on before his eyes, unconscious from first
to last how deeply she has been wounded, and
still treating her merely as a tool, says:
"... How now, Ophelia!
You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said;
We heard it all."
He and the king had only eyes and ears for
Hamlet; and so she drifts away from them into
a shoreless " sea of troubles," unheeded and unmissed.
We see her once again, playing a sort of automaton part in the play-scene-sitting patiently,
watchfully, with eyes only for the poor, stricken
one who asks to lay his head on her lap. You
see, in the little that passes between them, how
gently she treats her wayward, smitten lover.
And then, having no clew to his trouble, no thread
by which to link it with the past, she is scared
away, with the rest, at what appears to be a fresh
outbreak of Hamlet's malady. By this time her
own misery and desolation must have come fully
home to her-her hurt mind, her wrecked happiness must be more than the young, unaccustomed spirit can stand up against. She is not
likely, after the previous experience, to seek solace in her father's sympathy: nor is hers a nature to seek it anywhere. If found, it must have
come to her by the way. The queen is, by this
time, wrapped up in her own griefs-inclined to
confess herself to Heaven, repent what's past.
"0 Hamlet! thou hast cleft my heart in twain.
.. What shall I do?" She is grieved enough for
Ophelia when she sees her "distract," but has
had no time to waste upon her amid her own
numerous fast-growing cares-not even, as it
seems, to break to her the news of her father's
death. There might have been some drop of
comfort, if she had told Ophelia, as she told the
king, "He weeps for what is done!" Most
likely, in the usual marvel-loving way of common people, the news of Polonius's death by
Hamlet's hand was conveyed hurriedly, without
any preparation, to Ophelia's ears, by her attendants. Shock upon shock! The heart already stricken, the young brain undisciplined in
life's storms, and in close and subtile sympathy
with him who was her very life-she catches insensibly the infection of his mind's disease, her
wits go wandering after his, and, like him, she
falls down-" quite, quite down." One feels the
mercifulness of this. The "sweet Heavens," to
which she had appealed to help Hamlet, had
helped her! Her mind, in losing memory, loses
the remembrance of all the woful past, and goes
back to her childhood, with its simple folk-lore
and nursery-rhymes. Still, through all this, we
have the indication of dimly remembered wrongs
and griefs. She says she hears "there's tricks
i' the world, and hems, and beats her heart;...
speaks things in doubt, that carry but half sense,
... would make one think there might be
thought, though nothing sure, yet much unhappily." But the deeper suffering-the love and
grief together-can not (perhaps never could)
find expression in words. The soul's wreck, the
broken heart, are seen only by Him who knows
all. Happily, there is no vulgar comment made
upon the deep affection which she had so silently cherished-no rude, pitying words. "Oh!
this," says the king, "is the poison of deep grief;
it springs all from her father's death." Laertes
says:
"... O rose of May!
O Heavens! is't possible, a young maid's wits
Should be as mortal as an old man's life?"
He comes a little nearer the truth in what follows:
"Nature is fine in love: and, where'tis fine,
It sends some precious instance of itself
After the thing it loves."
But one sees he has not the faintest insight into
the real cause of her loss of wits. The revenge
he seeks upon Hamlet is for his father:
"...his means of death, his obscure burial No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o'er his bones,
No noble rite, nor formal ostentation Cry to be heard, as'twere from heaven to earth,
That I must call't in question."