Ophelia in 1.3 as the Beggar Lazarus (part 6)
OPHELIA AND LAERTES IN 1.3
At the beginning of the scene, it's clear that Laertes knows of Ophelia and Hamlet's mutual romantic interest. As the son of Denmark's chief counselor, Laertes has been given permission to return to France, where perhaps his father has sent him so that he can gain more worldly experience.
Usually Elizabethan sons were prepared to take their place in the world and encouraged to be ambitious, while daughters had marriages arranged for them by their fathers (and Shakespeare has written this for an Elizabethan audience, not a Danish one). Ophelia is breaking this tradition by going outside the initiative of her father in conducting a romantic relationship with Hamlet independent of familial scrutiny and control. Her brother disapproves, perhaps jealous that his sister might exceed him in rank if she were to become princess, or suspicious that Hamlet may only be interested in her as a lover (lines 467-507). Her father disapproves even more strongly than Laertes. If she is begging for their approval, she never gets it.
After enduring a lecture from her brother, starting at line 508, Ophelia says a number of things that relate to themes in Luke 16:
I shall the effect of this good lesson keep
As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven
Whilst, like a puffed and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede. (1.3.508-514)
Here the "puffed and reckless libertine" is similar to the rich man in the Lazarus tale, who fares well every day, stuffing his mouth with good food while the beggar Lazarus is neglected at the gate.
Bible commentary has often identified the rich man with five brothers in the Luke 16 Lazarus tale as the Sadducee priest, Caiaphas, son-in-law of the former high priest Annas. Luke 16:14 also mentions the Pharisees, perhaps compared in Luke 16:1 to the steward of the rich man. So the "ungracious pastors" who show others "the steep and thorny way to heaven" but walk "the primrose path of Dalliance" are like the rich and corrupt Sadducees and Pharisees.
Certainly we might consider that Ophelia is begging her brother for advice. But she's also excited to be in love, for Hamlet to have often given her "private time" and for her to be "most free and bounteous" with her attention in return (1.3.558-559). So perhaps she is begging her brother for affirmation: The prince! I am so happy for you, sister!
[L-R: Julia Stiles as Ophelia; Liev Schreiber as Laertes, in Hamelt (2000), dir. Michael Almereyda. Image via TheDrunkenOdyssey. Fair use.]The affirmation never comes. Instead, Ophelia is left like an unsatisfied beggar at love's table. Ophelia knows that her brother may go off to France and enjoy the sexual feasting of a young man sowing his proverbial wild oats, while urging his sister to be chaste. Sexually, she suspects that he may feast like the rich man while she starves like a beggar.
POLONIUS TO LAERTES:
DON'T GIVE, ONLY TAKE, AND BE TRUE ONLY TO SELF
Polonius gives his famous speech of advice to his son Laertes, but it's remarkable how much of it implies some form of withholding, resisting generosity, being self-contained:
Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel,
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but, being in,
Bear't that th'opposèd may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice.
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not expressed in fancy--rich, not gaudy,
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of all most select and generous, chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulleth edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow as the night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
(1.3.524-545)
Consider the following lines as being especially concerned with withholding generosity or being self-contained:
Give thy thoughts no tongue...
(don't be generous with your thoughts)
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel,
(a greedy image of holding friends captive?)
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade...
(Don't dull the palm by being too generous in shaking hands.)
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice.
(Again, take others' thoughts but don't share your own.)
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
(Again, *take* the opinions of others, but reserve your own.)
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not expressed in fancy--rich, not gaudy,
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of all most select and generous, chief in that.
In other words, buy as rich clothing as you can afford, but have it well-made and looking rich in an under-stated way, not a showy or gaudy way; and in this, make your wealth seem self-contained, for in France, they are good at either reflecting the advice of Polonius on this point, or at violating it with fancy and gaudy dress.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulleth edge of husbandry.
Don't borrow, don't lend; be self-contained. Consider that, in Luke 16:4-9, Jesus tells of a steward who uses worldly things generously as to make friends, so that if he loses his job, he'll have friends in the world to help him, repaying debts of gratitude toward him. Notice that Polonius advises Laertes to do the opposite, and claims only that loans often make one lose friends. This is the philosophy of a greedy person, like the rich man in the Lazarus tale.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow as the night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Of course, on the one hand this may seem good advice, to be true to one's conscience, perhaps at best. But notice here, again, instead of recommending that his son find good teachers whose virtues and wisdom transcend his own, and striving to be true to the transcendent example and wisdom, the advice of father to son is that the son should be true only to self, which might be another way of telling him to be egotistic and self-satisfied?
Again, in these lines, Polonius fits the type of the rich man described in the Lazarus tale of Luke 16.
POLONIUS THE MISER DEMEANS AND STEALS FROM A GENEROUS OPHELIA
Polonius overhears the final exchange of words between his son and daughter:
LAERTES: Farewell, Ophelia, and remember well
What I have said to you.
