This topic has popped up on this board from time to time, and I think over at the Library when we were doing a GR of Hamlet.

When Willoughby left the Dashwoods in Barton, he had been reading Hamlet to them and left it unfinished.

There are a number of parallels that can be drawn between certain characters and situations in the play and in S&S.

These last two chapters of this week's reading with Marianne out wandering around at Cleveland and finally falling ill bring to mind poor Ophelia in Hamlet (and not only because we can picture Kate Winslet in both roles!)

At the beginning of the play, we had Ophelia admitting that she and Hamlet have spent a lot of time alone together and he has made 'many tenders of his affection to her'

She admits to her father that:

" My lord, he hath importuned me with love

In honourable fashion.

And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord,

With almost all the holy vows of heaven."

To me, this sounds a lot like Marianne first of all being admonished by Elinor for having spent so much time alone with Willoughby and then, in London, Marianne's protests, when Elinor asks her:

"But he told you that he loved you?"

"Yes -- no -- never absolutely. It was every day implied, but never professedly declared.
(snip)
"I felt myself," she added, "to be as solemnly engaged to him, as if the strictest legal covenant had bound us to each other."

"I can believe it," said Elinor; "but unfortunately, he did not feel the same."

"He did feel the same, Elinor -- for weeks and weeks he felt it. I know he did. "

The part where Ophelia gives Hamlet back his letters (even though her father made her do it) reminds of when Marianne asks Willoughby to send back her letters and the lock of her hair.

And then of course we have Marianne wandering around distraught in the rain and damp air and nearly ending up destorying herself, which is like Ophelia meeting her own sad end.