Comment
on the relationship between Hamlet Ophelia.
Ans. There is some
ambiguity about the love relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia. Critics hold
different opinions regarding this love relationship:
(i) That Hamlet truly
loved Ophelia and never lost it but had to suppress it owing to circumstances.
(ii) That he never truly loved her, but only lusted after her. (iii) That he
loved her in the beginning, but became suspicious of her as her father's agent,
then treated her cruelly. (iv) That Ophelia loved Hamlet, and initially
believed in his love for her. But when her brother and father lectured her on
the impossibility of this love, and because of her foolishness she bowed to
their authority and withdrew.
The sincerity of the
love between Hamlet and Ophelia may be proved by the love letters Hamlet had
addressed her in exaggerated terms of affection. Ophelia's heart was also
entirely given to Hamlet for she had "sucked the honey of his musicked
vows", and that his loss of reason had made her "Of ladies most
deject and wretched".
Thus Hamlet's love for
Ophelia is sincere and passionate in the beginning but he is compelled to put
aside all thoughts of love and marriage by the pressure of circumstances. He is
greatly shocked by the sudden death of his father and the hasty remarriage of
his mother to his uncle Claudius.
His soul is filled with disgust and hatred
for womankind and he indulges in the generalization, "Frailty thy name is
woman". All women must be alike and Ophelia can be no exception. •This
partly explains his subsequent bitterness and brutality towards Ophelia, the
insults that he heaps upon her in the nunnery-scene and the play-scene. The
Ghost's revelations only deepen his disgust with life in general and womankind
in particular.
Hamlet's love like
everything of his life is "weakened by his melancholy" says Bradley.
His morbid melancholy accounts for the strange fact that he never once alludes
to Ophelia in his soliloquies, never mentions her name to Horatio, and that he
does not appear to realize how the death of her father must affect her. Ophelia
herself also, by her conduct, aggravates the situation. All would have been
well, had she stood by the Prince in the hour of his crisis. But she deserts
him, when he most needs her love, sympathy and understanding. She rather spurns
him, rejects his advances and returns the little tokens of love given by him.
Thus she betrays Hamlet in her obedience to her father. That is why Hamlet is
very offensive in the nunnery scene and. cries out to her "Get theeqt0 a
Nunnery." He hurts Ophelia because he feels that she has hurt him.
However,
it is only after Ophelia's death Hamlet admits in the graveyard scene:
Loved Ophelia. Forty
thousand brothers
Could not with all
their quantity of love
Make up my sum."
Critics disagree as to
the significance of this speech. Some think that Hamlet is here ranting like
Laertes, and that the exaggeration shows that he is being insincere. Others
assume that it is a genuine expression of his former feelings for Ophelia. In
fact, his exclamation is true of his inner self which would have re-asserted
itself but it is partly true of Hamlet whom we see in the play with the 'sea of
troubles'.
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