Because of her father, she is forced to betray Hamlet. Ophelia’s family do not much respect her and do not care about her feelings:
“OPHELIA He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders
Of his affection to me
POLONIUS Affection! Pooh! You speak like a green girl,”
But as she agreed to deceive Hamlet, it shows that Ophelia is more loyal and respectful to her father than Hamlet.
Hamlet still loved Ophelia as well:
“The fair Ophelia!”
On the other hand, this could be related to Hamlet’s “Are you fair?” which could mean that because Ophelia is beautiful, she has becomes dishonest:
“HAMLET Ha, ha! Are you honest?
OPHELIA My Lord?
HAMLET Are you fair?
OPHELIA What means your lordship?
HAMLET That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.
This is a generalisation based on the fact that mother remarried to Claudius for status and security so she is dishonest and she is also beautiful.
However because of Ophelia’s rejection of him he has to strike back.
The turning point is when Hamlet realises he is being spied on, and he tests Ophelia:
“Where’s your father?”
When she replies
“At home, my lord”,
There is unconscious irony used here, the audience and Hamlet know he has found out about the spying except Ophelia. This leads Ophelia into giving a wrong response which lets Hamlet know he has been let down and becomes very angry towards her; this shows his disappointment at Ophelia’s betrayal of him. Hamlet repeats
“Go thee to a nunnery”
many times to emphasise his point. The meaning of the word Nunnery is ambiguous, in the time of Shakespeare it is slang for brothel as well as meaning a convent. Hamlet means that if Ophelia
Is good then she should go to a nunnery to protect herself from evil men:
“We are arrant knaves all; believe none of us.
Go thy ways to a nunnery”
The other less evident reason is that if Ophelia is evil, she should go to a brothel:
“Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know
well enough what monsters you make out of them. To a nun-
nery, go”
After the marriage of Claudius and his mother, Hamlet is a misogynist, and he often generalises. Just because her mother is weak and evil for marrying his uncle, he believes that all women are similar. This is shown during the play within a play:
“OPHELIA ‘Tis brief, my lord.
HAMLET As woman’s love.”
He generalises that all women’s love is short just because his mother re-married so quickly and Ophelia betrayed him.
He is also to some extent, a misanthropist:
“HAMLET Denmark’s a prison.
ROSENCRANTZ Then is the world one.
HAMLET A goodly one, in which there are many confines, wards, and, dungeons, Denmark being one o’ th’ worst.”
Hamlet hates Denmark and the people of it and to a degree, the whole world in describing it as a prison. Another sign of Hamlet’s misanthropy is the quote also in the same scene.
“Man delights not me; no, nor woman neither”
Deception and espionage are other themes in this scene as well as the whole play; Claudius and Polonius are spying on Hamlet. Polonious spies frequently. Polonius spied on his son Laertes to see what he was doing at university, his spying eventually leads to his death by Hamlet:
“-A rat? Dead for a ducat,”
Polonius’ intention for spying, however is not completely wrong as it is partly to protect people, he spies on his son to make sure that he does not get to into any trouble and behaves appropriately. He spies on Hamlet the first time to prevent any harm to Ophelia. He spied on Hamlet the second time to find his signs of madness. However, it could be said that he did all this for selfish reasons; he maybe just doesn’t want Laertes to place a bad image on his family as he is in such a high position. All his spying could have been due to his curiosity. This spying represents the whole of King Claudius’ Denmark: corrupt and full of lies. This also, to a certain extent represents England at the time, after the death of Queen Elizabeth.
Before, Claudius and Polonius were both behind the arras, without Hamlet’s knowledge of them being there, this makes use of dramatic irony, the people on stage and the audience knew that Claudius and Polonius were there but Hamlet did not. Hamlet's ‘madness’ is also use of dramatic irony, as no one but himself knows whether he is truly mad which leads to the audience wondering. Hamlet eventually discovers that he is being spied on; this is done by there being a noise behind the arras. There are also other ways of portraying this. In the film production directed by Zefirelli and starring Mel Gibson in 1990, a shadow was shown which led to Hamlet’s discovery of the presence of the spies. In the film directed by and starring Laurence Olivier, Hamlet realises straight away that he is being spied on.
Hamlet poses a threat to Claudius while talking about marriage:
“Those that are married already, all but one, shall live;”
In a film production directed by and starring by Kenneth Branagh in 1996, Hamlet creates a direct threat to Claudius by pointing to him through a see-through mirror. Hamlet wanted revenge on Claudius for the murder of his father, revenge is another matter in this play, there are some attempted revengers in this play but only one who is ultimately successful. There is Laertes who wants revenge on Hamlet for the killing of his father, Hamlet does die at the end but at the cost of Laertes’ own life life, he realises at the end he is sorry for what he had done:
“Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet.”
Hamlet wanting revenge on Claudius ends up losing his life as well. So the only successful surviving revenger is Fortinbras who gains revenge for the death of his father by taking over the kingdom of Denmark.
