He loves me,; He loves me not.

Poor Ophelia, she died for love… In this post I want to discuss the Hamlet and Ophelia’s relationship… wait, there was no relationship at all. According to Showalter she suffered from erotomania; it means that she was deluded by the image of Hamlet, someone that was out of her league. Hamlet flirted with her, but both her father and her brother recognised that they belong to two different social status, so their love was impossible.   So, why Hamlet is so sad when he arrived at Denmark and he realized that she has committed suicide? Hamlet confesses his love for Ophelia at the graveyard, so his grief is absolutely normal. However, I would like to postulate the idea (very twisted by the way) that Ophelia represents the humanity that still remained in Hamlet. He was paranoid, but after her death, he became the revenge machine that killed his uncle, his mother (collateral damage) and Ophelia’s brother. 

God is death... and Claudius killed Him.

In 1882, Frederick Nietzsche coined this well-known phrase that became a motto for all atheists around the world. However, W. Shakespeare had postulated the idea that God has nothing to do in human decisions over 200 years before Nietzsche. The fact that Claudius assassinated King Hamlet, and then became the new King of Denmark shows that the mighty “chain of beings” was not as fixed as it seemed. According that belief, God himself designs a spot for every human being, and that spot can be changed. Firstly, Hamlet senior occupied the spot of king; then, Hamlet junior is supposed to occupy that place, but Claudius sat himself in the throne. In a world where God is centre of the universe, it is a revolutionary idea. Maybe Shakespeare was not aware that he was defying all the celestial order, but it is a hint that the anthropocentrism was around the corner. God is death, long live the human beings!

      

The fight between love and madness

Have you ever felt in love that you felt insane? Have you ever been in a relationship in which you felt that everything was out of control? Well, you maybe feel like Ophelia in Hamlet. 

In my view, Ophelia is one of the most sensitive characters in Hamlet’s play.  She was deeply in love with hamlet that she would do anything in order to be with him. It is like some of those relationships when one of the lovers is crazy to be with the other person and to keep their warmth with him/her, that the romance becomes insane.

Ophelia would do anything to have Hamlet’s love. Have you ever felt like that? If you answer is yes, BE CAREFUL! At the end of the play, she felt she had no options when she realizes that she lost him that she committed suicide. I am pretty sure that you do not want to end up like Ophelia.

But, we have to question something. What felt Hamlet? Why did not he love Ophelia as much as she loved him? He was very hurt because of his mother’s behavior. He was so disappointed that this leads him to distrust all women in the planet. His mother was to be perfect, but she is not. He idealizes her in a way no one could ever broke that image; however, Gertrude broke that idea by herself.

The line between love and madness is so thin that we might not realize when we are losing our minds. You do not want to be another Ophelia and become your life a tragedy, right? Life is so beautiful that it is not worth to suffer from someone who does not love you. Sometimes, you suffer because you get used to it. However, who can say what is normal and what is not? What is insane and what is not? Maybe we are all insane, we think that we love but we do not know what is love (baby don’t hurt me, no more hahaha) or what is to be in love. 

In my opinion, we were born "normal", but afterwards, we transform into sick people (especially when we are in love.) What do you think?

What does the Ghost say?

Have you ever seen a ghost? Have you talked to it? Well, I guess if you did, you would have described the situation to one similar from a horror movie, right? However, Hamlet did not even run away across a corridor because he saw his death father, on the contrary, he just talked to him in a way similar to a Ghostbusters Elizabethan version.

I wish, I was as brave as him, but let’s stop a little bit to what the ghost actually said.

First, he claims that he is his father, and clearly looks like him. Then, he explains that his death is actually a murder committed by his brother; Hamlet’s uncle and actual king. Third, because of words like “doomed” and being in “tormenting flames”, thus the desperation of his words about being revenged in order to make his crimes “burnt and purged away”, we can infer that he is not in heaven at all. According, to the catholic perspective he would be in purgatory, because he actually can be saved. Then the contradictions begin, because seen from that perspective spirits who are in that state should not try to make other sin or they would stay where they are. So, why is he suffering from not being revenged?

From the other religious point of view; for Protestants purgatory does not exist at all. This is another contradiction, since it is said that Denmark is a protestant nation and actually Hamlet attended to Wittenberg a school where the protestant reformation began.  Therefore, he was not his father at all, just an evil force.

All in all, I think that what the ghost says does not really matters; it is hamlet’s reaction to his words what moves him in the direction to revenge. A clear example of this idea is the mouse trap, since he needed to be sure of the words of his father.

Hamlet, do you really believe in the Ghost? Or are you a super expert of spirits? Is that the reason you had to test it?

Conscience or Just Reflection?

     Everyone acts according to their individual inner awareness of the right and wrong. So many times, in fact, we blame ourselves for doing things that are morally are wrong, but we do them anyways. Certainly, the moral sense inhibits actions by generating and creating fear. We, as human beings, have the ability to distinguish between good and evil, but it seems that for some ones have their own concept of good and evil, and do things their own way according to their interests and beliefs.

