A Woman's Brief Love and Hamlet's Resultant Anxiety in Shakespeare's Hamlet

Just before the play-within-the-play in Shakespeare's Hamlet (1600), Ophelia says to Hamlet: "'Tis brief, my lord" (3.2.137). This is in reference to the prologue of the play that Hamlet stages in an attempt to examine the conscience of his uncle, Claudius. Hamlet replies: "As woman's love" (3.2.138). These lines are part of a series of dialogue between Hamlet and Ophelia in which he is quite cruel to her. It is interesting to note that Hamlet uses the singular 'woman,' instead of the plural, which means that he is not merely making a remark about the behavior of women in general, but about one specific woman.

One might think that Hamlet's bitterness is toward Ophelia, because Ophelia has rejected his love and Hamlet recently had his almost-violent encounter with her. However, this is not true because Hamlet is the one who rejects Ophelia, not the other way around. Hamlet does not refer to Ophelia, but to his mother Gertrude and her hasty, adulterous marriage to Claudius. Hamlet's behavior toward Ophelia stems from his disgust with Gertrude, and marriage in general. This disgust with marriage leads Hamlet to reject Ophelia, despite his love for her. According to Harold Jenkins, this repressed desire for her, in addition to his feelings about his mother, causes Hamlet's anxiety (153).

From the opening act of Hamlet, before he even knows that his father was murdered by Claudius, Hamlet is extremely upset about his mother's marriage to him. Had he never know of the murder, he still would have been extremely troubled by the marriage. In his first soliloquy, the first time in the play that Hamlet unmasks his true feelings, he laments his mother's quick marriage. He says: "a beast that wants discourse of reason / Would have mourned longer!" (1.2.150-51). She married Claudius "Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears / Had left the flushing of her galléd eyes" (1.2.154-55). Hamlet also reveals his feelings to the only person in the play to whom he can be honest, Horatio, when he tells him: "Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven / Ere I had ever seen that day" (1.2.181-82). The day he refers to is his mother's wedding day.

When Hamlet meets the ghost of his father, the ghost specifically tells him not to touch his mother, but rather, "Leave her to heaven" (1.5.86). However, the issue of his mother remains the peak of Hamlet's preoccupation. When Hamlet confronts his mother in her chamber, he says to her: "would you were not so - you are my mother" (3.4.16). Later during that scene, Hamlet becomes so agitated that the ghost returns to remind Hamlet that his job is to kill Claudius, not worry about Gertrude. The incestuous actions of his mother consume Hamlet to the extent that the ghost needs to corral Hamlet before he does anything rash. Obviously, Hamlet feels very troubled and anxious about his mother and her brief remembrance of his father.

In reference to Gertrude, he says: "frailty, thy name is woman" (1.2.146), because she abased herself to marry Claudius after she had been married to a great man. Again, Hamlet uses the singular 'woman' to refer to one specific woman, Gertrude. Hamlet says his father was: "so loving to my mother / That he might not beteem the winds of heaven / Visit her face too roughly" (1.2.140-42). During the chamber scene, the central scene of Hamlet, Hamlet forces upon his mother the pictures of her two husbands and compares the two men.

He asks her: "Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed, / And batten on this moor?" (3.4.65-66). This suggests Gertrude lowered herself to marry Claudius. Claudius is the satyr, compared to the godlike hyperion, and the fact that Gertrude could stand to marry such a loathsome creature is disgusting. This only compounds Hamlet's troubled feelings about the short period between the death and the marriage, because Gertrude marries someone that cannot even begin to compare to Hamlet's father. That she could forget him so quickly for a man that Hamlet says is, "No more like my father than I to Hercules" (1.2.152-53) causes Hamlet to become even more upset.

Hamlet takes his disgust with his mother's actions one step further to a disgust with marriage in general. Marriage is a beautiful union between man and woman that has become polluted in Hamlet's eyes. Gertrude has caused these angry feelings that he has, and he sees her marriage as being: "In the rank sweat of an unseaméd bed, / Stewed in corruption, honeying, and making love / Over the nasty sty" (3.4.82-84). He charges Gertrude: "go not to mine uncle's bed" (3.4.150), and deny the desires of marriage. Her marriage is what makes her so corrupted.

Perhaps she can somewhat redeem herself, then, if she would vow to sleep apart from Claudius. This is what Hamlet means when he tells her: "do not spread compost o'er the weeds / To make them ranker" (3.4.142-43). Without the act of marriage, his mother would not be such a foul sinner. Thus whenever she and Claudius go to bed as a married couple, Hamlet sees that as a sin. Gertrude can end the sinning immediately, in Hamlet's eyes, if she would "Repent what's past, avoid what is to come" (3.4.141).

