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Hamlet and Women

There are only two women in Hamlet of any significance. One is Hamlet’s mother Gertrude and the other is his girlfriend Ophelia. Hamlet maintains a complex and torturous relationship with both women. At the beginning of the play Hamlet is melancholy and his mother tries to console him in his grief over his father, “Thou know’st ‘tis common,--all that live must die, / Passing through nature to eternity” (Shakespeare p. 1074). Hamlet explains that he knows dying is common, but he is not melancholy on a superficial level. He tells her, “I have within me which passeth show” (Shakespeare p. 1074). Until the end of the play, this is one of the only positive exchanges between Hamlet and his mother or Ophelia.

Hamlet discovers that his father, the former King of Denmark, has been murdered by his brother who then wed his mother. Hamlet is extremely upset over this news but he is undecided about how to work out his fate. He is not sure whether he should avenge his father’s death but he is offended by his mother’s seeming lack of fidelity. He is also appalled she is sleeping in the same bed with the man responsible for murdering his father. Ophelia is Hamlet’s girlfriend. Hamlet has been away at school. When he returns he is visited by his father’s ghost and makes his ghastly discovery about his uncle and mother. Ophelia has been cautioned by her brother and father to be cautious when it comes to the affection of men. In addition, her father Polonius informs her that she should not give in to Hamlet’s affections and that she should not see him or give him time. As Ophelia tells her father when he asks if Hamlet has had any harsh words with her, “No, my good lord; but, as you did / I did repel his letters, and denied / His access to me” (Shakespeare p. 1081).

Hamlet begins to act mad at this point in the play. He is doing so to try to find out the real truth of what is rotten in the state of Denm...

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Hamlet and Women. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 09:43, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1685612.html