“To be or not to be, that is the question” (Act 3, Scene1). This is just one example of Hamlet deliberating an action in the play. Throughout the play, Hamlet is constantly deliberating action, most notably, whether or not to kill King Claudius to avenge the death of his father. Subsequently through all the deliberation, his inability to take action is also shown throughout the play. Time after time, when he is given the chance to kill Claudius, he never follows through. This inability to take action is paralleled in Ophelia and her alleged suicide. Many people believe that Ophelia committed suicide, that she actively allowed herself to drown in the brook, but that is not the case. In addition to her turmoiled relationship with Hamlet, her inability to take action throughout the play shows that Ophelia had simply gone mad and did not have the mental capacity to consciously take her own life. Because there was no reason left in her head, her death was an accident rather than a suicide.
We are first introduced to Ophelia in the play as an innocent and naive girl biding a farewell to her brother Laertes who was due to set off to France. In Ophelia’s first appearance in the play, she is already being told to stay away from Hamlet. Her brother warns her not to fall in love with Hamlet because he will never be able to love her back. He claims that by birth, Hamlet is too far above her class and that because of this discrepancy they will never be able to get married. Hamlet has his own feelings but at the same time is responsible for his position in the state, which would prevent the two of them from being together. This is the first instance of someone barring Ophelia from being with Hamlet. Moments later, their father Polonius walks in. Laertes leaves for the ship and Ophelia and her father have a conversation. Polonius inquires about her conversation wth Laertes and she reveals that it was about Hamlet. She reveals that Hamlet claims to love her. Unsurprisingly, Polonius reflects with Laertes says and forbids Ophelia to be with Hamlet anymore. He claims that Hamlet is lying to her, “Do not believe his vows; for they are brokers, not of that dye which their investments show,” (Act 1 Scene 4), and then continues to ban Ophelia from seeing her. After his lengthy monologue Ophelia replies with “I shall obey, my lord.” (Act 1 Scene 4). She pledges to obey her father. This is the first time we see the inability of Ophelia to perform an action on her own. She is agreeing to obey her father, and does so without any protest. Throughout the whole play, she follows instructions and does as she is told without any rebuttal, giving us the impression that she is content with herself in life. She sees no need to dispute what others tell her to do.
The next time we encounter Ophelia is in the first scene of Act 2. She runs into the run to tell her father Polonius that Hamlet has just approached her, visibly shaken, didn’t say a word, and then letting out a sigh walked out the door with his eyes closed. Polonius is quick to judgment, and proclaims that this is the result of Hamlet being in love with her. Ophelia’s inability to perform action is on display here as she is coming to her father for him to form an opinion on the situation. She herself has no opinion on the situation, and is needing the guidance from her father. When Polonius asks if she has said anything harsh to Hamlet recently she replies, “No, my good lord, but, as you did command.” (Act 2, Scene 1). Again, she reasserts that she has only followed his instructions and nothing else. She depends on her father to tell her how to behave. She never performs an action on her own. Although she may want to perform action, such as being with Hamlet, she never follows through on her actions. Instead she lets her desires sit inside her, and obeys other people’s instructions.
Polonius, suspecting that Hamlet is madly in love with Ophelia, convinces King Claudius to spy on an encounter between the two. He gives Ophelia instructions, which she directly follows. Hamlet enters the room and is deliberating an action, whether or not to commit suicide as to rid the pain of experience. Hamlet then sees Ophelia, and following her instructions, she proceeds to tell Hamlet that she wishes to reciprocate the love that she has felt and told her father about. Hamlet proceeds to deny giving her any love and instead suggests that Ophelia go to a nunnery. “You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not….Go thee to a nunnery. (Act 3 Scene 1) He attacks the way women create monsters out of men, and how women are contributing to the world’s dishonesty by putting makeup on their faces. Hamlet then angrily denounces marriages, saying he wishes to end all marriages. All of this is shocking to Ophelia as she pleads toward the heavens to make him sane again. For a long time she thought that Hamlet was in love with her, and now he screams angrily at her saying he never did. After this encounter, Ophelia admits that her mind is “out of tune and harsh”, and that it is sad to see Hamlet become this way. One can see how Ophelia’s mind is starting to become mad now that everything she has been told by both Hamlet and her father have been wrong. She has her own desires but doesn’t take action on those desires. Because she only listens to what others tell her, she doesn’t know how to comprehend the situation.
Soon Polonius, Ophelia’s father, has been killed by Hamlet thinking that it was King Claudius. It was a rash decision by Hamlet, one that was not premeditated. Although Hamlet does physically kill Polonius, it is not classified as action as he was not planning to kill Claudius when he went to meet his mother. This development is yet another confusing moment in Ophelia’s life. We next see her wandering into the room where Gertrude, Horatio, the Queen, and King Claudius are discussing Ophelia. Horatio explains that people should feel pity for Ophelia because her grief over the death of her father, as well as her tumultuous relationship with Hamlet has caused her to become disordered and incoherent. Ophelia enters the room and starts singing strange songs. She is incoherent and unable to have a normal conversation. King Claudius declares that she has gone mad. “poor Ophelia divided from herself and her fair judgement, Without the which we are pictures, or mere beasts;” (Act4 Scene 5) The lack of action that she takes in her life has affected her because she is lost. This culminates in her drowning in the brook.
