The Impact of Ophelia on Hamlet Essay -- Essays on Shakespeare Hamlet

The Impact of Ophelia on Hamlet Could the Bard of Avon energize created a more innocent and obedient young lady in Hamlet than the victimized Ophelia? I think not. Let us handle the ups and downs of her life in the play. Michael Pennington in Ophelia Madness Her Only ripe Haven, describes spirit traits of the young lady This is the woman she might have become warm, giving and imaginative. Instead she becomes jagged, benighted and imaginative. . . .Ophelia is made mad not only by circumstance but by something in herself. A personality obligate into such deep hiding that it has seemed almost vacant, has all the time been so painfully open to impressions that they now usurp her reflexes and take possession of her. She has loved, or been prepared to love, the wrong man her father has brought disaster on himself, and she has no mother she is terribly lonely. (73-74) Helena Faucit (Lady Martin) in On Some of Shakespeares pistillate Characters reveals the misunderstood characte r of Ophelia My views of Shakespeares women have been wont to take their shape in the living portraiture of the stage, and not in words. I have, in imagination, lived their lives from the real beginning to the end and Ophelia, as I have pictured her to myself, is so unlike what I hear and read about her, and have seen delineate on the stage, that I can scarcely hope to make whatsoever one think of her as I do. It hurts me to hear her spoken of, as she often is, as a weak creature, wanting in truthfulness, in purpose, in force of character, and only interesting when she loses the little wits she had. And stock-still who can wonder that a character so delicately outlined, and shaded in with touches so fine, should be o... ... Lehmann, Courtney and Lisa S. Starks. Making Mother Matter Repression, Revision, and the Stakes of Reading analysis Into Kenneth Branaghs Hamlet. Early Modern Literary Studies 6.1 (May, 2000) 2.1-24 <URL http//purl.oclc.org/emls/06-1/lehmhaml.htm>. Pen nington, Michael. Ophelia Madness Her Only Safe Haven. Readings on Hamlet. Ed. Don Nardo. San Diego Greenhaven Press, 1999. Rpt. of Hamlet A Users Guide. brisk York Limelight Editions, 1996. Pitt, Angela. Women in Shakespeares Tragedies. Readings on The Tragedies. Ed. Clarice Swisher. San Diego Greenhaven Press, 1996. Reprint of Shakespeares Women. N.p. n.p., 1981. Shakespeare, William. The cataclysm of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 1995. http//www.chemicool.com/Shakespeare/hamlet/full.html No line nos.