Hamlet in the Play Hamlet Term Paper

A hop'd thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife; thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid,

And not have strew'd thy grave (V.1.244-247).

When Hamlet is feigning madness and wishes to tweak Laertes, he claims to have loved Ophelia, though his actions previously have not shown much love for her:

lov'd Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers

Could not (with all their quantity of love)

Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her? (V.1.280-282).

Laertes certainly does not see Hamlet as a lover for his sister and instead believes that Hamlet is only trifling with her, and he warns her of this:

For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favour,

Hold it a fashion, and a toy in blood;

violet in the youth of primy nature,

Forward, not permanent? sweet, not lasting;

The perfume and suppliance of a minute;

No more I.iii.7-12).

Her father, Polonius, asks her openly what is between them, and she answers, "He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders / Of his affection to me" (I.iii.109-110). Her father also warns her about Hamlet, but she states that Hamlet "hath importun'd me with love / In honourable fashion" (I.iii.120-121).

Ophelia's madness is real and contrasts with that of Hamlet. In addition, while Hamlet always seems much concerned with his own mortality and given to bouts of depression which bring him to think of suicide, Ophelia actually carries out her suicide. Hamlet's response to her death shows that his feelings are deeper than he has shown earlier in the play, for he leaps into her grave in grief:

What is he whose grief

Bears such an emphasis? whose phrase of sorrow

Conjures the wand'ring stars, and makes them stand

Like wonder-wounded hearers? This is I,

Hamlet the Dane (V.1.259-263).

In the Elizabethan conception, there is a sense that the assertion of individual conscience goes against group interests: "The individual, placing himself a the center of things asserting his private will, violates the WHOLE, disrupts the political and social order, chokes all pity with 'custom of fell deeds' and, striving to gain the whole world for himself, loses his own soul" (Hobson 27). There is thus also a social component to morality and integrity, with living up to the whole of society and its precepts being a mark of integrity expressed in Shakespeare. Hamlet represents this type of integrity as he goes against his own best interests to carry out the duty given to him. His real sense of duty contrasts with the empty platitudes of Polonius, though he achieves this by feigning madness, while Polonius's daughter really is mad. Hamlet restores order by sacrificing himself, while the futility of outright suicide is demonstrated by the actions of Ophelia, just as the futility of revenge is seen in the actions of Laertes.

Works Cited

Frye, Roland Mushat. The Renaissance Hamlet. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.

Harrison, G.B. Shakespeare: The Complete Works. New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1952.

Hobson, Alan. Full Circle: Shakespeare and Moral Development. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1972.

Prosser, Eleanor. Hamlet & Revenge. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971.