Her drowning in the brook was not a suicide but in fact an accident. At that point, her mind was beyond reason. Her life was turned upside down when Hamlet denied his love for her, which she cherished in the entire first half of the play. Then her father was killed, taking away her voice of reason. She had already displayed moments of instability when she entered the room singing. This was her madness on full display. Ophelia is a victim throughout the play because her desires to be with Hamlet have been oppressed. This is another contributing factor to her apparent madness. The passage where Gertrude is talking about Ophelia’s death makes her death seem passive. Gertrude says that she accidentally falls into the brook and then simply neglects to save herself. Ophelia is mad and unaware of her actions, so she cannot willingly jump into her death. As mentioned in the passage, she falls into the water rather than jumps. In the water, she continues to sing songs. She does not resist against drowning because she lacks the ability to recognize danger. The queen mentions that Ophelia is “one incapable of her own distress” (Act 4 Scene 7). The passage is also weirdly poetic and pretty in a sense, creating vivid images by using descriptions such as weeping brook and clothes spread wide like a mermaid, suggesting it wasn’t an act of defiance.
Her alleged suicide is also unlike the other planned suicide in the play. At the end of the play when Hamlet is dying, Horatio says “I am more an antique Roman than a Dane.” (Act 5 Scene 2) Here Horatio is bravely following his friend Hamlet into death proclaiming that he will commit suicide. Ophelia however does not proclaim her suicide, instead she dies calmly singing until she is pulled down by the weight of her garment. It is also interesting the way that Gertrude phrased her death, “Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay To muddy death.” (Act 4 Scene 7) Her garments dragging her down seem to be a metaphor to the way Ophelia lives her life. She simply succumbs to what her father, brother, and Hamlet tell her to do, letting the garments drag her down without any defiance. In addition, no important characters in the play call her death a suicide. Only two people do, the gravedigger and the priest. However, these two character’s opinions do not mean much in light of their prejudice toward the nobility. Everyone else including the queen calls her death an accident.
Ophelia’s lack of action is paralleled in Hamlet’s quest to avenge the death of his father. After encountering the ghost of his deceased father, Hamlet has been on a mission to kill Polonius. Throughout the entire play Hamlet is torn between action. The two main ones are killing himself, as well as killing Polonius. In both cases he cannot make up his mind. He deliberates on doing them, but never actually follows through on his deliberations. Aristotle says that action involves deliberation. According to that definition, Hamlet has a problem with action and never performs action. The action he deliberates he never performs, and the action he performs he never deliberates. The first time Hamlet deliberates an action and does not follow is when he contemplates suicide. He decides not to act on his desire because he says that it is against cannon law. “Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter!” (Act 1 Scene 2) The second time that Hamlet deliberates suicide, he again finds reasons not to act. “Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, and enterprises of great pitch and moment with this regard their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action.” (Act 3 Scene 1) Another instance where Hamlet does not follow through with his deliberations is when he was about to kill Claudius. He had deliberated this action and was about to follow through, but he yet finds another reason not to act on it. This time, his excuse is that Claudius is praying so killing him at this instance will not exact the revenge he desired.
When Hamlet does act on something, he does it blindly, impulsively, and rashly. These actions involved no deliberation, which according to Aristotle, cannot be classified as action. One of these instances is when he killed Polonius. He went to meet with his mother with only an intention of doing just that, but heard something behind the curtain. Assuming it was Claudius, he plunged his sword through the person, who turned out to be Polonius. Another reckless action is when he decided to start a fight with Laertes while Ophelia is being buried. Laertes leaps into the grave and Hamlet follows, starting a fight with him. A third rash action is when Hamlet decides to jump aboard the Pirate ship in the heat of the battle, leaving him a prisoner, as he described in his letter to Horatio.
While some may argue that Ophelia committed suicide in the play, evidence points to the opposite. At the time of her death, she was not mentally capable of recognizing the danger she was in, and thus her death was an accident. All her life, she had been told what to do by her brother and her father. Although she made have had desires of her own, she never acted upon them. She wanted to be with Hamlet, but her father and brother refused to allow that to happen. With Hamlet’s denial of his love, her life was turned upside down. Then the death of her father in Hamlet’s hands added on to the confusion and drove her mad. When she fell in the brook, she was incapable of recognizing the danger she was in. Her lack of action ultimately led to her death. Similarly, Hamlet wants to kill Claudius, but he can never truly perform the action. Although he does kill Claudius in the end, it was an impulsive move, which highlights his lack of ability to perform action throughout the entire play.