OPHELIA        O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!

The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s eye, tongue, sword,

Th’ expectation and rose of the fair state,

The glass of fashion and the mould of form,

Th’observed of all observers, quite, quite down.

And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,

That sucked the honey of his musicked vows,

Now see what noble and most sovereign reason

Like sweet bells jangled out of time and harsh –

That unmatched form and stature of blown youth

Blasted with ecstasy. O woe is me

T’have seen what I have seen, see what I see.        (3.1.149-160)

Ophelia’s response is jarring, complex, difficult for an audience who perhaps want her to be angry and hurt from the start rather than concerned. It’s risky, too, asking the audience to take on trust how Hamlet used to be—or maybe Ophelia’s just being naïve, that’s an option too. O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown! A combination of intelligence and virtue has—at least for Ophelia—been Hamlet’s defining feature, and that’s been shattered, like a ruined tower. Hamlet’s been laid low, he’s unrecognisable. He used to be the model, the poster-boy, for all sorts of things, he was the courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s eye, tongue, sword (and those don’t quite cohere or match up, suggesting Ophelia’s distress: what she’s saying is that he was a complete man, in all possible senses, in how he looked and acted, spoke, fought). He was th’ expectation and rose of the fair state, our hope and our dream, our flower; our prince. He was the glass of fashion and the mould of form, th’observed of all observers: he was handsome, so stylish, everyone wanted to look like him, to be him. You couldn’t take your eyes off him. (She couldn’t take her eyes off him.) But the audience has never seen this Hamlet—the odd flash or glimmer, perhaps; there’s added pathos in having to take him on trust, no, you don’t understand, he was WONDERFUL. And now he is quite, quite down. Utterly reduced, laid low.

Then, at least, Ophelia turns to herself. And I, of ladies most deject and wretched—I’m at rock-bottom too. I sucked the honey of his musicked vows—the way he spoke to me! the things he said and promised! (honey picks up the way she had described his gifts as being perfumed by his words; sweet, sweet)—I drank it all up, I listened, in raptures. But now see what noble and most sovereign reason—such a mind, such a powerful, rational brain—completely disordered, like sweet bells jangled out of time and harsh. Sweet bells jangling are bad enough; tune for time is a possible variant and either’s possible, what matters is the sense of wrongness, ugliness—and harsh, a final attempt to describe this terrible thing, a word that’s almost onomatopoeic, that’s not the opposite of sweet, but suggests cruelty and disproportion all over again. That unmatched form and stature of blown youth—that young man, at the peak of his perfection, in full bloom, blasted with ecstasy, stricken, diseased, with madness. No longer himself. Destroyed.

O woe is me—that’s all Ophelia can manage, finally, that conventional little sobbing lament, otherwise lost for words to express how she feels in all this—t’have seen what I have seen, see what I see. No words. I can’t believe it, any of it, what’s just happened, what he’s said to me, what’s happened to him. I want to disappear.