This was an English assignment over, you guessed it, Hamlet. We had to tell the story from a major-minor character's view. I chose to do quite a few things with this, some stylistic and some plot-wise. A few of the things Ophelia says and some of the stuff Hamlet says are from the play itself, as we had to have at least 6 of those quotes.
So Sing My Merry Suicide
He went to England. I died. I suppose that puts me on the losing end of the post-break up relationship with Hamlet, but for the first time in my life I didn't let someone else choose for me. I've always been Ophelia the Follower, the one who chased after Hamlet, who followed her father's every instruction, who worshipped her brother like a god. Someone else told me how to act and how to look; and when Hamlet and Horatio went abroad for college, I let my father convince me to stay home. After all, he knew best, didn't he? I used to think so. Then again, Hamlet killed him before I got the chance to really find out.
But I, in my poetic search for clever words, am getting ahead of myself.
Hamlet's father ran a big plastics corporation, offices located on the east end of town, and my dad was his assistant. I always thought Dad did too much for Hamlet Sr., but then again, he loved his job. As a result, we moved into an apartment complex down the block from the big townhouse Hamlet's family lived in, and I grew up playing tag with Hamlet and all the other kids on the block. They made fun of me for being a girl, Hamlet told them to shut up, and we all got along very nicely.
When my mom died, Hamlet let me cry on his bed for hours. Most boys tell you to stop it, or they leave the room. Once I got over my grief for my mother, I realized that I loved him. Everything he did seemed so benevolent, so special, just for me. He supported me in my endeavors as a struggling poet, reading all my verse and always finding something nice to say. All through high school, I was there, just to the side, hanging out with all Hamlet's other friends and waiting for him to notice me like those pretty girls he always took out. He didn't. At least, not during high school.
The day Hamlet and Horatio came home from freshman year abroad, Hamlet took me out for dinner and told me that he couldn't imagine making it through another second without telling me how much he missed me. How much he loved me. It was the happiest day of my life. I wrote more poetry that day than I have ever written in my life. Hamlet was kind enough to tell me how very lovely it all was.
After he went back to college, he wrote me poetry as well. I will admit his was so much better than mine, and he wasn't even trying. That's another thing about Hamlet that I don't think he ever realized: how effortlessly everything came to him when the rest of us struggled just to keep up. He said he loved me in so many forms, in so many ways, that I could get drunk on his words. I'd sit for hours, rereading old letters while sprawled out on the floor of my bedroom, imagining his love was something I could subsist on, eat without needing to eat anything more to keep me alive.
Now I'm not sure how deep his love really went. His father died before I could find out.
Horatio said he had to drag Hamlet onto the plane home for the funeral. Hamlet wouldn't speak, wouldn't move unless badgered, and spent an alarming amount of time weeping. He cried on my bed for hours, almost refusing to go to the funeral service. Hamlet did go, but he refused to go near his uncle, Claudius. In fact, we sat on the very end of the pew opposite him. I didn't know Claudius at all, really. He resembled Hamlet Sr. as all brothers do, but he seemed a little more pleasant than the usual mourner. He had, though, inherited all of the plastics corporation from Hamlet's father. I also found out that my father really did love his job. He was so happy with his job that he practically stumbled over himself in his effort to please Claudius. But you do what you can to make ends meet, I suppose.
It was a shock then, when Hamlet's mother, Gertrude, married Claudius. Even Dad, who never allowed anything bad about his employer to come out of my brother Laertes's mouth or mine, didn't quite know how to handle it. All Laertes wanted to do, though, was go back to Paris. Dad had called him in to be present for the funeral and even found him work assisting Claudius during the change of administration. With so much attention focused on the value of family, my relationship with Hamlet soon came under scrutiny. Dad didn't like me hanging around with Hamlet because Hamlet didn't respond well to Claudius at all. Laertes didn't like it because he always felt the social distance between Hamlet and himself. Nothing would ever put the knowledge that Hamlet's family employed our father out of Laertes's head.
After Laertes told Claudius he was going back to Paris, to "finish college"-most likely to get drunk and ravish women again-he asked me to come with him to the airport to see him off. For all that I loved Laertes for being a lovely older brother, he rarely did anything so near to actual emotional outpouring. I never saw him off to Paris. He told me goodbye in the morning over breakfast with a little smile and wink, and that was that. It turned out that he wanted to talk to me about Hamlet. Don't let him fool you, he told me. All men want the same thing.
