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                     Hamlet and Ophelia

     I am both charmed and appalled that after sixty years'
familiarity, I still discover about Hamlet, previously
unrecognized: the obvious.  Obvious and most compelling to me
because it corresponds most closely to my own experience.

     Polonius' hypothesis that Hamlet's madness is
consequence of Ophelia's rejection is unpersuasive because
the reader knows, and because Hamlet knew, that Ophelia's
rejection of him was pro forma only, in other words that she
didn't really mean it, that she loved him and that with
sufficient determination Hamlet would have prevailed.

     Moreoever the text clearly shows that it was not Ophelia
who rejected Hamlet but Hamlet who rejected Ophelia.  The
conventional interpretation, as I remember it, is that Hamlet
rejected Ophelia because his mother's (Gertrude's) treachery
made him despair of all womankind. The text may contain
(some) evidence to support this hypothesis. My own surmise,
however, based on my own experience, is that Hamlet's
reluctance to marry Ophelia is an expression of the spiritual
gulf between himself and Ophelia's family of which,
notwithstanding his royal status, he would become a member,
when he married her. Polonius, who, after all was Ophelia's
father, and with whom she was unavoidably (spiritually and
socially) allied, was intolerable to him.  Hamlet understood
that Ophelia could not cross the (spiritual, intellectual,
cultural) chasm that separated him from Polonius, and by
extension from Ophelia; in other words, that given her
parentage, Ophelia would not be capable of being
(spiritually) loyal to him. Without doubt, the (spiritual)
chasm between Hamlet and Ophelia was broadened and deepened
and made ultimately unnegotiable by Claudius' and Gertrude's
treachery.  Perhaps under other circumstances it might have
been bridged.

     It is probably worthwhile to compare the ill-starred
love of Hamlet and Ophelia with that of Romeo and Juliet. For
Romeo and Juliet the impediments to happiness were purely
outward: the engrained enmity between their families with
which the lovers were untainted.  For Hamlet and Ophelia, the
hindrances to happiness were purely inward: Hamlet's
insurmountable reluctance to become part of Polonius'
(spiritual) family; and after Polonius' death, Ophelia's
guilt for loving the murderer of her father.

     This interpretation which reflects my own experience,
suggests to me that ultimately, the explanation for the
indescribable effectiveness of this drama of Shakespeare's,
is not a consequence of any specifics of the plot, nor a
consequence of the specific qualities of its characters.
Rather the effectiveness of the play derives from its
function as a relatively undefined screen onto which each
member of the audience may project his own experience, his
own memories and his own needs. If this is true in essence of
all drama, or for that matter, of all literature, then the
"greatness" of this play is a function of the inordinate
facility and veracity with which it is capable of reflecting
the personality of each individual listener or reader.

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Copyright 2006, Ernst Jochen Meyer
