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There's at least one more factor   Written by Laraine (5/22/2003 2:06 p.m.) in consequence of the missive, GR: Ophelia's insanity ~ plausible?, penned by Kristen G.
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In addition to the fact that her beloved killed her father, I think she understands from Claudius' reaction to the play that she has participated in spying for a murderous king.

If in fact the contempt Hamlet shows toward her in the nunnery scene is justified, perhaps she cannot bear it.

My own theory is that Ophelia made the fatal mistake of thinking she could discern the truth, that she could know whom to trust (that is, her father). She is a victim of all the the deceit and spying going on in Elsinor.

Consider her snatches of song and dialogue in 4.5:

Ophelia: . . .How should I your true love know
From another one? . . .
Gertrude: Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?
Ophelia: Say you? nay, pray you, mark.
. . .They say the owl was a baker’s daughter. Lord, we
know what we are, but know not what we may be.
. . . Pray you, let’s have no words of this; but when they
ask you what it means, say you this: (23–46)
These are all bits of questions about trustworthiness and betrayal, about knowing whom to trust, about knowing who we are. It's a bit of a puzzle to decipher whether or not Ophelia feels betrayed by Hamlet or by her father, and there are hints both ways. Horatio (or the Nurse, depending on the text one reads) tells us at the opening of the scene,
She speaks much of her father; says she hears
There’s tricks i’ the world;
. . . speaks things in doubt,
That carry but half sense: her speech is nothing,
Yet the unshaped use of it doth move
The hearers to collection; they aim at it,
And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts;
Which, as her winks, and nods, and gestures yield them,
Indeed would make one think there might be thought,
Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily. (4–13)
In other words, one cannot determine the meaning, or the truth, of what Ophelia now says, but that does not prevent people from believing they have, from projecting their own meaning on what is said.

I think much of the reason that she is on stage at this point is that she shows the audience a frightening and pitiful example of what happens when we when we listen to spies or participate in spying ourselves, when we let ourselves be led astray by failed communication.


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