Hamlet: The Story Of Laertes And Ophelia

In the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare, there were many important characters just like Hamlet who show up in more than three-fourths of the play; but there are also characters that don’t necessarily show up as much but still have a strong role. One of the characters that didn’t get as much screen time but was still important was Ophelia. Ophelia was a sister, girlfriend, and daughter that so many people loved. Therefore, Despite the lack of presence of Ophelia, she ultimately played a big role in the lives of a lot of the characters.

In this passage, Shakespeare contrasts Ophelia and Laertes’ reactions to their father’s death to characterize Laertes as revengeful and Ophelia as passive. Laertes and Ophelia have both recently found out about the death of their father, Polonius, a lord of the King of Denmark. When Laertes first addresses the king, Claudius, he says, “O thou vile king, / Give me my father” (IV.v.116-117).Without properly addressing Claudius, Laertes angrily demands to know what happened to his father. Ophelia, however, enters driven by madness and singing, “They bore him bare-faced on the bier… And in his grave rained many a tear” (IV.v.164-166). Unlike Laertes’ aggressive demands for details about his father, Shakespeare gives Ophelia a passive reaction,

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the stage was used as a way to break the barriers of gender norms. In his creation of Hamlet, Shakespeare uses the voice of Ophelia as a means to battle the gender norms that had been placed on Elizabethan society. A good women was seen as someone that was quiet and submissive. If a man could not control a woman’s tongue, there would be no chance that the man would be able to control her body. Though Ophelia’s character was more than capable of exhibiting reason, the control that her father, Polonius, held over her let Ophelia to the the madness that would claim her life by the end of the play. On the other side of the gender spectrum, Hamlet, a prince that should be have been more than capable of

It is often questioned who is responsible for the deaths of the characters in famous plays. In Hamlet by William Shakespeare, the answer is more complicated than it seems. All of the characters are directly responsible for their own deaths. Ophelia and Laertes, for example, cause their own deaths by their own actions, even though they are for different reasons. It may appear as if several characters in Hamlet die because of someone else’s actions, not their own. This may be the case, but it overlooks that although other people were involved in some of the deaths, it was still ultimately each character’s own fault. The characters are all responsible for their own deaths because of the actions they took.

If Laertes did not hear this beautiful story from Gertrude, he would have been even more heated and depressed. Laertes’s father was murdered by Hamlet, and the only way Laertes would be satisfied is if Hamlet was killed by his hand. Gertrude was always worried for her son and tried to protect him from Since Laertes owns an army which is powerful enough to overthrown Claudius, if he were to know that his beloved sister Ophelia went crazy and killed herself while he was away, Laertes would have been angrier and take over Denmark. Once Laertes takes over Denmark and overthrown the king, Claudius will not be the King and Gertrude will no longer be the Queen. In order to keep Gertrude’s powerful position, she had to make up this story to protect Claudius from being replaced, and thus hold on to her position of being the Queen.

Do women really need a man to keep their sanity or do they need a man to tell them that they are wanted so that they can live? In the medieval days, women relied on men for everything and anything, from a home to fighting for their family in times of war. Women had very high standards that they had to live up to or they would never find a man that would want to marry them. Some were very weak people who waited upon the thoughts of men. In the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare, Ophelia is affected by the corruption of the men which ultimately pushed her to insanity and suicide.

Horatio insists that the girl must be pitied due to the grief of her father’s death. Only to add to the recent chaos, I learn that Laertes is leading a mob of common folk to avenge his father. My king is quick to assure Laertes that he is not responsible for the death of Polonius. Shortly after I had left the company of Laertes and my king, I found myself rushing back to deliver tragic news, Ophelia has drowned in a river due to her grief. I find all of these wild events in addition to Hamlet’s departure, to be completely out of control. The funeral for Ophelia came quickly and I soon found myself walking out to the burial site. As the priest leads the ceremony, Laertes becomes outraged at the fact that the priest is unwilling to give Ophelia a proper Christian burial. Laertes quickly jumps into the grave and is suddenly fighting over Ophelia’s body with Hamlet. The inopportune arrival of Hamlet was confirmation of his

Hamlet is one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays. In it, a young, Danish prince struggles with the death of his father and the betrayal of his mother. This struggle is so profound; it shakes its main character Hamlet to the core and brings him to the brink of sanity. Shakespeare uses madness to convey important information throughout the play especially through Hamlet and his love interest, Ophelia. Hamlet does not always appear to be mad, in fact throughout the play his sanity is questioned by the reader and other characters. Whether real or faked, Hamlet and Ophelia’s madness reveal to us more about their characters, opinions and secrets than their regular discourse.

