“I will not speak with her.”

April 24, 2024 12:19 AM

Ophelia’s life, as much as we see of it within the boundaries of five acts, has been one of enforced silence, climaxing in a desperate call—answered too late by Gertrude—for a chance to unpack her heart with words. She comes in a full and terrible circle from her playful rebuke to Laertes for pontificating about how women should behave, but she never saw what was coming. “Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be.” Only in her madness, when language tumbles out uninhibitedly, does Ophelia make a direct and profound charge about masculinist privilege and culpability. “Young men will do’t if they come to’t, / By Cock, they are to blame.” Unlike Hamlet with his words, words, words, Ophelia never speaks of taking her own life. And then she does. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune strike more than one target in this play. Among its many wonders, Hamlet depicts a young woman set on a lonely path, leading to an abyss, in a lethal world of male verbal license. from The Silencing of Ophelia by Robert Crossley [Hudson Review]
posted by chavenet (11 comments total)

There's only one adaptation for me.
posted by groda at 1:32 AM on April 24 [4 favorites]

I appreciate that he doesn't soften what a self-centered arrogant asshole misogynist Hamlet is. (Hamlet gets it from dear ol' dad. When both of them together talk about Gertrude it's... okay, it's really gross actually. And neither of them even thinks to ask what choice Gertrude had about marrying Claudius.)

Protagonists don't have to be likeable yadda yadda... but Hamlet is a real low point even for Billy Shakes, who doesn't shrink away from the unlikeable (Pandarus in Troilus and Cressida is worse even than Hamlet).

I will only watch this play when it's in a double bill with Stoppard's RAGAD as a chaser. I loathe Hamlet-the-character that much.

As for Ophelia, one thing the author misses is how much of her accustomed life the play strips from her. Her brother gone. Her father dead. Her it's-complicated crazed and denying her, then exiled. It's a lot.
posted by humbug at 5:01 AM on April 24 [5 favorites]

To be fair, virtually everyone in the play has everything stripped from them by the end, but Ophelia never had anything. Everyone else had some status, some power, some prospects, but Ophelia just gets moved around by people as they will. I suppose her brother and father love her or are at least fond of her, but they don’t respect her. And, unless you think Hamlet is no longer competent, his behavior towards her is utterly inexcusable — we start from the assumption that he had some sort of affection, however wan, what did she do to deserve his utter contempt except be there and be vulnerable? I mean, Gertrude’s not that much better off, really, but she at least has a pretense of position and some affection from Claudius (well, maybe).
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:54 AM on April 24 [5 favorites]

I should say that I’m not a huge Hamlet fan. The play has some good lines, but it’s a convoluted machine for killing almost all the speaking roles, and it’s twice as long as Macbeth. Hell, Hamlet’s lines are like 2/3 the length of Macbeth. So it feels like kind of a slog to spend time with characters who just aren’t that pleasant or interesting to be around. Obviously, other opinions are available.

I much prefer Macbeth, where I think there is a lot of room for the actors and directors to fine tune schemes to ask questions like Are the witches real? Do they drive him to it? How much is it Macbeth and how much Lady Mb? If every crown is founded in violence, how bad is Mb? And on and on. Hamlet seems to allow much less wiggle room on the characters.
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:05 AM on April 24 [5 favorites]

A friend of mine is a Shakespearean scholar, who once explained Hamlet to me as a genre exercise that would have been very recognizable as such in its day but isn't now - specifically, the Revenge play common in Elizabethan theater. This isn't, like, a novel thought, but it was new to me and helped to explain why Hamlet largely doesn't work for me - it's playing around with beats and tropes that the Elizabethan audience specifically would be very familiar with. Since I'm not familiar with them, most of what the play is doing, plotwise, is going to be diminished somewhat in my reception of it.

(There's a quote that I've come across from Roger Ebert, which he ascribes to Pauline Kael, defining Auteur Theory as folks trying to "shove art into the crevices of dreck." Ebert used it to describe Tarantino's career. I think it describes Hamlet pretty well by my understanding of what Shakespeare was doing with it.)

Anyway, I'm pretty sure it was this same friend who introduced me to the interpretation that Ophelia does not, in fact, kill herself, or die at all within the timeline of the play, but rather that Gertrude sees the writing on the wall, helps Ophelia make good her escape from Elsinore, and then serves as the lone witness to what happened.

I like that interpretation. It conflicts with Act 5, Scene 1, in that there still needs to be a corpse for whom the grave is being dug, but there's probably some way to work with that. I prefer that version of events.
posted by Navelgazer at 8:32 AM on April 24 [13 favorites]

Are there any good books that tell the tale from Ophelia's point of view?
posted by Faintdreams at 8:32 AM on April 24 [2 favorites]

Navelgazer, that would make the funeral scene even more hilariously awkward with Hamlet and Laertes unable to see that they are posturing over the wrong body…

I agree that Hamlet is a Revenge Play, but the genre really needed to cook for a few more years before it got completely bonkers and kind of brilliant. The Revenger’s Tragedy is a lot of fun if the actors and director really go to town. There’s a 2002 adaption by Alex Cox with Christopher Eccleston and Suzy Izzard is fun, although shortened, that should be reasonably easy to find.
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:56 AM on April 24 [5 favorites]

There is a game from Ophelia's point of view. MetaFilter argued about it.
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:45 AM on April 24 [3 favorites]

I think about it from time to that, that the adaptations of Shakespeare that I enjoy most seem to revel in the characters being terrible. Ian McKellan's take on Richard III is about seducing as much as sneering at the audience, as you kind of just join in and root for him, at least until the end.

I think Shakespeare is at his best when he points (however indirectly) back at the audience at our frailties and insecurities, how (in however small ways) we sometimes can revel in pettiness and revenge and less pleasant behaviors to fellow human beings, and how that might sometimes lead to great suffering when we promote the worst among us to powerful positions (like dictators or orange-haired creeps who aspire to the role).

But Hamlet has always seemed a vehicle for lead actors to wallow in narcissistic self-pity (Ethan Hawke, Maximilian Schell, Mel Gibson). The one adaptation I did enjoy was Branagh's, mostly because I was lucky enough to see it in full 70mm beauty at Baltimore's wonderful Senator theatre. I would love to see a revisionist take from Ophelia's point of view.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 12:15 PM on April 24 [7 favorites]

(Thank you for this Shakespeare conversation, just one day after his birthday. I love that ol' Bard!)
posted by wenestvedt at 6:06 PM on April 24 [3 favorites]

I look forward to reading this. Robert Crossley is a lovely man and is the sole happy memory from my unfortunate attempt at college 40 odd years ago.
posted by InkaLomax at 7:40 AM on April 25 [2 favorites]