Thursday, February 25, 2016

Blog #23: Hamlet Act 4 "Reviving Ophelia" Literary Criticism

Dear Followers,

Why is it that the most abhorrent of emotions affect the purest of heart? Those that have no place to pity themselves with their striking beauty come to a resolution of insanity derived from the authority they are obligated to. Oh sweet Ophelia! "I did love you once" (3.1.115), my fair lady. "You should not have believ'd me, for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I lov'd you not" (3.1.117-119). I stay "a prince out of [your] star, yet [you were] willing to bide [your] time patiently, waiting for [my] formal proposals" (Seng 218). I pray you retain your beauty beyond the limits of life, from the grave you collect back the innocence your acute father wickedly stole, yet accusing me of the crime. Your "father and brother have had their share in the spoliation of [your] mind's purity and [your] child-like trust" (Seng 220). Though it pains me to see you covered in the Denmark's glacial grounds, knowing that "a certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at [you]" (4.3.19-20), I shall not feel sorrow at your heart as a breeding ground for mistrust. The first of the family gone, who reared the "accusation of guilt where no guilt has been" (Seng 220), surely a "shock to [your] gentle nature which believed men were what they seemed to be" (Seng 220). What a foolish faith! You and I have much in common, my dear. For us both, "Denmark has become a prison" (Seng 218), though you now are held captive for a timeless period, but nevertheless engendering our insanity. As for your father, I feel no remorse. "[He] find'st to be too busy is some danger" (3.4.34) as he finds himself "too willing to sacrifice morals to political expediency" (Seng 221). I understand not your madness over the venal character, him standing at the trench of the deepest sea as my father rules over the skies, worthy of sacrificing sanity. Perhaps it is, for some peculiar reason, the same love I shed for my father that you sense. "There lives within the very flame of love a kind of wick or snuff that will abate it" (4.7.111-112). Your flame, too feeble to withstand the strong gusts of emotion, abated by your own drowning into an incessant adherence to your father.

As always, with devotion,

Hamlet

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