Download Soft you now, / The fair Ophelia

Hamlet:
The Problem with Women
But "Soft you now, / The fair Ophelia"
Hamlet's "To be or not to be speech" runs into Ophelia:
--Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia!--Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered.
What follows is the famous “nunnery scene”: pp. 64-66;
3.1.88-152.
1) Shown last week in Branagh’s Hamlet with Kenneth
Branagh as Hamlet and Kate Winslet as Ophelia (1996)
2) Today: scenes of Polonius (Bill Murray) with Ophelia (Julia
Stiles) before she goes mad, and including the “nunnery
scene” with Hamlet (Ethan Hawke) from Almereyda’s
Hamlet (year 2000), 15 mins.
Why is Hamlet so mad at Ophelia in
this scene?
What does Hamlet mean when he keeps
saying “get thee to a nunnery”?
A) Live pure in a convent
B) Convert to Catholicism
C) Be a whore
D) A and B
E) A and C
Hamlet says to Ophelia at ll. 124-125,
“I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with
more offenses at my beck than I have
thoughts to put them in, imagination to give
them shape, or time to act them in.”
Does this sound like an accurate selfdescription by Hamlet to you?
A) Yes 
E) No
Ophelia's Madness
Branagh film clip of Ophelia's madness,
pp. 102-105; 4.5.1-74: Kate Winslet as
Ophelia (5 mins.)
Why does Ophelia go mad?
A) Because Hamlet has yelled insults at her and
rejected her
B) Because she has no mother to comfort her
C) Because women are by their fragile nature
prone to going off the deep end
D) Because her father was her mind—he did her
thinking for her—and now he’s dead
E) Because she can’t have sex
The mad Ophelia sings bawdy love songs:
e.g., pp. 104-105, 4.5.48-66
Why does her madness take the form of
bawdy love songs (songs about lovers
having sex)?
Ophelia Pictured
Paintings of Ophelia have captured the full array of
her qualities: innocent child, nymph, madwoman,
sexually repressed, natural beauty:
Arthur Hughes: childlike Nymph O
James Sant: childlike innocent O
John Everett Millais: beautiful part of nature O
Ernest Hébert: beautiful, sultry, and crazed O
John W. Waterhouse (1): sexy, crazy O
Lemaire's Ophelia Madeleine: really sexy, crazy O
In 1.5.165-180 (p. 34), after talking with the
Ghost, Hamlet says to Horatio,
Here as before, never, so help you mercy
How strange or odd some’er I bear myself
(As I perchance hereafter shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on),
That you, at such times seeing me, shall
With arms encumb’red thus, or this headshake,
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,
As, “Well, well, we know,” or “We could, an if we would,”
Or “If we list to speak,” or “There be, an if they might,”
Or such ambiguous giving out to note
That you know aught of me—this do you swear,
So grace and mercy at your most need help you.
In what way are Ophelia’s madness and
Hamlet’s “antic disposition” NOT alike?
A)
B)
C)
D)
E)
Both are caused by grief over a dead father
Both utter meaningful nothings
Both consider or result in suicide
Both are feigned or put on for a purpose
Both express an obsession with sexuality
At the beginning of the play, Hamlet feigns madness:
1. as a way of functioning in a world where everyone
works by indirections
2. as a way of protecting his identity from everyone
who is trying to penetrate to the heart of his
mystery
3. as a way to give expression to his own troubled
sexuality and the mingled visions that he cannot
keep separate (e.g., "nunnery")
4. as a way to prevent himself from actually going
mad like Ophelia.
Ophelia's Madness
versus Hamlet's Madness:
In sum, Hamlet's madness protects and
expresses his identity while Ophelia's
reflects a crushed ego.
Do you think Hamlet ever actually goes
mad in the course of the play?
A) Yes 
E) No
Harping on Mothers: Gertrude
One of Hamlet's obsessions, expressed through
madness, is female sexuality, especially in
relation to his mother.
• These feelings explode in Hamlet's meeting with
Gertrude in Act 3, scene 4, the Closet Scene:
Closet Scene (3.4): Zeffirelli Film Clip
with Mel Gibson as Hamlet and Glenn
Close as Gertrude (5 mins)
The Gibson Hamlet and (Too)Close
Gertrude:
The Zeffirelli production draws on Freud's
interpretation of the play:
• according to Freud, Hamlet cannot easily
avenge his father's death because he has an
Oedipus complex
• he wishes (or wished) to kill his father and to
sleep with his mother
• he thus cannot bring himself to act against the
man who has done what he himself wanted to
do
To the extent that the Oedipus complex operates here,
I would take it one step further:
• Claudius has become the stand-in father that
Hamlet must remove to possess his mother
• Hamlet's killing of "Claudius" (actually the other
father figure, Polonius) is "doable" in this scene
because Hamlet's repressed love for his mother
drives him to such distracted aggression.
But, of course, Hamlet kills the wrong father and his
"real" father resurfaces.
Gertrude's Failed Vision
Why doesn't Gertrude see the ghost?
The Woman Within
Gertrude, like Ophelia, is a projection of
Hamlet's vision of himself:
• in attacking Gertrude's sexual perversion,
Hamlet is attacking an aspect of himself:
his strong feelings for her, which he has not
yet come to terms with.
As with Ophelia, Gertrude is the receptacle of
Hamlet's double image of himself as ideal
and depraved.
This is why it is so important for him that she
repent and change.
But the fact is that the women in
Hamlet’s world cannot save him.
• The answer must come from within.