Shakespeare's Hamlet, is a tale of the dramatic downfall of the prince of Denmark and through a series of unfortunate events, the entire royal family. That ends with power passing over to the neighboring, and probably less complicated country. The conventional story of revenge and vengeance contains its own dark twists and complex aspects that Shakespeare explored and transformed throughout the five act play. One of which being the way Shakespeare utilizes a multitude of different of relationships rooted in family and romance, the most controversial being a mixture of the two; incestual love. An example of this sick type of relationship is between the only mother-son bond Shakespeare included in the play, Gertrude and young Hamlet.

  In Shakespeare's tragedy, Hamlet, the audience finds a docile, manipulated, scolded, victimized young lady named Ophelia. Ophelia is a foil to Hamlet. Plays have foils to help the audience better understand the more important characters in the play.  The character of Ophelia is necessary so that the audience will give Hamlet a chance to get over his madness and follow his heart.

Laertes loses his family because of Hamlet’s actions. His father is killed by him and his sister kills herself because of her grief. Laertes and King Claudius begin to plot Hamlet’s murder, planning to poison him, by drink or wound, whichever comes first. However, the plan backfires on the both of them and Laertes dies from his own blade, but not before saying “The King, the King’s to blame.”

To begin, let’s compare and contrast the characters Hamlet and Laertes. Hamlet, a play by Shakespeare, has a quite interesting start. It opens in scene two where we meet Hamlet and Laertes at a wedding. Typically weddings are a happy occasion for many but we find that Hamlet and Laertes are not happy. "My good lord, I ask your permission and your blessing to return to France. I came from there to Denmark willingly to show my support for your coronation. Now, I must confess, that duty done, my thoughts and wishes bend again toward France." (Act 1, Scene 2). Laertes is wanting to return to France instead of staying in Denmark. "(King) Why do you still seem to be under a dark cloud?" (Act 1, Scene 2). Hamlet is then seen apart from them due to him mourning the death of his father and he refuses to accept the harsh words that were said by his mother and uncle. No one really knows why Hamlet is acting the way he is until his first soliloquy, where he lets out all his feelings: "Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw, and turn into dew! Or that God had not said we must not commit suicide! Oh, God! God! How weary, stale, flat, and useless the world seems! It is like an unweeded garden gone to seed. That it should come to this! Not even two months dead, so excellent a King!" (Act 1, Scene 2). In this soliloquy, Hamlet feels like committing suicide but battles it out with himself, finding excuses why not to do things. For example he will not commit

Furthermore, Shakespeare portrays a parallel situation for Laertes just as Fortinbras and Hamlet, after the death of Polonius. Laertes is a young Danish lord and with his sister Ophelia, he is the son of Polonius. The death of Polonius comes unexpectedly and accidentally; however, its significance comes more considerably than that to Hamlet and Laertes. The contrasts between their response from the Polonius’ death gives another example of Hamlet’s femininity just as that of Fortinbras and Hamlet. During his attempts to spy on Hamlet so that he can have advanced position than Gertrude while discussing his objectives, Polonius hides himself behind the arras in Gertrude’s room. It is where Hamlet is having tough conversations with his mother because

The play Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, looks at the issue of madness and how it effects the characters of the play. Madness can be looked at from very different perspectives, such as strong and uncontrollable emotions, a person’s desires, and also a persons mental stability. Throughout the play, the audience is questioning the sanity of the main character, Hamlet, as he goes on his quest for revenge. The people around him also show signs of madness, such as Ophelia and Claudius, but in different forms. Existentialist philosopher Friedrich Nietzche says, “There is always some madness in love. But there is also some reason in madness.” What Nietzche is saying is that when you are in love with someone or something, there is always a little

Hamlet is rife with commentary on social hierarchies, chiefly those of insanity, religion, and women in society. Through the character of Ophelia, we can see the intersection of all three of these aspects, and through an analysis of her character can gain insight on the England for whom Shakespeare writes. I argue that the marginalization of Ophelia in the play is a result of these multifaceted attitudes, and we can examine how insanity and religion frame Ophelia’s character, her and Gertrude’s relationships with men in the play, and her pessimistic end. From the introduction of Ophelia in Act 1, Scene 3, her Shakespeare’s role for her appears evident. Immediately she is defined in relation to the men in the play, first with Laertes, “Farewell.