Part 16: Ophelia, priestess and peace-parted mystic

To Elizabethans, preparing to die a “good death” involved such things as
1. generosity and love for the community;
2. repentance of mistakes, sins, harm to others;
3. seeking God’s favor, grace, forgiveness;
4. contemplating God at the moment of death.
 
With these, one might be considered a “peace-parted” soul [1].

In Hamlet, Shakespeare shows that Ophelia’s death not only conforms to all of this, but that she is a kind of priestess [2], mourning in song, offering prayers, flowers, symbolic advice, and blessings.

1. GENEROUS: Ophelia sings of her father’s death [3], and of the loss of Hamlet’s love [4], generously expressing grief that others avoid.

She prays for Hamlet [5];
sings, and speaks words of blessing as if directing her congregation to sing [6];
bids Claudius “God [yield] you” [7];
bids Gertrude that her true love will be recognized not as a king but as a pilgrim [8];
speaks of transformation [9];
bids that God will be at others’ table [10].

In place of communion, she gives symbolic flowers [11].
Instead of hoarding a crown for herself, she crowns willow branches with flowers, where an “envious” [12] willow branch will betray her and break, sending her into the water.

2. REPENT: “THE OWL WAS A BAKER’S DAUGHTER”:
Ophelia refers to a folktale retelling of the gospel tale of the Rich Man and Lazarus:
In it, a baker’s daughter is changed into an owl for being ungenerous with a beggar, who is Jesus in disguise.
- Ophelia is like the baker’s daughter, ungenerous with Hamlet who came to her like a beggar.
- This may be Ophelia’s way of repenting of her obedience to her father in rejecting Hamlet. [13]

3. GOD’S FAVOR: “THE FALSE STEWARD … STOLE HIS MASTER’S DAUGHTER” [14]: Ophelia refers to a tale or play in which a steward steals his master’s daughter while the master is at war. When the daughter falls in love years later, the steward says she is unworthy of a match he claims is above her social station. In fact, she is worthy by her birth.
- Ophelia may realize: her brother and father were like false stewards, keeping her from Hamlet and from becoming the next queen.[15]
- A Christian’s ultimate (figurative) parentage is from God; made to feel unworthy, Ophelia was worthy of any match. This is a moment of grace.  

4. CONTEMPLATING GOD AT DEATH: According to Gertrude, Ophelia dies like a mystic, fearless, “incapable of her own distress”: she “chanted snatches of old lauds” (religious songs) [16].

Perhaps she doesn’t struggle in the water out of faith that whatever happens, it is for the best, not suicide? (“The readiness is all”?)

Mystics are sometimes considered crazy, misunderstood, slandered. So Shakespeare follows Ophelia’s death with the misunderstandings of the gravediggers and “churlish priest” who can only imagine her death as suicide.[17]  

If Gertrude’s account is not fiction, this is one way to read Ophelia’s death.

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NOTES:

[1] 5.1.247. All references to Hamlet are to the Folger Shakespeare Library online version: https://shakespeare.folger.edu/shakespeares-works/hamlet/entire-play/

On attitudes regarding n attitudes regarding what makes for a good death, see the following:

Ariès, Philippe. The Hour of Our Death, trans. Helen Weaver, 1982, Vintage Books, New York, especially pages 10-19;

Engel, William E. & Grant Williams. The Shakespearean Death Arts: Hamlet Among the Tombs, 2022, Palgrave-Macmillan. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-88490-1

Perkins, William. A salve for a sicke man, 1595, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A09461.0001.001/1:1?rgn=div1;view=fulltext ;

Seibert, Loris Elaine, Shakespeare's Treatment Of Elizabethan Ideas About Death (Master’s thesis), 1958, Chapter Three: Preparation for Death (49-80)
https://scholarship.rice.edu/bitstream/handle/1911/89317/RICE0355.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Sperry, Eileen, “The art of dying,” Posted September 13, 2022, Folger blog:
https://www.folger.edu/blogs/collation/the-art-of-dying/ ;

Sutton, Christopher, Disce mori. = Learne to die, 1600, London. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A13179.0001.001?view=toc ; alternate (later) edition at https://archive.org/details/a609311800suttuoft/page/n7/mode/2up?view=theater ;

Swanton, Kathryn, “Shakespeare and Cervantes: Dying well after living well,” Posted May 10, 2016, Folger blogs: https://www.folger.edu/blogs/shakespeare-and-beyond/shakespeare-cervantes-dying-well-after-living-well/

Vinter, Maggie . Last Acts: The Art of Dying on the Early Modern Stage, 2019, Fordham University Press, especially Introduction: https://doi.org/10.5422/fordham/9780823284269.003.0001 ;

Wunderli, Richard, and Gerald Broce. “The Final Moment before Death in Early Modern England.” The Sixteenth Century Journal 20, no. 2 (1989): 259–75. https://doi.org/10.2307/2540662 .

