Hamlet: Act I Sc III Essay

In the Act I Sc III of small town, the readers get three sets of conversational exchanges that illumine Shakesp stiletto heeles assured grasp over the legion(predicate) threads of his complicated plot. It is often argued by Feminist critics like Lee Edwards that We can imagine hamlets story without Ophelia, but Ophelia literally has no story without Hamlet. Except the Little digressive episode of the few precepts (202) of Polonius to his son, the scene throws light on the characterization and representation of Ophelia as purity and sinlessness personified, establishing femininity in a patriarchal discourse as passivity, subservience and lack.Laertes feels sincere anxiety for Ophelia because of Hamlet and the trifling of his favour (197). He warns Ophelia against the youthful Hamlet in brilliant rhetoric, who might love her for the time being, but His greatness weighd, his will is, non his own(199). The most intriguing aspect of his advices is the ostensible anxiety for the loss of his sisters chaste treasure (199) or virginity. Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain If with too credent ear you list his songs, Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure rotateTo his unmasterd importunity. (199) This leads to stage productions of Hamlet since the 1950s where directors have hinted at an incestuous subsume between Ophelia and Laertes. Trevor Nunns production with Helen Mirren in 1970, for example, made Ophelia and Laertes flirtatious doubles. Also in the delightful text of Laurence Olivier, Confessions of an Actor (1982), he noted that in opposite productions of the same period, Marianne Faithful was a haggard Ophelia equally attracted to Hamlet and Laertes.In the classic study by Elaine Showalter, Representing Ophelia Women, Madness and the Responsibilities of Feminist Criticism, she notes that in iodine of the few performances directed by a woman, Yvonne Nicholson sat on Laertes lap in the advice scene and played the part with rough sexual bravado . The maternal(p) advices given by Polonius to Laertes were a tradition of the period. Those conventional advices establish Polonius as a man of practical prudence, experience and underline his role as the father.However, his advices for Ophelia open up deeper possibilities of thematic expansion. All his advices carry specific messages about femininity and sexuality. In a psychoanalytic seminar on Hamlet, held in Paris in 1959, Jacques Lacan argued As sort of a come-on, I announced that I would speak today about that piece of bait named Ophelia In his paper, he established Ophelia as the tendency of Hamlets masculine desire in his words, she is linked forever, for centuries, to the figure of Hamlet. Such conceptions stem from the announcement of Polonius that Ophelia is nothing but a green girl (204) and advises to Tender yourself more dearly (204). The phallic bait game is assured when Ophelia finally utters I shall obey, may lord. 9207). Critics like Theodor Lidz present the view that while Hamlet is neurotically attached to his mother, Ophelia has an unresolved Oedipal attachment to her father. In this scene, it is Ophelias unquestioned obedience to her father, which is in other words her subservience to the phallic order that infers her inevitable tragedy.Ophelias role as a sister and a daughter in a self-assertive male world obscure her sense of billet as Polonius and Laertes not only make her doubt her own instinctive understanding of Hamlet, but also make her fear her own self by pointing out her inexperience in resisting temptation, she is Unsifted in such perilous circumstance(204). Confused, she takes the recluse of passive obedience. And it is the precise reason why A. C.Bradley speaking for the Victorian male tradition in Shakespearean Tragedy (1904) pointed out Large number of readers feels a kind of personal irritation against Ophelia they seem unable to forgive her for not having been a heroine. The most potential aspect of the scene is the brilliant contrast between the eloquence of the male characters and the silence of the female that underlines Ophelias role of the ineffectual creature cornered in a fiery game of male power play who can only find meaning in furore in a patriarchal discourse. Hamlet The Arden Shakespeare. U. K Methuen, 2000.