Discuss the importance and significance of the Nunnery Scene in Hamlet.

Discuss the importance and significance of the Nunnery Scene in Hamlet.

Ans. Hamlet sinks into melancholy and puts on an "antic disposition" after he receives the shocking revelation of the Ghost who claims to be the spirit of his dead father. The Ghost reveals the truth that Claudius, his uncle, who is the present King, is his murderer and urges Hamlet to avenge both the foul play and the "incestuous" marriage of his mother to his uncle. He behaves as if he were mad. The King and the Queen are amazed at his strange behavior. Claudius is anxious to find out the cause of his madness. With this end in view he engages Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy upon him. But because of Hamlet's cleverness, their attempt to draw him out are in vain.

Under this situation Polonius comes out with a plan to use Ophelia, his daughter as a decoy, because he thinks that the Prince has gone mad for being rejected by her. Ophelia who is very gentle and innocent, falls in with the idea and meets Hamlet on the way while Claudius and Polonius hide.

Hamlet arrives on the scene with his famous soliloquy, "To be or not to be", on his lips. The soliloquy clearly reveals his weariness and disgust with life. At this moment he perceives Ophelia, so beautiful, so innocent that he utters involuntarily,

"Nymph; in thy orisons,

Be all my sins remembered."

But Ophelia plays her part in a manner that soon betrays her. She is too innocent and too good to practice any deception. She. complains that the Prince rejected her love and returns the love tokens that he had given her from time to time. Hamlet, being suspicious, realizes that he is being spied upon, and the King or  someone else must be at hand overhearing their conversation. He is shocked at Ophelia's complicity in the plot against him. He had already been disillusioned and embittered by his mother's conduct, and now Ophelia, too, seems to him to be an imposter, a hypocrite like the rest of them. The result is that he pounces upon her with a savage zeal and heaps insults and humiliations on her  innocent head. He had never loved her, he tells her, but had merely lusted after her, and she was a fool to believe in his professions of love. He advises her to go to a nunnery and rails against female hypocrisy.

The nunnery scene brings to light the gentle, childlike, innocent nature of Ophelia, her love for Hamlet, her lack of understanding the crisis of her lover, her humble obedience to her father. Hamlet speaks to her harshly, yet his love for her is seen in his very advice to her to join a nunnery and not to marry anyone else. It is the only love-scene in the play and the love ends at the end of the scene. It shows the shrewdness and cunning of Claudius. He is ready to adopt any means to safeguard his own life and reputation. Here Claudius is convinced that Hamlet is not mad but a danger for him. So he immediately conceives plans to send Hamlet away from Denmark. Thus the nunnery scene enhances the action of the play.