I told him, waxing eloquent for the first time since the funeral, "But, good my brother, do not, as some ungracious pastors do, show me the steep and thorny way to heaven…himself the primrose path of dalliance treads." Laertes just rolled his eyes and told me that he was just looking out for my best interests.
Dad gave him some advice on what to do in Paris, like Laertes even listened to it, and then we both waved him onto the plane. I wondered if they planned this together as, when Dad drove back from the airport, he cautioned me against Hamlet as well. He asked me, Do you think he really loves you? I thought about it for a moment. "I do not know…what I should think." He told me how unlikely it was for someone of such a high class to marry someone less socially advantaged.
We weren't poor by any stretch of the imagination, but Dad kept going over his points, making sure I understood his concerns. At the time, I thought he might very well be right. Maybe Hamlet was using me like he used all those girls in high school. I had, after all, never seen him hold down a steady relationship before. I promised Dad I'd stop the relationship with Hamlet before it got worse.
Even though it hurt so bad, even though I didn't want to, I figured it would be best for the family if I stopped it. It felt like I was ripping my own soul out. I was totally convinced it was a good decision. Dad had given up so much for me, I knew I owed him at least that much. After Mom died, Dad was everything to me. I vowed that I would never, ever take him for granted like I had taken Mom for granted.
I stopped answering Hamlet's phone calls. I returned his letters. When Horatio came to ask what was going on, I told him that I couldn't be with Hamlet anymore and shut the door in his face.
Hamlet went completely crazy. He appeared at the corporation's offices, where I worked for Claudius as a secretary by that time, and he was usually half-dressed and speaking in riddles. He sat for hours in the lobby and stared at the floor. It killed me to see him acting like that, and just at the point where I thought I would break, he followed me into the supply room.
I didn't even know he was there till I turned around, dropping the package of copy paper on the floor. He reached out and grabbed my hand, staring at me like he was trying to memorize my face. I couldn't move. And all at once, he backed out of the room, leaving the building entirely before I collected myself enough to move. I knew then that I'd have to tell my father about it and even beg him to let me see Hamlet again.
Once I'd told Dad about it, though, he was already planning for me to talk to Hamlet. Claudius didn't know what Hamlet's problem was, but my father wanted to surprise his boss by proving Hamlet's madness was symptomatic of his being lovesick for me. He wanted me to talk to Hamlet where they could hear. I didn't see why that was at all important, not to mention I was embarrassed that something said or done would not be appropriate for my employer and my father to hear. Again, Dad convinced me it was in my best interest this way.
So I relented. As usual. Dad had never led me astray before. I asked Hamlet, through Horatio, to come see me in my office. I had something important to tell him. Dad and Claudius hid in the supply closet, spying on us. Hamlet wandered up and down the hallway for a few minutes, speaking to himself, so I decided to go out and call him in. I knew from the expression on his face that he wasn't sure himself why he was here talking to me. I asked him how he was doing, and he replied shortly, quickly. Stumbling a little, unsure of what to say with him looking at me so intensely, as if I was a snake, I told him that I felt very badly for how I'd behaved regarding his attentions to me. I hoped he would accept my apologies and my sincere love for him. "I have remembrances of yours that I have longed to redeliver," I told him.
No, no you don't. Confused, I stood there and stared at him, open-mouthed, until he continued. He called me a whore, he told me how little he thought of me. He told me he hated my poetry. With every word he leaned closer, shouting into my face with the wildest look in his eyes. He felt he was angry enough that he needed to leave. By the time he decided to stop, I was bent back over my desk, trying not to cry.
I stood in disbelief, shaking with emotion. Could I have hurt him so badly? But I was never one to overestimate my influences. Something was going on, something I didn't understand. "And I, of ladies most deject and wretched," I murmured, but my heart wasn't in it. Did he really hate my poetry?
Dad told me to go home. Hamlet had arranged for a company get-together that evening, centered on a play he wanted everyone to see. I didn't really feel up to a public outing after all that had happened that day, but I had to go to keep up appearances.
