Blog Post #16: Hamlet Blog Assignment 4

It is just so sudden, and difficult to take, “I lov’d Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers could not (with all their quantity of love) make up my sum” (4.1.90). But like all deaths, especially those of late, things are unsurprising. The thought that I, among others, drove Ophelia to this point... Our love truly was mere “tenders of affection” (1.3.20). And it was not my fault she was swayed by her father and brother to distrust me, I only acted with malice in retaliation of her distant portrayal, “No not I; I never gave you aught…Ha, ha! Are you honest [chaste]?” (3.1.95, 104)! I tell you it really shows the disparity of real men and those jaded, false liars! Filling her head with such deceits as “A violet in the youth of primy nature, forward, not permanent—sweet, not lasting” (1.3.15) it could have lasted, but alas, now we will never know. All because Polonius and Laertes went too far, and ignored the signs that “the habit of mistrust, so ingrained in her father and brother, [was] something new to her” (Seng 220) in favor of scaring her into submission at the consequence of scarring. I always could see so clearly through Polonius’s ploys, and his bitter joke disgusts me, in that it caused Ophelia so much pain in the slandering of her person, “Tender yourself more dearly, Or…you’ll tender me a fool” (1.3.18). I agree with this critic though, because “indeed, she had believed [me]; and, as it turns out, though tragically and too late, her trust was not misplaced” (Seng 220-221). This proving of course that this untimely death was of no fault of mine. It was all due to Polonius who was “only too willing to sacrifice his morals to political expediency; and it is his spying, sneaking and eavesdropping that finally brings his own death” (Seng 221). My dagger may have stabbed him to death, but really he was already dead due to his own debilitating flaw. Had Polonius not hidden behind the curtain, I would not have stabbed him, and then I would never have been sent away, and Ophelia would still have a support system. Polonius is the one who ruined her, causing her madness, I had naught to do with the conspiracy.