Part 21: Ophelia's Bonny Sweet Robin: Tricksters who Redistribute Agency

In her alleged madness, one of Ophelia’s lines that has attracted critical attention is when she sings, “For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy” (4.5.210). For years I ignored this song of Ophelia's, but given how many feminists speak of the lack of agency of Ophelia and Gertrude, it occurred to me:  Robin Hood is a trickster who stole from the rich and gave to the poor. In doing so, he redistributes not only wealth, but also agency. As often happens, the lines we once ignored may be more important than we thought at first. 

In 1958, during the cold war and still relatively soon after the impact of Freud and his student, Ernest Jones (Hamlet and Oedipus, 1949), Harry Morris wrote an essay about this part of Ophelia’s songs, highlighting mostly the bawdy slang implied with Robin (Bob, Knob) and such details as one tale of Maid Marian given over to Friar Tuck as a concubine. [1]

This should not be ignored, as the Robin Hood tales and plays were associated with spring festivals featuring Robin, lord of misrule: After a long winter, people like some fun. Some say Maid Marian was modeled after the Virgin Mary, but also linked to the concubine, perhaps an exploration of the mysterious parentage of Mary’s child, Jesus, conceived by the Holy Spirit in the official version, or by a Roman soldier in an alternate tale.

Morris says nothing of the Robin Hood who redistributed wealth, perhaps due to the cold war context and the perceived evil of socialism.

Ophelia witnessed the play within the play, The Mousetrap, and knew of Claudius hoarding the throne and his brother’s wife, a marriage that original English audiences would have considered incestuous. It may have been clear to Ophelia that her own trickster, Prince Hamlet, was taking risks and opposing Claudius, the rich hoarder in such a reading.

So it’s possible that Ophelia referred to Hamlet as her “bonny sweet Robin,” not (or not merely) as a bawdy reference, but because she viewed Hamlet as striving to redistribute power even as Robin Hood redistributed wealth.

Hamlet had made to her “almost all the holy vows of heaven” [2]: Even if she felt jilted or abandoned while he was on a ship for England, she may have thought herself a Maid Marian figure.

Ophelia may have understood the part in The Mousetrap, where the assassin poisons the player king and woos his wife. If Hamlet was the legitimate king instead of a murderous poisoning usurper, Claudius, then Ophelia to whom he made his vows was a sort of Queen Regent in his absence.

And in this way, a Robin Hood reference by Ophelia (one of the neglected beggars in the play) also relates nicely to the theme of the Rich Man and Lazarus, as mentioned by the ghost regarding how the poison made his skin “lazar-like.” [3]

Hamlet is in that way a play about how those rich in power - and who hoard their power incestuously - neglect and exploit the marginalized beggars, who may seem to them merely madmen and madwomen because they don’t fit the patriarchal assumptions about the proper behavior of those under their control.

But as it turns out (SPOILER ALERT), that control was not absolute.


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NOTES:

[1] Harry Morris, “Ophelia's ‘Bonny Sweet Robin,’”
PMLA, Dec., 1958, Vol. 73, No. 5, Part 1 (Dec., 1958), pp. 601-603.
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/460304

[2] 1.3.23

[3] See my posts in a previous series on the Lazarus allusion and themes, which starts here: https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2021/02/new-series-on-rich-man-lazarus.html


IMAGES:

Left: Maid Marian - from
Bold Robin Hood and his outlaw band; their famous exploits in Sherwood forest (1912), “penned and pictured by” Rhead, Louis, 1857-1926. Public domain via
https://archive.org/details/boldrobinhoodhis00rheaiala/page/229/mode/1up

Center: “Robin Hood & Clorinda” (often equivalent to Maid Marian), (early) William Blake after John Meheux (1783). Public domain via
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Robin_Hood_%26_Clorinda_William_Blake_after_John_Meheux.jpg

Right: Robin Hood, from 

Bold Robin Hood and his outlaw band; their famous exploits in Sherwood forest (1912), 

“penned and pictured by” Rhead, Louis, 1857-1926. Public domain via
https://archive.org/details/boldrobinhoodhis00rheaiala/page/29/mode/1up

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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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YOU CAN SUPPORT ME on a one-time "tip" basis on Ko-Fi:
https://ko-fi.com/pauladrianfried

IF YOU WOULD PREFER to support me on a REGULAR basis,
you may do so on Ko-Fi, or here on Patreon:
https://patreon.com/PaulAdrianFried
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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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Thanks for reading!
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My current project is a book tentatively titled Hamlet’s Bible, about biblical allusions and plot echoes in Hamlet.

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