Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

Part 44: Ophelia, Ariadne, Aegeus: Rejection, Ecstasy, Drowning After Ophelia’s father Polonius tells her to reject Hamlet [1], she obeys; later Hamlet is unkind to her and tells her, “Get thee to a nunnery” [2]. But the fact that her father forbade her to see him could not erase her feelings for him [3], or her hurt at being rejected. The story of Theseus, son of King Aegeus, and how he killed the Minotaur with help from Ariadne, was quite familiar in Shakespeare’s time, and the playwright even has Theseus as a character in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Ariadne loved Theseus, as Ophelia seems to have loved Hamlet. But like Polonius, Ariadne’s father, King Minos, would not have approved. In the Greek myth, Theseus takes Ariadne with him when he leaves the island of Crete after defeating Ariadne’s half-brother, the Minotaur [4]. He later abandons her on the island of Naxos. Ophelia may feel similarly abandoned after Hamlet leaves for England [5] and her father is found dead and given...