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Shakespeare Videos 51 videos

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Shakespeare's Hamlet 11 Ophelia's Death 162 Views


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Description:

How does Ophelia die, and what does that say about her character? What a weird question. If we die as planned––in a bathtub full of mac n' cheese––we hope people don't make assumptions...

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:00

Thank you We sneak Shakespeare's hamlet Ophelia is dead Alas

00:09

shmoop How does ophelia die And what does that say

00:14

about her character So we don't see her actually drown

00:17

Of course we see her show up with all these

00:20

flowers kind of saying these nonsensical nursery rhyme ish things

00:23

So there's this sense of like you know that creepy

00:27

like a baby innocent stuff turned sour where she's this

00:31

corrupted figure and we're not sure why and she she

00:34

herself doesn't seem to have a good sense of why

00:37

and she seems to retreat into this like infantile world

00:40

Other people actually read her final speech as actually having

00:44

like content and meaning but it's when you first hear

00:47

it it certainly doesn't make any sense at all And

00:50

then when she when she doesn't maybe kill herself or

00:52

whatever just dies that's that's always left Is this lingering

00:55

question and because of the to be or not to

00:57

be speech we know that it really matters whether or

01:00

not she killed herself right It matters as to whether

01:03

or not she's going to go to heaven matters in

01:05

terms of like the proper burial rites So she's like

01:09

officially she just died but there's that specter of her

01:13

Maybe Having committed suicide there the whole time which in

01:16

some senses makes it even more tragic right Because then

01:19

her innocence is corrupted on so many levels She's not

01:21

just a martyr figure she's like a martyr that goes

01:24

to hell Alright she's like actually corrupted She actually chose

01:28

to do the evil thing And again it's she's she's

01:31

an interesting character because we don't get any kind of

01:33

internal sense of her thoughts ever You know she doesn't

01:36

give us soliloquies She's always there kind of with policing

01:41

male figures either like hamlet he's manipulating her or her

01:44

father and brother were manipulating her or claudius who's manipulating

01:48

her but she just she has nowhere to turn for

01:51

someone who's actually giving disinterested advice How does ophelia die

01:58

And what does that say about her character Huh No

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