Part 12: Ophelia and Hamlet as Orpheus and Eurydice
In Ophelia’s description of Hamlet’s exit, Jonathan Bate finds an allusion to Orpheus' glance back at Eurydice as he leaves the underworld (left image), a Greek myth recently adapted for the Broadway musical, Hadestown.
Ophelia describes Hamlet:
[...] with a look so piteous in purport
As if he had been loosèd out of hell
To speak of horrors—he comes before me.
[...]
He took me by the wrist and held me hard.
Then goes he to the length of all his arm,
And, with his other hand thus o’er his brow,
He falls to such perusal of my face
As he would draw it. Long stayed he so.
At last, a little shaking of mine arm,
And thrice his head thus waving up and down,
He raised a sigh so piteous and profound
As it did seem to shatter all his bulk
And end his being. That done, he lets me go,
And, with his head over his shoulder turned,
He seemed to find his way without his eyes,
For out o’ doors he went without their helps
And to the last bended their light on me. [1]
Bate notes:
“...when Hamlet, looking 'As if he had been loosed out of hell', turns 'his head over his shoulder' to gaze one last time at Ophelia before he sunders his love from her, the audience is given the pleasure of a recognition of Orpheus' glance back at Eurydice and in that recognition a confirmation of the truth of the old stories. This Orphic glance occurs in a scene which Shakespeare does not dramatize: it is narrated by Ophelia. The allusion is possibly more readily recognizable as narrative than it would have been as stage image.” [2]
To Bate, after seeing his father’s ghost, Hamlet has already decided he must not endanger Ophelia, so his strange visit to Ophelia’s room is not merely to pretend to be mad, but to protect her by “sundering” the relationship. That is one way to read it.
Or was Hamlet so frightened by his encounter with the ghost that his first thought is to visit Ophelia, still looking “loosed out of hell”?
Either way, it can still allude to Orpheus and Eurydice.
But which of them is Orpheus, and which Eurydice?
Is Hamlet Orpheus, being sundered from Ophelia, his Eurydice, as Bate suggests?
(Yes.)
Or since Hamlet visits the dead first, is he Eurydice?
(OK: with time - and gender - out of joint [3]?)
As Kate Winslet’s Ophelia reenacts this for her father Polonius, and as she later sings more than other characters play, is she also Orpheus, and the scene foreshadowing her grief at Polonius’ death?
With the 1996 Branagh-directed film, all of these may be true.
Or is this “thinking too precisely” [1] or “to consider too curiously to consider so” [2], to split an allusion’s hairs like this?
If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears, does it make a sound?
If an allusion is there but only a handful of people get it, how deep is the "rest" that is silence?
NOTES:
[1] 2.1.85-112
[2] [2] p. 201, Bate, Shakespeare and Ovid. Oxford University Press. 1993. On Ophelia’s song as “Orphic,” see also, Trudell, Scott A. “The Mediation of Poesie: Ophelia’s Orphic Song.” Shakespeare Quarterly 63, no. 1 (2012): 46–76. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41350169.
[3] 1.5.210.
[4] 4.4.43.
[5] 5.1.212-213.
IMAGES
Left: Orpheus and Euridice, c.1870-1872, George Frederic Watts (1817-1904). Public domain, via https://victorianweb.org/painting/watts/paintings/1.html
Upper right: Kate Winslet as Ophelia, Richard Briers as Polonius (dir. Kenneth Branagh, 1996), with Ophelia describing to and acting out for Polonius how Hamlet came to her room and frightened her, in the manner that Jonathan Bate describes as alluding to “Orpheus' glance back at Eurydice.” Image fair use via https://hamletscloud.com/terrifying-ophelia/
Lower right: Laurence Olivier and Jean Simmons in a 1948 film production of Hamlet, dir. Laurence Olivier, Two Cities Films. Image via New York Times, via Hulton Archive Photos and Getty Images. Fair use/public domain (75 years).
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INDEX OF OPHELIA POSTS:
My 2023 series on Ophelia, and earlier Ophelia posts:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2023/10/index-of-ophelia-posts-2023-series-and.html
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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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