Hamlet and Ophelia

Hamlet and Ophelia

         Throughout the play of Hamlet, Hamlet himself claims to love Ophelia and yet in other parts of the play he seems to have serious distaste for her; his love for her is ambivalent at best. Speaking in general terms of the modern world, men often testify that they dearly care or even love a woman. However a vast majority of the time, that love is lackluster if not less. Some men have very good intentions, but when push comes to shove that love usually falls short of what is needed to sustain a healthy relationship. Other men just use love in order to seduce women and get what they want, consciously or within the subconscious. Either way: the word love today is but a watered-down version of what it used to mean. Now depicting Hamlet’s intentions within the play is very difficult to decipher, because of his constant unsure nature, does he truly love her? Or is it a physical lust only?
         “Frailty, thy name is woman-“(Shakespeare, Hamlet pg. 11) Now while this quote is directed toward his mother Gertrude, this does show his view of women as a weak creature. Throughout the play he constantly bashes on both his mother and Ophelia, maybe Hamlet just has a very cynical view of life or maybe Shakespeare was going through a rough spot in his marriage while writing this play, who knows? Regardless Hamlet has skeptical overview of women; however he does seem to bounce between hate and love. “I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers Could not, with all their quality of love, Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her?”(Shakespeare, Hamlet pg. 108) This quote may give us insight of Hamlet’s deeper thoughts; at this point in the play Ophelia is dead from proposed suicide, and Hamlet is wrestling in Ophelia’s grave with her brother Laertes. At first glance the audience maybe dwelling under the illusion that Hamlet’s words are sincere and he truly loves her; at second glance on the other hand, is Hamlet just in the moment? Is his coursing adrenaline forcing him to make dramatic statements? This can be argued from the quote “Give me your pardon sir. I’ve done you wrong; pardon’t as you are a gentlemen. This presence knows,-“(Shakespeare, Hamlet pg.116), after “grappling” with each other in Ophelia’s grave Hamlet apologizes to Laertes for his rash behavior. Does this signify fake or dramatized emotion for Ophelia? Does this negate the previous quote (pg. 108)? In a previous section of the book, Hamlet has an interesting conversation with Ophelia’s father Polonius; in which he tells Polonius to keep his daughter safe from the men of the world or she will end up pregnant. Just the way he talks to Polonius, insinuates that he may have had an intimate relationship with her. Seeing as he wrote her many love notes on previous occasions, he at one point had at least a physical attraction to her; unfortunately those events progress back to before the play begins, so no one will know for sure of the fine points of their relationship.
         When rubber meets the road, at one point Hamlet had a love for Ophelia; however it was an innocent love, not fully dilated enough to see if it would hold through trails. Assuming they might have had a sexual relationship prior to the play, that may explain Hamlet’s ambivalence towards her. After his dead father reveals his mother’s weakness, Hamlet begins to see weakness in all women as a whole. At that point he began to stop loving Ophelia because of his pessimistic view; however he seems to have suffered a revival toward the end of the play when Ophelia is dead. Hamlet is around thirty, making him slightly more mature than the marrying age of today, he still shows signs of emotional immaturity. Now despite Hamlet’s seemingly weak love for Ophelia, when it comes down to the point and Hamlets wrestles Laertes and re confesses his love for Ophelia, it is a sincere jest of love. Hamlet did love Ophelia at the end.

Work Cited
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Dover Publications, Inc. 1992, 21 Dec. 2010.