RALPH:  This scene is a whirlwind of emotion for Hamlet, and a humiliating and baffling moment for Ophelia.  But if we step back and reflect on its location and broader significance in the play as a whole…. Sarah?  What is it?

SARAH:  Excuse me… Ralph…

RALPH:  Yes, Sarah?

SARAH:  I know the play is called Hamlet, and we’re supposed to figure out what Hamlet’s thinking, and doing, and not yet doing, and saying.. but don’t you find it irritating that we still have no insight into what Ophelia is thinking?

RALPH:  Well, that’s a bit of exaggeration, I think, Sarah.  First of all, we get Ophelia’s monologue at the end of this scene, which helps us understand that she clearly does have strong feelings for Hamlet – and that she’s convinced by his show of madness, she thinks he’s really…

SARAH:  But again, it’s all about Hamlet!  Whenever Ophelia speaks, she tells us about Hamlet!  In her earlier scene with her father, in Act II scene 1, what does she do?  She painstakingly describes Hamlet’s every movement, every wrinkle on his shirt. For all of our deep explorations of Hamlet’s psyche, we know precious little about Ophelia.  Where’s her mother, for example?  Did she die? Did she leave Polonius because he prattled on so much?  Does Ophelia actually want to marry Hamlet?  What does she think of the new King?  Does she suspect foul play?

RALPH:  You’re right, Sarah, absolutely right. But this is all Shakespeare gave us. We have to make do with what we’ve got here – and certainly we’ve got plenty! But the problem with knowing Ophelia’s character is only going to get worse as the play moves on… and she’s not the only one we don’t have much insight into.

SARAH:  That’s frustrating.

RALPH:  I totally agree.  For now, let’s get back to Ophelia and Hamlet’s strong behavior towards her in this scene.

SARAH:  All right, Ralph. Why does Hamlet become so bitter toward Ophelia now? Does he truly think that she’s complicit in some plot against him?

RALPH:  Well, it’s not all that unreasonable on his part. She’s meeting him here because Polonius and the King have arranged it - then she calls him unkind and returns his gifts. Finally, she lies to him about the whereabouts of her father.

SARAH:  Even so, it doesn’t quite justify the strident nature of Hamlet’s invectives. Some critics see his emotional behavior in this scene as part of a psychological pattern where his anger builds until he loses control of himself. Possibly this indicates that stress is starting to take its toll on him; it’s a symptom of the melancholy, which has inflicted him since the play began.

RALPH:  That may explain Hamlet’s anger toward Ophelia, but why does he belittle himself as well, and men in general? He accuses himself of ‘such things that it were better his mother had not borne him. He’s proud, revengeful, and ambitious’ and labels all men as sinners and errant knaves.

SARAH:  Asimov thinks he’s being accurate when he describes himself as proud, revengeful, and ambitious – but that doesn’t explain the rest. Wilson thinks he’s sending a warning to Claudius – but why would he give himself away?  That doesn’t make sense.

RALPH:  Some suggest this is just another why of hurting Ophelia – “I never loved you, i’m just a horrible person who took advantage of you, and guess what, all men are like me, we’re all going to misuse you”. Alternatively, the proponents of the melancholy theory see this self-denegration as a repetition of the weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable worldview Hamlet expressed in his first soliloquy.

SARAH:  Ralph – given Hamlet’s apparent disgust with the entire female sex, should we read into all of this some of Shakespeare’s own attitudes towards women?  Was Shakespeare a misogynist? After all, we know that Shakespeare lived almost his whole life in a different city from his wife,  and that they had no more children after he was 21.

RALPH:  That’s right, Sarah. It’s also been pointed out that his sonnets, those cryptic intimate poems he wrote throughout his life, imply that for a long period of time he had an infatuation with a handsome young upper-class man! Other sonnets hint that a woman called ‘the dark lady’ may have given him syphilis – that could certainly help explain Hamlet’s nausea about sex.  But deciding what an author thinks based on the characters in his or her works is tricky business.

SARAH:  That’s true, Ralph.  One could just as easily argue that Shakespeare has shown remarkable sensitivity in portraying the very difficult position women found themselves in at all levels of Elizabethan society. We don’t know what Ophelia’s thinking precisely because nobody around her seems to care. Perhaps Shakespeare wants us to be moved by Ophelia’s plight.  As we’ll see, what happens to her might be the most moving event in the play.

RALPH:  So the questions mount:  what’s Hamlet really up to?  What’s Ophelia thinking?  And what, if anything, does this tell us about Shakespeare’s attitudes towards women?