I stood in front of my mirror for a long time in my best party dress, staring at myself. I'd heard about amputees who still "felt" their missing limb. I figured I'd always feel Hamlet in my heart, even when I had someone else, like a little ghost in my soul. Even then, though, I felt almost nothing. I was in shock. None of it was real to me. In a few minutes, I would wake up and go to the party, where Hamlet would kiss me and love me like he used to.
Chairs were set up in the banquet hall, so I chose one near the front where people were already sitting. Hamlet spoke to Horatio, standing away from almost everyone, but once Claudius and Gertrude stepped into the room he shambled away. I tried not to look at him, tried not to show that he had hurt me, even as I wanted to throw myself at his feet and beg. His mother, quite loudly, as if acting crazy made him deaf, asked him to sit by her for the duration. He bowed politely and said, Here's a metal more attractive. He smiled and sat down next to me. I tried not to see my father jostle Claudius's shoulder in triumph.
Hamlet cracked a few crude jokes, but the merriment seemed forced. He was concerned about something. I could tell by the way he worried at his left thumb with his fingers. I made some small, silly comment about his unusual brevity, and his eyes flashed to my face. How can I be happy when my mother remarried two hours after my father's funeral?
Now it was my turn to stare incredulously. Two hours? It had been months! Before I could question him further, the play started. A king, killed by treachery, and a wife who married the murderer. First it was mimed, then the same king and queen reappeared to have a long talk about how much she loved him, such that she would never remarry. I must admit, I never quite saw the point. It was definitely esoteric.
I glanced at Hamlet's face often to gauge his attitude, but he stared almost fixedly at Claudius, occasionally murmuring to himself. Towards the end of the queen's speech, he spoke to his mother of how the play was proceeding. The next actors came onstage, and Hamlet watched them intently. I saw Claudius get up, so I nudged Hamlet and pointed it out. He said nothing, merely watched.
The lights came on and Claudius stared at Hamlet for a long time before ordering everyone to leave. Dad bustled me away as Hamlet talked to Horatio. I watched, looking over my shoulder and desperately wishing to be back in that boys club, to know what was going on. Neither of them noticed me.
Out on the street, Dad told me to go home. He said he had to go by Claudius's house to settle some things, and that he'd be home later. Personally, I felt very vulnerable. I'd messed things up with Hamlet, my dad didn't care about anyone except for Claudius and Gertrude, and I was walking home alone in a very thin dress.
I made it, nonetheless, and only woke up, sprawled on the couch, when the sirens screamed down the street. I watched the red-blue lightning play across the walls for a moment before I began to panic. Dad wasn't home yet. I rolled to my feet and threw on some clothes, running in my fright down the street to Hamlet's house.
Things ran together after that. I was hysterical. Someone held me back. Someone else told me my father was dead. In that moment, everything seemed to come into clear, painful focus. The lights were too bright, the sirens too loud. Police were everywhere, flashing lights swimming over the marble. Horatio appeared from one of the doors out of the huge house, looking for me.
Horatio took me aside and said, Hamlet killed him. Your dad-and he just-and he killed him. He thought Polonius was Claudius. His decorum caught up with him then. I'm so sorry.
Instead of folding in on myself, instead of collapsing into helpless crying like I had after my mother's death, I screamed. I screamed every curse I could think of, every threat I knew of. I screamed until my throat gave out. Wherever Hamlet was, I hope he heard me. I hope he knew I hated him. I never saw him again while I was alive.
I stopped going to work, almost never leaving the house except for the occasional moment when I fleetingly felt like going back to work. I'd get dressed and walk into the office, but everything there reminded me of my father and of Hamlet. I'd feel overwhelmed; I couldn't breathe. Any time someone spoke to me, I'd answer in completely different words than I meant to.
Where once I was eloquent, nothing I said made sense. My poetry became jumbled up nonsense.
One day I picked flowers from neighbors' gardens and went to Hamlet's home. Horatio had come by earlier-that day? last week?-to tell me Hamlet had left for England. I didn't want to care, so I sang a song instead of giving my condolences. And he left, after two verses.
Ophelia! Gertrude exclaimed after she opened the door. I curtsied before I went inside, remembering some of my manners as if through a dark fog.