Hamlet loves Ophelia throughout the entire play, as Shakespeare carefully makes clear. Her family has noticed his love, and Laertes admits this love when he warns Ophelia to avoid Hamlet. Laertes says to her: "Perhaps he loves you now" (1.3.14), but he goes on to say that Hamlet might not be able to marry her because of his station in life, despite his love. Ophelia's father, Polonius, has also noticed this love, and he proves it with a love letter that Hamlet wrote to Ophelia, which he shows Gertrude and Claudius in act 2. Although Hamlet tells Ophelia, during their scene together: "I loved you not" (3.1.119-120), he had just told her: "I did love you once" (3.1.116). This seems to suggest that he is not being completely honest with her, and perhaps playing rhetorical games with her like he does so frequently throughout

Hamlet. However, during Ophelia's burial, when Laertes jumps into her grave in his grief, Hamlet comes forward and admits his love. He boldly reveals his presence in Denmark to Claudius after his uncle sent him to England to be killed. Hamlet also risks a confrontation with Laertes after Hamlet had recently killed Polonius. Hamlet throws caution aside to step forward because of his grief for Ophelia and the fact that he must prove that Laertes is not the only person upset by her death. He tells the burial crowd: "I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers / Could not, with their quantity of love, / Make up my sum" (5.1.254-56). Claudius dismisses his actions as madness, but Claudius has much to gain by labeling Hamlet as a madman. Although Hamlet never admits his love directly to Ophelia, he does love her during the entire play. Though he rejects her, he never stops loving her, as evidenced by his reaction to seeing her dead.

Although Hamlet loves Ophelia, he refuses to marry her. She does not reject him, and this does not cause his anxiety. Shakespeare makes this clear because this is what Polonius believes. Since Polonius is the wordy old fool of the play, the fact that he thinks that his order to Ophelia to "lock herself from his resort" (2.2.143) put Hamlet "Into the madness wherein he now raves" (2.2.150) should be proof that this is not true. Usually whatever the foolish characters think should be rejected by the audience.

Hamlet rejects Ophelia when he tells her, "we will have no more marriages. Those that are married already - all but one - shall live. The rest shall keep as they are" (3.1.146-48). This is a clear rejection of marriage on Hamlet's part, thus he has rejected Ophelia herself because she is woman that he would have married. He also tells Ophelia: "Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? (3.1.122-23). This shows a clear disdain for marriage. Jenkins says that Shakespeare uses the subplot of Ophelia and Hamlet to shine light upon the more central theme of Hamlet's disgust with marriage because of his disgust with his mother. This disgust with Gertrude and marriage has been extremely obvious from the beginning. The subplot should not take away the focus from Hamlet's disgust with Gertrude, because that is the main issue (152). Rather, the rejection of marriage to Ophelia proves Hamlet's revulsion from all things that might remind him of the behavior of his mother in her own marriage bed.

Hamlet confronts Ophelia first, before the play-within-the-play, and he confronts Gertrude after the play scene. Structurally, Shakespeare uses the Ophelia confrontation to lead up to the Gertrude confrontation and set the stage for this later, more violent scene, since the Ophelia action exists to deepen the themes associated with Hamlet's reaction to Gertrude's sins. As Jenkins points out, both confrontations mirror the play-within-the-play. The play-within-the-play itself paints a picture of the queen and her two husbands, which is the primary source of Hamlet's anxiety (141). He is upset because the godlike man has been replaced so quickly by the beast, and his mother has brought the beast to her bed through marriage. Shakespeare also uses the staged play to build up to the scene between Hamlet and Gertrude since the play illustrates the issues that Hamlet struggles with concerning his mother. Hamlet demonstrates his rejection of marriage during his scenes with both women (Jenkins 141).

Though Hamlet has refused marriage, he continues to love Ophelia. This rejection of her goes against his natural feelings (Jenkins 153). This denial of himself and his true feelings is also a cause of anxiety for Hamlet because of his desire. He desires Ophelia, but will not have her. Although the decision not to have her rests solely with his own personal choices, he nonetheless cannot give in to his desires because they are the same desires that he has come to hate in his mother because of her lust for the satyr, and when he feels them in himself, this becomes even more repulsive and causes additional anxiety.

The anxiety that Hamlet experiences is a direct result of his mother's hasty marriage to Claudius, as is his unfulfilled erotic desire for Ophelia. Hamlet is unbearably disgusted with the whole affair because Gertrude hardly waited after Hamlet's father died to remarry, and she rushed to marry a mere beast of a man who is nothing but the shadow of the man Hamlet's father was. This adulterous, incestuous mess causes Hamlet to wish that Gertrude was not his mother, because she is now polluted. The revulsion that Hamlet feels toward his mother carries over to a revulsion with marriage in general, because it is through marriage, what should be a beautiful, natural thing, that these nasty sins occurred.

Hamlet loves Ophelia, and he never stops loving her. However, he cannot stand the thought of marriage because he can only see it in the light of his mother together in her incestuous bed with Claudius. Thus Hamlet cannot not marry Ophelia. He must deny his natural desire for her to do this, which causes additional anxiety. Shakespeare uses Ophelia to illustrate the extent of Hamlet's revulsion with Gertrude by showing it carry over into Hamlet's personal life choices. Gertrude's love for Hamlet's father after his death is so brief that Hamlet finds himself repulsed by the thought of love. To find the same erotic desire in himself that he is so disgusted with in his mother causes anxiety because he hates them in his mother and he must consciously suppress them in himself.