Not only this, but he can string his words together in such a way that they make a subtle kind of sense. He talks a lot about the mask that men wear to appear innocent when they have something to hide. He speaks of "words" that hide what someone is, such as Claudius's words are thick with deceit.
Ophelia, on the other hand, has no rhyme nor reason to her crazy rants. There is no pattern of any kind; she simply talks....okay actually, maybe there is some: she does talk about the betrayal of Hamlet, the one she loved...but it's in such a random way that it seems inconsistent. No one but the audience or the reader would really understand her. We know she is sad about her father, and hurt by Hamlet, but it's almost impossible to tell due to her jumbled words and crazy actions.
3 comments:
Hannah,
An interesting, meandering post--full of insight, but not much suggestion here of a focus for your next essay. Let's see what emerges from our discussion of the play over the course of the next couple of days.
UUUMMMM, I don't really think that madness is supposed to have "rhyme or reason". That is kind of the idea. That is why Ophelia's madness is so much more convincing. Cmon.
I know its the idea, Max. But the idea is that Hamlet really isn't going mad. You can't dig into Ophelia's madness like you can dig into Hamlet's. Hamlet's little rave sessions are full of so much deeper meaning; Ophelia's is just a senseless babble.
In response to you, Mr. Lavender, this is not what I intend to write my essay on - I don't think I understand this enough or that I can weed out enough demonstration to make a strong argument.
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