Tuesday, January 10, 2017

What are some quotes from Hamlet that proved Hamlet and Ophelia's love for one another?

Ophelia's lamentations when she believes that Hamlet has truly gone mad help to show how much she loved him.  After Hamlet insults her over and over again, implying that she's a whore, that she would corrupt honest men, suggesting that she's false and deceitful, and insisting that she take herself away to a nunnery (or brothel, depending on one's interpretation), she mourns for the "noble mind [...] here o'erthrown" (3.1.163).  She calls herself "of ladies...

Ophelia's lamentations when she believes that Hamlet has truly gone mad help to show how much she loved him.  After Hamlet insults her over and over again, implying that she's a whore, that she would corrupt honest men, suggesting that she's false and deceitful, and insisting that she take herself away to a nunnery (or brothel, depending on one's interpretation), she mourns for the "noble mind [...] here o'erthrown" (3.1.163).  She calls herself "of ladies most deject and wretched, / That sucked the honey of his musicked vows [...]" (3.1.169-170).  She means that out of all the women who might have cared for Hamlet, she is the most miserable, an assertion that clearly conveys her love for him.  She would be most dejected in seeing his declension if she is the one who loves him the most.


For his part, Hamlet, after Ophelia's death, actually gets into a fight with her brother, Laertes, about who loved her the most.  He says, "I loved Ophelia.  Forty thousand brothers / Could not will all their quantity of love / Make up my sum" (5.1.285-287).  He means that not even the love of 40,000 Laerteses could equal the love Hamlet feels for Ophelia, and the two of them end up jumping into her grave together, Hamlet declaring that he loves her so much that he would be buried with her.  

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