     In Shakespeare's Hamlet, there is an eternal game with the mind and conscience. Actually, I could ditinguish consciousness, self-consciousness and reflection within the play, which are differente things. But, I would like to focus on Claudius. At the beginning of act III, Claudious states, "how smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience" (actIII, sc. III, 49-50). Claudious disguises his ugliness and evilness with clever words and false emotions; he hides his sins because he knows what he did wrong and the reason of his murder: "My crown, my own ambition and my queen." He recognizes his guilt but he does not regret at all. He reflects about their actions, he looks into his soul and kneels to pray, hoping to purge his guilt , but reflects that this penance will not be true and genuine since he will still retain the prized for which he committed the murder and he is proud of them.

     Even though throughout the play we can perceive Claudius as a celever monster, this is the first time the king confesses comitting the crime (act III, sc. III); he does have conscience, he acknowledges enjoying his ungodly gains; therefore, he just reflects about his actions. Claudious is not completely beyong redemption.

    Nowadays, there are a lot of Claudius in the world. People recongnize doing wrong, and still continue doing it; people committed bad actions but tehy are justify by the end (Machiavelli's idea). Today, we live in a society where coscience exists but it is not taken into account nor even present when acting or taking decisions. I must say that everyone constructs their own conscience regarding their own interests and needs; what is wrong for me, for you is good; what is morally correct for me, for you it is not. This leads to frustration, madnees, and more wickedness at a personal level. Having coscience does not mean you are a a good person, it means you are human prompt to sin at any time.
     As we can see, human mind is a mess. Check this video about it. 

Juliet and Ophelia:  Active and passive, passion and softness

It is possible to see a relation between two of the most famous plays, and more specifically tragedies, by William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet. Such relation takes into account the factor of the woman in the play (which is, in some way, wicked since no women performed the role of women in plays in that period). 

Juliet is merely a girl when the play starts. Nevertheless, it has been argued that she grows over the development of the play and, in contrast to Romeo, she progressively matures. The child is no longer so: she is a person able to make decisions and to decide what is it that she wants and pursues it. She goes with the flow of things but in an active way since she knows where things are headed to.

Ophelia, the woman I refer to in Hamlet, is sadly totally the opposite. She is shown as downtrodden, submissive and welcoming, in contrast to the character of Hamlet, aggressive and passionate in nature. She follows the will of others, for example Laertes or Polonius. The girl is given little - if none - voice in the play except when she finally loses her mind after Polonius death, and that voice, or room for her to speak, is full of nonsense and madness. In act 4, when her father is accidentally killed, her craziness is unleashed. Therefore, Ophelia is a character to be pitied.

Despite having a totally different attitude toward events, they both, Ophelia and Juliet, have something in common; they both are dragged to their fatal destiny because of a man. Hamlet and Romeo are the ones to be blamed for the downward spiral Ophelia and Juliet undergo. Juliet, actually, dies the same as Ophelia. Is it notorious that their deaths have a different nature, though: Juliet dies by a knife being “sheathed” in her skin, which could be considered as aggressive, dying almost by phallic icon; meanwhile, Ophelia dies by water, in a sort of soft way, surrounded by a welcoming entity such as water, she fades into the depths; so now I wonder: Would the way they die have something to do with their personalities?

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

The Hunchback of Notre Dame has been one of my favorite movies since I was a child—Yes… and I cried like everybody else when I watched it for the very first time, I must confess. For those who may not know it, this is an animated musical drama film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and it was released in 1996.

Believe it or not, I was reading the play Twelfth Night when this movie, suddenly, came up to my mind and without noticing, my neurons started making some connections by relating one topic presented in the play to another exposed in the movie. For that reason, I decided to look for some information on the Internet—the greatest savior of work groups nowadays—in order to find out if my ideas were going to make sense at some point.

            So, here we go. First of all, The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a French Gothic novel by Victor Hugo and it was published in 1831. Nevertheless, the story takes place in Paris in 1482—Ok, first thing that makes me think that I am not entirely lost, because Twelfth Night was written around 1601.

            The word that really made me think of this movie was “carnival”. At the very beginning of this movie, a carnival, The Carnival of Fools, is exposed, and like it is stated in one part of the song performed by Clopin, the mischievous leader of the gypsies, "everything in this carnival turns upside down." From this point, we can see all the people of the city, from the lower to the upper classes, having fun together by drinking, singing, and disguising themselves; actually, there is a competition of masks portrayed like the main event of this festivity. In connection with the play, by the time that Twelfth Night was written, people used to celebrate this carnival—Twelfth Night—where everything was ruled by madness and craziness; indeed, during this festivity, men used to disguise like women and vice versa—Am I making myself clear?

            There is another point that I was able to analyze with the help of my friends, and I would like to share it with you as well. The character of Feste, the trixiter, is pretty similar to Clopin, this mischievous gypsy that narrates the story of the hunchback since the beginning of the movie and who seems to be an omniscient narrator; for some reason, he knows everything concerning the character’s lives. Like Feste, who was Olivia’s servant, he was wise (trixters were supposed to be smart, but portrayed the role of clowns in society) free, and even though he interacted with all the characters, he didn’t belong to their realities, for he knew everything about them—Does it make any sense?

What do you think? I’m looking forward to reading your comments in order to exchange more ideas!
                                                                                                                                          
Sergio Reyes