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Copyright Hecate Press, English Department 1996 -- Article URL
Ophelia: A Theory

I have a theory that Ophelia wasn't such a wholesome girl...In fact, she was bonking the entire male half of the cast of Hamlet. She was the best kept secret in the palace brothel, except for when she went mad and all that hidden whoredom came spilling out of her mouth and between her legs and into the ears of all around her

She did it with Claudius, Hamlet Snr. (before the poisoning), Hamlet Jnr., Horatio and even Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The only men she didn't do it with were Polonius, because he was her father, and Laertes, because he was her brother (and that was debatable). She didn't go mad because Hamlet yelled at her. She didn't go mad because her father was slain. Ophelia went mad from some venereal disease. Ophelia was a pretty girl with a kind heart. She loved Hamlet endlessly, and he loved her back the same.Their love was never consummated, though, and they were both virgins when they died. Their love was the purest love, until murder got in the way.

Maurice Greiffenhagen 1862 - 1931

Once a begrudged apparition puts in an appearance, the world falls down gradually, like dominoes. Hamlet became twisted and bitter and hateful, until he could love no more. And Ophelia's heart bled for him, and it bled her dry, so she went mad and then she died.

Ophelia was an innocent girl. She didn't notice Claudius leering at her from behind his royal throne.She didn't really know what sex was, but she knew desire and passion and love.She didn't know where it could all end.

Ophelia's mother died long before Ophelia was ready to be told about the facts of life. So there she was, a motherless young woman who believed in the stork. She didn't know women bled, until one day she found stains on her dress and felt cramps in her back and her hips and her waist. (She screamed blue murder, apparently, until one of the women -- the obscure women, the ones who didn't rate a mention in the cast list or a line in the play -- explained it all to her. Insufficiently, of course. It simply meant that, next time, Ophelia knew not to scream but to be very still and perhaps spend a day or two in bed eating chocolate and reading Dolly or Mills and Boon romances and take a panadol).

Thus, therein lies the sum total of Ophelia's sex education; the knowledge that, somewhere, underneath all those black clothes, Hamlet had a `throbbing member' and somehow, in the heat of passion, he and she would `become one' together.

Ophelia didn't notice Claudius leering. She used to sit on his knee whenever he asked her to. She did it to please him, and considered him an old Father Christmas, but Claudius took it personally. She didn't notice him squeezing her hip or stroking her leg amidst all those over, under, and in-between garments.

Ophelia was raped and became a survivor hell-bent on revenge. She staged the entire apparition thing herself. Claudius violated her one day, in the garden, and she hated him for it. (She was sleeping on the lawn and woke to find him heaving and sweaty on top of her, whispering lusty words in her ear like poison.) (It put ideas into her head and That sounds like a good idea for a play, she said.)

As luck would have it, Ophelia had a scientific mind. She invented the hologram, successfully creating one in the likeness of Hamlet Snr. (who had earlier died, from a stroke, also in the garden, during a nap).

Ophelia knew how to do voices. She could copy just about anyone. She copied Hamlet, Snr. and made the hologram speak.

It said,

Swear,

Swear,

Swear...

She remembered the rape and wanted Claudius dead for a ducat. She didn't mind that she drove Hamlet Jnr. into a state of clinical depression and turned Denmark on its head in the process. Or so she thought. But when Hamlet's outburst freaked her out, and her father ended up dead instead, Ophelia had a nervous breakdown that escalated into madness and, because the palace had such poor mental health facilities, Ophelia was left alone to despair of the world and drown herself and die.

Ophelia never had swimming lessons.

She didn't really go mad, it's just that she was heavily into horticulture at that time in her life and she liked to pick flowers and give them as presents and because the other characters were all caught up in their own melodramas, they over-dramatised Ophelia's passion for floristry and called it madness to take the heat off themselves.

(She heard there was a splendid flower in full bloom by the water. The rocks were wet, she slipped and fell, and didn't have a hope in hell of saving herself, what with all those layers of clothing and her inability to swim.)

Gertrude told a romantic tale of drowning, but it was a load of bull. Ophelia didn't die quietly. She thrashed and kicked and screamed and became all knotted up in her knickerbockers, and finally she gurgled and sunk. Gertrude made up a kinder, but no less tragic, version of events because it was deemed unladylike to thrash and kick and scream and gurgle, and Gertrude didn't wish to speak ill of the dead. So she spoke of romantic drownings instead, in order that Ophelia's spirit might rest.

Ophelia was a pill-popping, cocaine-snorting, acid-freak. One night she and Hamlet dropped acid, lay on their backs on the lawn, and stared into the sky.

Ophelia had a wild imagination, she made up stories so vivid and startling that Hamlet believed and saw them all, dancing across the night sky. His favourite was the one where his father was murdered by his Uncle Claudius and the shit hit the fan in a big way in Denmark. Everyone was killed off in the end except Horatio.

`How come Horatio gets to live?' Hamlet asked the sky.

`Cos he scored us this acid, that's why,' mumbled Ophelia, and started the next story.

Ophelia was beautiful and young and intelligent. Everybody said so. After King Hamlet died, Gertrude went into a brief state of mourning until her therapist said: `Cut the crap, Gertie. Try getting a hobby.' Gertrude was inspired. She took a short course in hypnosis and practiced her art on Ophelia because she was jealous of the girl and wanted to manipulate her life into a tapestry of hell, gradually, brain cell by brain cell.

First she made Ophelia squawk like a chicken, then she made her stand on one foot and sing `Tenterfield Saddler,' then she gave her a fetish for flowers and lewdness, then she told her to go sit down by the water. Then she pushed her in and told her drown. And Ophelia did, and Ophelia died, and Gertrude said to the lifeless girl: `When you wake, you will remember nothing...'

Ophelia was, essentially, a good girl. Ophelia was mad. Ophelia was a florist in a former life. Ophelia had endometriosis. Ophelia wore too many clothes for her own good. Ophelia slipped and fell. Ophelia was a slut. Ophelia considered becoming a nun. Ophelia was a junkie. Ophelia was violated. Ophelia was bright. Ophelia had potential, her grade five teacher said so. Ophelia was an angel. Ophelia drowned.

If Ophelia came back from the grave, she would say, `I have a theory...'