methods in madness:
thinking with Ophelia
POLONIUS: Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't.
What does "method in madness" mean?
Polonius means that although Hamlet is talking nonsense, there is still some sense or meaning behind his words.
It can also mean that Hamlet is pretending to be mad.
We can also think about the techniques that Shakespeare uses in creating Hamlet as a character who acts mad (Shakespeare's "methods" of writing as well as Hamlet's "methods" of speaking).
What are the "methods of madness" for Hamlet? for Ophelia?
Hamlet uses his madness in order to protect himself. His madness is also filled with witty and philosophical sayings. (Find some!) Is Hamlet "really" mad? Yes and no. He has what we would call a depressive personality, his negative tendencies intensified by the situation in which he finds himself at the beginning of the play. But he is not as mad as he pretends to be.
What are the "methods of madness" for Ophelia?
Shakespeare creates a special language of madness for Ophelia that is quite distinct from Hamlet's. She uses flowers to express her interpretations of the different characters. She also uses fragments from romantic ballads (folk songs). Although her intentions are not as rational as Hamlet's, and she does not speak philosophical truths, she nonetheless speaks emotional truths that move her audience.
Whereas Hamlet is pretending to be truly crazy, Ophelia really is broken by the circumstances. Not only has her boyfriend abandoned her, but he has also killed her father. Both themes can be found in the songs that she sings.
DEATH OF OPHELIA
What aspects of Ophelia's madness reappear in this scene?
Songs; flowers. In her death, as in her mad scene, she continues to turn "thought and affliction, passion, hell itself to favour and to prettiness."
Is her death intentional, accidental, or something in between?
Evidence can be found in the text to support either interpretation. She falls into the stream while picking flowers; this implies that her death is an accident. But drowning is also a method for suicide, and she may have intentionally placed herself in danger. Her death is ambiguous, as the grave-diggers indicate in the burial scene (Act Five, Scene 1).
RELATED LINKS ON OPHELIA
Folger Library Teachers' Gude to Ophelia
folger.edu/education/lesson.cfm?lessonid=77
Ophelia in Art Nouveau
nouveaunet.com/prbpassion/various1.cfm
Zefferelli's Hamlet: Commentary by Frank Kermode
geocities.com/queeniemab/ZeffHamlet.htm
Flowers in Shakespeare: Commentary on IV.5
huntington.org/BotanicalDiv/Shakespeare/ophelia.htm
OPHELIA: Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?
OPHELIA: [Sings]
How should I your true love know
From another one?
By his cockle hat and staff,
And his sandal shoon.
QUEEN GERTRUDE: Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?
OPHELIA: Say you? nay, pray you, mark. [Sings]
He is dead and gone, lady,
He is dead and gone;
At his head a grass-green turf,
At his heels a stone.
QUEEN GERTRUDE: Nay, but, Ophelia, --
OPHELIA: Pray you, mark.
[Sings]
White his shroud as the mountain snow, --
[Enter KING CLAUDIUS]
QUEEN GERTRUDE : Alas, look here, my lord.
OPHELIA : [Sings]
Larded with sweet flowers
Which bewept to the grave did go
With true-love showers.
********************************* OPHELIA: There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember: and there is pansies. that's for thoughts.
LAERTES: A document in madness, thoughts and remembrance fitted.
OPHELIA: There's fennel for you, and columbines: there's rue
for you; and here's some for me: we may call it herb-grace o' Sundays: O you must wear your rue with
a difference. There's a daisy: I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father
died: they say he made a good end, --
[Sings]
For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.
LAERTES: Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself,
She turns to favour and to prettiness.
DEATH OF OPHELIA (IV.7)
QUEEN GERTRUDE: There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.
IMAGINING OPHELIA
Artists in the nineteenth century were very taken with the "prettiness" of Ophelia's madness and death. The "pre-Raphaelites" were a group of artists who looked back to the early Renaissance (before Raphael, an important painter of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries) for models of simple beauty and grace.
JohnWilliam Waterhouse, Ophelia
John Everett Millais, Ophelia, Tate Gallery, London, 1851.
Odilon Redon, Ophelia, 1910, collection of A.D. Lasker.
BEYOND PRETTINESS AND FAVOUR:
OPHELIA IN MODERNITY
Experimental photographer Victor Burgin did a series of photographs based on Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. This shot combines Vertigo and John Everett Millais's Ophelia.
Ken Reinhard and I wrote a book about Shakespeare (a Renaissance author) and Freud (a modern thinker). We chose Victor Burgin's photograph for our cover image because we liked the overlay of Shakespeare, nineteenth century imaginings of Ophelia, and a contemporary re-vision (through film and photography).
Some modern films of Hamlet have also tried to rethink or work against the "pretty" Ophelia in favor of stronger, darker, or more troubling images.
Helena Bonham-Carter plays Ophelia in the film adapation of Hamlet directed by Franco Zeffirelli in 1990. Commentary on the film by Frank Kermode.