Blog #24: Hamlet Act 4 Blog

As Horatio

"Though this be madness, yet there is method in ’t" (2.2.195-196). Polonius said this of Hamlet once, my dear friend and possible madman. Hamlet told me shortly after the wedding that he was to play a madman, but his actions hence seem to show that he may have genuinely gone mad. Still, I am at his side, always. Regardless, I wonder which was Ophelia.

Her words and her songs make too much sense too be the word of a mad woman. Yet Hamlet has spoken many a truth while mad. "Where is the beauteous Majesty of Denmark?" (4.5.21) Such biting irony! I would suspect such stinging criticism from my friend, but Ophelia?  "There’s fennel for you, and columbines.—There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me. We may call it “herb of grace” o' Sundays.—Oh, you must wear your rue with a difference.—There’s a daisy. I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died" (4.5.151-156). Hamlet once stood in front of the king to give criticism, yet I think he was never as direct as this.

Then why has she gone mad at all when she was so quiet before? Again, I think this goes back to Hamlet. "She cannot believe that she could have been so mistaken in Hamlet, nor Hamlet so base in his protestations of love" (Seng, 221). Did Hamlet truly love Ophelia? I may never know. But I like to think that he did, he was harsh and cruel at times, "Get thee to a nunnery" (3.1.123), but the way he spoke of her made me think that he did. Even his jests of nunneries can be seen as a veiled warning to flee Elsinore soon. Before this whole affair began, he seemed nothing but genuine. Why would she doubt his love so? "Yet those critics who would urge that Polonius is merely prudent here will be hard put to defend him a few scenes later when he tells Claudius that he will "loose" his daughter to Hamlet for purposes of entrapment; and how is Polonius to be defended at all for the role of agent provocateur that he suggests Reynaldo take with Laertes' friends about the son's sexual morals?" (Seng, 221) That old fool Polonius and even Laertes' ("His greatness weighed, his will is not his own, For he himself is subject to his birth. He may not, as unvalued persons do, Carve for himself, for on his choice depends The safety and health of this whole state" (1.3.17-21).) Thought that Hamlet was not or could not love Ophelia, yet her good soul trusted in love. I think she did go mad, but then only madmen speak honestly in Denmark.

I was at her "funeral" if one can call the rushed affair that. What have we now? Three incomplete funerals: one for the king where the food was still warm for the marriage of his widow, one for Polonius who was hastily stuffed into a coffin and hide, and now one for an innocent girl whose only parting words are a grave-keepers jests and Hamlet's bitter jests. "The incongruity of the song with the task which prompts it - a grave being dug for Ophelia - is a a reflection of the disordered moral universe of the whole play" (Seng, 227).