Shakespeares Hamlet †Ophelia Discussed Essays -- GCSE English Litera

Hamlet Ophelia Discussed Courtney Lehmann and Lisa S. Starks in Making Mother Matter Repression, Revision, and the lay on the line of Reading Psychoanalysis Into Kenneth Branaghs Hamlet make a statement regarding the effect of Ophelias words, even though she was considered mad at the time Hamlets own disgust toward the torso and sexual behaviour, coupled with Ophelias erotically-charged songs, did not suddenly become about sexuality after Freud. On the contrary, censorship of the play in performance during various diachronic time periods indicates that the tragedy has always been perceived of as highly erotic, and often dangerously so. Even in the context of twentieth-century interpretations of Hamlet, critics have been reluctant to engage in genuine confrontations with the problem of the plays sexuality and its underlying anxiety. For this reason, Jacqueline Rose has claimed that critics writing on Hamlet, beginning with T. S. Eliot, have conflated their puzzlement over the play with the Western notion of womanhood as the be atomic number 18r of an impenetrable secret. (2) Shakespeares tragedy, Hamlet, presents almost a dozen male characters for every one female character. The only prominent female characters are two Ophelia, Laertes sister and Polonius daughter and Gertrude, the queen and wife of Claudius and mother of Hamlet. This essay will explore the character, role, and importance of Ophelia. The protagonist of the tragedy, Prince Hamlet, initially appears in the play dress in solemn black, mourning the death of his father supposedly by snakebite while he was away at Wittenberg as a student. Hamlet laments the sharp remarriage of his mother to his fathers brother, an incestuous act thus in his first soliloqu... ...akes of Reading Psychoanalysis Into Kenneth Branaghs Hamlet. Early Modern Literary Studies 6.1 (May, 2000) 2.1-24 http//purl.oclc.org/emls/06-1/lehmhaml.htm Pennington, Michael. Ophelia Madness Her Only fail-safe Haven. Readings on Ham let. Ed. Don Nardo. San Diego Greenhaven Press, 1999. Rpt. From Hamlet A Users Guide. New York Limelight Editions, 1996. Pitt, Angela. Women in Shakespeares Tragedies. Readings on The Tragedies. Ed. Clarice Swisher. San Diego Greenhaven Press, 1996. Rpt. from Shakespeares Women. N.p. n.p., 1981. Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Massachusetts fetch of Technology. 1995. http//www.chemicool.com/Shakespeare/hamlet/full.html Wilkie, Brian and James Hurt. Shakespeare. Literature of the Western World. Ed. Brian Wilkie and James Hurt. New York Macmillan Publishing Co., 1992.