OPHELIA:'Tis in my memory locked,
And you yourself shall keep the key of it. (1.3.549-52)
But instead of being the kind of father who respects the secrets his grown children wish to keep and the vow he has just heard Ophelia make about that secrecy, the greedy Polonius forces his daughter to violate that vow so that he can obtain the secret he wishes to know. In the Branagh-directed Hamlet of 1996, Polonius takes Ophelia into a chapel and pushes her into a confessional, where he demands that she give him up the truth. He wants to steal the secret she wishes to honor with her brother.
Polonius repeatedly insults Ophelia, when in fact, he might congratulate her on her budding relationship with the prince, while also expressing a bit of fatherly caution. But Polonius is too controling and selfish to consider such an approach:
OPHELIA:
He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders
Of his affection to me.
POLONIUS:
Affection? Pooh, you speak like a green girl,
Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.
Do you believe his "tenders," as you call them? (1.3.565-9)
He calls her a "green girl," "unsifted," too gullible. And it gets worse:
OPHELIA:
I do not know, my lord, what I should think.
POLONIUS:
Marry, I'll teach you. Think yourself a baby
That you have ta'en his tenders for true pay
Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly,
Or--not to crack the wind of the poor phrase
Running it thus--you'll tender me a fool.
OPHELIA:
My lord, he hath importuned me with love
In honorable fashion.
POLONIUS:
Ay, fashion you may call it. Go to, go to.
OPHELIA:
And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord,
With almost all the holy vows of heaven. (1.3.570-80)
In this passage, she says she doesn't know what to think, giving him an opportunity to give her good fatherly advice. She is like the beggar, treating him like the rich man, possibly with good advice to give. But he says it is as if she is a "baby" who has taken been deceived because she has taken counterfeit money for something she has given, and been defrauded.
Again, note the language of money and the insistence on avoiding monetary fraud, where his daughter is speaking of love. This is the language of the rich man.
It continues, as Polonius tells Ophelia not to trust the prince, and evolves into his forbidding her to spend time with him at all. He begins by comparing "all the holy vows of heaven" that Hamlet made to traps that were used to catch birds:
POLONIUS:
Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. I do know
When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
Lends the tongue vows. These blazes, daughter,
Giving more light than heat, extinct in both
Even in their promise as it is a-making,
You must not take for fire. From this time, daughter,
Be something scanter of your maiden presence.
Set your entreatments at a higher rate
Than a command to parley. For Lord Hamlet,
Believe so much in him that he is young,
And with a larger tether may he walk
Than may be given you. In few, Ophelia,
Do not believe his vows, for they are brokers
Not of that dye which their investments show,
But mere implorators of unholy suits,
Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds
The better to beguile. This is for all:
I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth
Have you so slander any moment leisure
As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet.
Look to't, I charge you. Come your ways.
OPHELIA:
I shall obey, my lord. (1.3.581-602)
Polonius will very soon regret that he was so distrusting of Prince Hamlet, and will repeatedly say, "I'm sorry" to Ophelia (2.1.1003, 1009).
But again, note that Ophelia seems to have wonderful news that might make her father proud: Not only has she found someone that she seems to enjoy being mutually generous with, but it is the Prince of Denmark, who Claudius has said is to be the next king. There could be perhaps no greater success that she could share with him. But he belittles her and withholds any fatherly affection, praise, and encouragement he might show. If she is begging for affirmation and fatherly love, he gives her the opposite: He insults and belittles.
If she is the beggar Lazarus, her father Polonius is the rich man.
NO EVIDENCE HAMLET WOULD HAVE USED AND DISCARDED OPHELIA AS LOVER Note also that, to this point in the play, we have no evidence of Hamlet being the sort of person who would take advantage of Ophelia, and in fact his mother later says she'd hoped they would be married. Hamlet jokes with his old school friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern about how the goddess Fortune is a strumpet, with some suggestive comments, but this is about Fortune, and not necessarily a reflection on how Hamlet would treat Ophelia.
On first seeing Hamlet in the nunnery scene (3.1), he calls her "fair Ophelia" and says, "nymph, in thy orisons [prayers] be all my sins remembered." She gives him back his letters, and he, feeling hurt, claims at first that he never loved her, but later admits he loved her once. Having seen the ghost of his father, perhaps from purgatory, he fears his own sins and what may come after death, so he speaks harshly to her of how women tempt men and paint for themselves new faces with makeup, although God gave women faces that God deemed perfectly acceptable (a theme in an official homily of Thomas Cranmer read in church every year).
In the "Mousetrap" scene (3.2), he gives Ophelia a terrible time with jokes about sex, and he remarks about how women are unfaithful to their husbands, reflecting both on his feelings about his mother's hasty marriage to his uncle, and also on Ophelia's apparent unfaithfulness in returning his letters at her father's demand. He tells her to get to a nunnery, which may be a way of calling her a whore, or it may be a way of urging her to avoid the sin and corruption of the Danish court.
