See – there’s a big assumption here that almost all of us make – which is that she’s talking about Hamlet. It seems like she’s upset about (possibly) losing her virginity to Hamlet. Or rather, she was into the idea at first – since she showed up at the window (and not the other way around) and then she went crazy. Because sex will do that to you when you’re a young virginal girl.
Except. Except. She is saying You and Your. And I know this is crazy – but even if she DIDN’T have an affair with Claudius – she is still talking to him, saying “You” and “Your” which may implicate him in others’ eyes.
There’s something about this as well that makes Polonius’ behavior around Ophelia a lot more interesting. Like, what if Polonius sort of suspected that Claudius was involved with Ophelia? There’s a way that their behavior or this Hamlet/Ophelia issue could really read as a big honking denial, a huge cover up of what was really underneath.
I mean, the numbers of girls who have been sexually abused by men in their lives, family members, family friends, those numbers are staggering. And this kind of familial shuffle around the possible abuse would be pretty normal. As awful as it may be. It’s a stretch, I know. But an interesting layer to consider.
hello, i’m so glad to find this site exists!!! i have never understood the hamlet/ophelia thing – to my mind, the text speaks not to the theme of sex, but of sexual abuse. it’s so much more fitting, narratively speaking, as a metaphor for claudius’ tyrannical control over the other characters; he literally enters their bodies and minds without their knowledge or consent, for his own pleasure.
i do believe this is the crux of the “closet scene” too (although i can’t parse it too well here). it frustrates me no end that this scene is so often interpreted as hamlet scolding his mother for her “betrayal” – because here i find hamlet revealing a terrible, painful, necessary truth to gertrude: that they have both been sexually abused by claudius. (there’s also a real possibility – given how much the idea of incest crops up in the text, plus the lines about “tak[ing] off the rose/from the fair forehead of an innocent love” and being “though-sick at the act” – that claudius has forced gertrude and hamlet to have sex with one another. you know, just because he can.)
anyway, thank you so much for making this webbed site!! it’s wonderful to learn another person is also obsessed with the minutiae of this text. i hope it still brings you joy.