Claudius inquired after my health, but I was already fixated on something more personally important. "I hope all will be well," I said in reply, springing up the steps two at a time to get to Hamlet's room. Maybe Horatio lied to me. Maybe Hamlet was just hiding from me.
But his room was empty, bare of the clutter Hamlet generally surrounded himself with. I caught sight of myself in the mirror and abandoned the investigation of the room. Some night before this I had stared at myself, transfixed by my own image. Once I was polished and pristine; now I was wild and unkempt, like some otherworldly naiad. Was this the same Ophelia?
Shouting from downstairs tugged on my easily swayed attention, and I remembered the flowers in my hand. Turning back to the door, I saw Horatio leaning against the frame. Upon my fierce change of expression, he held up his hands and said, They sent me here to watch you. Make sure you didn't hurt yourself.
I sneered and tried to squeeze out past him, but he caught at my arm and made me look him in the face. You're not the only one Hamlet hurt, Ophelia. Looking up at those familiar eyes was almost like seeing Hamlet again-I almost never saw Horatio without Hamlet before all of this. And then everything focused again. It wasn't so hard to think about where I was or what I was doing.
Before I could consider the ramifications, I leaned into Horatio, trying to follow that tenuous thread of sanity back to the old me. His arms came up around me and he kissed me. I felt no remorse, no sadness, no hurt, no pain, no fear.
Then Laertes's voice reached me, filtering up through stairway. I stiffened and broke away from Horatio. He looked at me questioningly, not a little confused. I gestured down the stairs. Horatio listened for a moment while I arranged my flowers again, then he turned towards me. You'd better go down there, before your brother-
I smiled and touched the side of his face with my fingertips. He looked at me, tormented by the conflict of his desire and my status as Hamlet's ex-girlfriend. "Nobody owns me, Horatio. In fact, Hamlet told me he never loved me and to leave him alone. No one makes my decisions for me, anymore." Laertes's voice rose again, angry and hostile, and I felt the small opening of sanity drifting shut again no matter how hard I tried to keep it open.
Horatio clutched my hand tightly, whispering, Tonight? Tonight. I nodded. He released me then, and I descended the stairs, again obsessed only by my flowers.
Oh, God, Laertes moaned when I came into view, singing and preening my posies. He said things to me, but I didn't care anymore. My mission involved those flowers.
Rosemary for remembrance. Pansies for thoughts. Fennel for deceit. Columbines and daisies. When I passed out the rue, I told Gertrude, "You must wear your rue with a difference." I flung the assorted rest of the flowers in the air to shower down on my shoulders and hair. "No violets today. All the violets died with my father."
Horatio watched me, even though no emotion showed on his face. He was always so self-contained, so good at hiding what he felt. That would've been bearable, except he reminded me of Hamlet, and Hamlet reminded me of a time of happiness. I refused to stay any longer. I couldn't go there. Not yet.
So I fled.
Later, when I opened the door to Horatio, he smiled shyly. Sorry about earlier. I shouldn't have assumed- But I didn't want to hear another word about it. I wasn't sorry. He shouldn't have been, either.
Thankfully enough, Laertes didn't come back to the apartment. In fact, he never came back again, that I know of at least. Laertes avoided me and I let him. Horatio told me that my brother and Claudius spent a great deal of time holed up together, talking. What things they spoke of, neither of us knew.
Horatio and I talked quite a bit, as well. We lay awake and considered Hamlet sometimes, but more often we would talk about simpler things. Why I thought it was convenient to have microwave dinners. Why he liked Mozart better than Beethoven. We never talked about us, if we were together or not. We didn't need to. Both of us knew what was going on.
Together, we represented Hamlet, as if the ghost of him in my soul added to the scholar and friend Horatio remembered created a more or less whole Hamlet. Even though part of me at the time hated Hamlet for killing my father-I even started to hate him on Horatio's behalf for disappearing to England-part of me still missed him desperately. And while I couldn't reliably grab hold of my sanity every time Horatio and I were together, it seemed to happen more often around him than not.
After a few weeks, some blinding flash of insight let me see that the relationship with Horatio went too far for both of us. We couldn't keep going in that direction. I wasn't dependably sane. He was still friends with Hamlet. Some bridges could not be crossed by love, if you could even call it that. I knew that I was using Horatio as a sort of surrogate lover for Hamlet, or at least what I missed about Hamlet.