This doesn't give evidence that Hamlet intended to use Ophelia and discard her. The only sources we have to this point for such an opinion would be Laertes and Polonius, but Polonius in 2.2 regrets having misjudged Hamlet. Ophelia suspects that Laertes may use and discard women (like a "puffed libertine" in France). So perhaps both Laertes and Polonius misjudge Hamlet, knowing what they would do if they were in Hamlet's position: They would use women and leave them. That doesn't mean Hamlet would do so.
RECALL WHAT THE RICH MAN DOES IN HELL, ASKING ABRAHAM TO SEND LAZARUS AS A MESSENGER
When we consider the Luke 16 tale of the beggar Lazarus and the rich man, we often focus on the first two parts of the story:
1. the rich man neglecting Lazarus in life, and then
2. the rich man being punished in the afterlife, becoming a beggar in hell, while Lazarus is rewarded with heaven.
But there is a third part of the story, and it has to do with the rich man asking for Lazarus to act as a kind of mediator:
3. The rich man treats Lazarus like a servant, asking Abraham to send Lazarus down with water to help him quench his thirst.
When Abraham refuses, the rich man again treats Lazarus like a servant and asks if he can send Lazarus to warn his brothers so that they can escape a similar fate.
[L-R: Kenneth Branagh as Hamlet, Kate Winslet as Ophelia in Hamlet (1996), dir. Branagh. Image via maramarietta.com. Fair use.]
OPHELIA THE INTERMEDIARY, BAIT FOR THE SPYING OF POLONIUS AND CLAUDIUS
Ophelia fits the role of intermediary when her father and the king require that she act as bait while Claudius and Polonius spy on her conversation with Hamlet. This is a twist on the Luke 16 tale, because there, Abraham refuses to allow Lazarus to be an intermediary. In Shakespeare's Hamlet, the rich man Polonius has not died yet, and he still has authority over his daughter, so he can require that she comply obediently, and so can the king.
The rich man was in the habit of treating people like his servants most of his life, so he attempts to continue his habit after he dies and goes to hell. Polonius is in the habit of belittling and ordering Ophelia around, so even after he has apologized twice to her for misjudging Hamlet's intentions (a kind of death, to have to admit that to her and repent of his mistake), now beyond that "death," he still treats her like his servant and requires obedience. That is his habit, and now his mission is, he thinks, to prove that Hamlet's madness was caused by the loss of Ophelia's attention. He sees himself as rich in controlling his daughter, so he views himself as, through her, controlling the potential cure to Hamlet's madness.
COMPARE PLOT STRUCTURES FOR BEGGAR LAZARUS AND OPHELIA:
In summary, consider the following elements in the plot structures for Lazarus and Dives tale in Luke 16:19-31, and for Ophelia in scenes 1.3, 2.1, and 3.1:
1. NEGLECT:
- In life, the rich man enjoys plenty, neglecting Lazarus.
- Laertes and Polonius enjoy plenty, neglecting Ophelia.
- Laertes may be a libertine in France, rich in sexual experience, while he advises chastity.
- A too-cautious, miserly Polonius scolds Ophelia for being too generous with attention for Hamlet, forbidding her to spend time with him.
2. REGRET:
- After death, the rich man regrets his mistakes.
- In 2.1, Polonius regrets misjudging Hamlet, a miniature spiritual "death" to repent of previous convictions. His new plan: to prove that Hamlet's madness was caused by Ophelia's withheld attention.
3. SERVANT AND INTERMEDIARY:
- The rich man asks Abraham to allow Lazarus to act as his servant and intermediary, to quench his thirst, or if not that, to warn his brothers. Abraham refuses.
- In 3.1, Polonius uses Ophelia as intermediary, as bait for the eavesdropping of Claudius and Polonius.
Ophelia is a compelling Lazarus figure; Laertes and Polonius share aspects of the rich man's role.
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INDEX OF POSTS IN THIS SERIES ON THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS:
See this link:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2021/02/index-series-on-rich-man-and-beggar.html
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Hamlet quotes: All quotes from Hamlet (in this particular series on The Rich Man and Lazarus in Hamlet) are taken from the Modern (spelling), Editor's Version at InternetShakespeare via the University of Victoria in Canada.
- To find them in the first place, I often use the advanced search feature at OpenSourceShakespeare.org.
Bible quotes from the Geneva translation, widely available to people of Shakespeare's time, are taken from an internet source somewhat close to their original spelling, from studybible.info, and in a modern spelling, from biblegateway.com.
- Quotes from the Bishop's bible, also available in Shakespeare's lifetime and read in church, are taken from studybible.info.
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Disclaimer: If and when I quote or paraphrase bible passages or mention religion in many of my blog posts, I do not intend to promote any religion over another, nor am I attempting to promote religious belief in general; only to explore how the Bible and religion influenced Shakespeare, his plays, and his age.
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