Comment on the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia.

Comment on the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia.

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 offensive in the nunnery scene and. cries out to her "Get thee,to 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:

                               “I 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'.