I couldn't be sure if his feelings extended only as far as mine. We couldn't talk about it either. It would just go places I wasn't prepared to go in any state of mind I happened to be in.
In order to think more clearly, I went down by the river to pick wildflowers and contemplate how to tell Horatio we shouldn't see each other anymore. I felt just like I had before telling Hamlet much the same thing. This time, however, it was my decision. No one could make it for me.
I made flower chains as I drifted in and out of solid awareness. I tried. I really did. Then I found myself in a tree hanging over the river, flowers dripping from my hands in a riotous waterfall. The instant I regained sense enough to move, my branch broke. I fell, through the flowers, into the cold, swift river below me.
I tried to remember how to float like they teach you in childhood swimming classes. I could swim, but I knew that I would never be able to swim in a river like that. I knew floating might save my life.
I'd spent so much of my life avoiding hurt, avoiding death. Everyone does. Don't talk to strangers. Don't go around town by yourself after dark. Don't drink and drive or let anyone drunk drive you, even if Hamlet swears he drives just the same while drunk.
At that moment, though, it didn't matter. If I just gave up, I couldn't hurt anyone anymore. No one could tell me to do something I'd regret. No more stupid tendencies to follow blindly. And I wouldn't hurt anymore. I wouldn't lose myself constantly. I wouldn't be a burden to Laertes anymore. No more crazy sister to hide in a closet for the rest of her life. And it wouldn't give Horatio a chance to hate me for what we'd done.
I sighed, smiling at the freedom, and the river closed over my head. The water turned everything luminous, like some kind of bright aura. My skin shone like starlight, and the first breath of water felt like starlight.
Then it was over.
Time after death moves oddly, even more so than while I was mad. I never lost any time, though there were a lot of gray times, a lot of half-remembered scenes. But I remember seeing my funeral.
My body was so pale, pristine. No signs of madness there but for the shifty, rather short funeral service. Laertes leaped into my grave after they lowered my body into it. He made quite a scene, which made me miss him intensely for a minute. One thing I can say about the afterlife is that hurtful emotions are much more ephemeral. The only emotions that even seem to stick with me are hate and amusement. Claudius seemed bored. The schmuck. Gertrude actually expressed some sorrow in her comments about wanting me to marry Hamlet. Horatio nor Hamlet were anywhere to be found.
Or so I thought, because after a moment of Laertes's spectacle, Hamlet leapt up from behind a gravestone and jumped into my grave as well. He then proceeded to pick a fight with my brother over my dead body. I'd think that one thing about my life could be normal, but no-not even my funeral. Everyone has to act stupid at my funeral.
Then Hamlet started shouting, I loved Ophelia! Forty thousand brothers could not make up my sum. Various other shouts of what he'd do for me to prove it followed before anyone decided to stop them from flailing at each other. Even Horatio told Hamlet to shut up at that point.
To my credit, I didn't feel any sort of hope about Hamlet's supposed "love" for me. Perhaps he loved me truly at one time, but that display in my grave was nothing more than a mere display.
And that was it, really. Time slipped out through my fingers again. I wandered through the graveyard occasionally, and one day discovered Hamlet's grave. I had no idea he'd died just days after my burial. News doesn't move very fast in the afterlife.
I still don't know what Hamlet's problem was. Is, rather. Hamlet never comes to see Horatio when he visits our graves, so I like to think he's too busy burning in the fires of Hell to bother with his best friend. Sometimes Horatio comes to talk to me for hours to tell me all the things I've missed out on lately. I hope that someday I'll see him again and tell him how sorry I am about how things turned out, with Hamlet and with me.
The only difference between us, that I can still tell, is that he has and always will worship Hamlet. I hate him. Hamlet, I mean. He abused me more than anyone should ever abuse another, even after a bad breakup. He killed my father and never felt sorry for it. He left for England without having the decency to even face the consequences. His pretended psychosis especially infuriates me. I knew the real depths of madness, how it eats you from the inside until you can't even breathe without emotional anguish. For all that I loved Hamlet, for all that I suffered because of it, I hate him more now. Someone said there's a thin line between love and hate. Maybe when I learn to let that go, I'll be able to stop wandering the earth like a disobedient child. Until then, I'll revel in dancing on Hamlet's grave in passing.