[2] See HOLLERAN, JAMES V. “Maimed Funeral Rites in ‘Hamlet.’” English Literary Renaissance 19, no. 1 (1989): 65–93. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43447267.

[3] 4.5.34-37, 41, 43-45

[4] 4.5.53-60, 63-71

[5] 3.1.145, 153

[6] 4.5.194-6. She acts as the presider of a liturgy, telling her congregation what they must sing to express their grief in the face of the turns of the wheel of fate:
“You must sing ‘A-down a-down’—and you
‘Call him a-down-a.’—O, how the wheel becomes it!”

[7] Ophelia to Claudius:
“God ‘ield you” (4.5.47). See my previous blog post (part 8):
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2023/07/part-8-ophelia-to-claudius-god-yield-you.html

[8] 4.5.28-31

[9] 4.5.48-49. “Lord, we know what we are but
know not what we may be.”

[10] 4.5.49

[11] 4.5.199-209

[12] 4.7.98. This envy and betrayal echoes the religious and political envy that triggered the betrayal and death of Jesus.

[13] See Richard Finkelstein, "Differentiating 'Hamlet': Ophelia and the Problems of Subjectivity"
in Renaissance and Reformation Vol: 21 No: 2 Date: 1997 Pages: 5-22
OCLC - 5884807087; ISSN - 0034429X
From page 15: Not having responded to Hamlet's entreaty after his soliloquy on action, she is later "the owl [that] was a baker's daughter" — the daughter Jesus turned into an owl because she did not respond generously to his request for bread.
and Finkelstein's FN 27:
27. See note to 4.5.42 in The Riverside Shakespeare, eds. G. Blakemore Evans et al. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), p. 1173.

See also page 375, The Riddles of Hamlet and the Newest Answers, 1917, by Simon Augustine Blackmore, 1848-1926, Boston, Stratford Co., available online at this link:
https://archive.org/details/riddlesofhamletn00blac/page/n7/mode/2up

https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2021/04/the-begggar-lazarus-at-bakers-door-in.html

[14] 4.5.96-97. Shakespeare later uses a similar subplot himself in A Winter’s Tale and Pericles when daughters are separated from their fathers and raised for a time by others, unaware of their true parentage. 

[15] See the following:
Moore, Peter R. "Ophelia's false steward." Notes and Queries, vol. 41, no. 4, 1994, p. 488+.

Burnett, Mark Thornton, "Ophelia's 'False Steward' Contextualized." The Review of English Studies, Vol. 46, No. 181 (Feb. 1995), pp. 48-56.

See also my previous blog post on this topic: https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-false-steward-that-stole-his.html

[16] 4.7.202-3.

[17] The fact that Ophleia seems to die a “good death” does not prove the existence of God or heaven. It simply shows that, according to the text and England’s Christian beliefs, Ophelia might best be considered a “peace-parted” soul, not a suicide.
- She seems saved by faith, not works: She may be open in faith to being rescued from the water, but if not, she accepts a drowning death in faith: “The readiness is all.”
- English Protestantism claimed we are not saved by works, so we might note that (at least in Gertrude’s account) Ophelia does not struggle in the water, does not “work” to save herself, which would have been opposed to “faith alone.”
 

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IMAGES:

Left: Ophelia, Sir John Everett Millais (detail of “orans” posture of hands). Public domain via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:John_Everett_Millais_-_Ophelia_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

RIght image: Quote on orans posture (in the same Millais painting) by Christopher P. Jones:
https://medium.com/thinksheet/how-to-read-paintings-ophelia-by-john-everett-millais-54eeebc59ab6

"The position of her hands …particularly interesting. They are raised and open, possibly in a gesture of prayer known as the orans posture… a common form of prayer in early Christianity. In art, it is often seen in catacombs or on sarcophagi and is used for images of saints interceding (praying) for the dead. As an opening up of the body, the prayer gesture indicates an opening up to God’s benign will. So the position of Ophelia’s hands may represent her submission to God’s will as she approaches death."    - Christopher P Jones

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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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IF YOU WOULD PREFER to support me on a REGULAR basis,
you may do so on Ko-Fi, or here on Patreon:
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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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