Everyone’s favourite series is back!
Shoutout to Ms. Kenny’s senior year Shakespeare class! I guess it’s fitting to post this a decade after I originally wrote it…(yikes @me) I remember that I spent wayyy too much time looking up all the fun Middle English words to cram into this. I believe this was our final project; I chose to write, then memorise and perform an original “lost” monologue from Hamlet. I ofc have very strong opinions about Ophelia’s characterisation and wrote it accordingly. Author’s note at the end was included as part of my project submission. Enjoy…?
Ophelia’s Lost Monologue:
OPHELIA:
[singing, sitting on a tree branch suspended above the pond while plucking flower petals and tossing them into the water]
(slightly deranged:)
Drink to me only with thine eyes
And I will pledge with mine
Or leave a kiss within the cup
And I’ll not ask for wine
[singing breaks off abruptly, as she snaps out of her “madness” and back into reality upon realising that she is alone and needs no longer pretend]
O Hamlet, how I wish to tell thee-
I ken wherefore thy conscience didst decay.
My father—gone! And all remaining kin
have fast forsaken me, favouring instead
their cozening and twattling, heeding not
my laments of betrayal and my veiléd
warnings of abounding treachery. How
didst thou charge these ill-bred dissemblers, lest
you carelessly apprise their suspicions?
In the same manner I dost now, my lord,
with my shadowed words and hidden meanings
like a modest virgin fluttering her
lashes at her suitors? Would that the drapes
of their own self-absorption could strangle
them in the same form it smothers all
the innocents entangled in their webs
of artifice! Erelong methinks their
guiles and contumely shall benight me.
Wherefore can they not see how the blades of
such actions cleft their mores all atwain?
Wherefore do they not perceive my words,
though dressed as madness, cloak uncoinéd
conjurations? Oh, fie; hath Claudius made
another Janus pawn of dear Laertes?
Guilty Gertrude succours me not, and thou,
dear Hamlet, banishéd far to England be!
Already can I sense my vaded sanity
succumbing to my masqueraded madness;
the lies become the truth, the truth deboshed
by nobles cautelous in all. Alack!
I fear nothing more remains for me here;
in the Fields of Asphodel, perhaps
I yet may seek solace. Foolish but fond
Father I may find—or even that
long-lost lady of leisure, now a mere
echo in the shadowy corridors
of my mangled memory—even she
may yet I find comfort in! Only those
who have traversed across the bourn of
life still care for lost Ophelia. Forsooth,
I cannot pretend the weeds of feignéd
madness do not weigh upon my mind.
I fear what more of me shall crumble
beyond repair, what twisted shadow of
myself would prevail. Nay; ‘twere better be
remembered no worse than be I now.
Misplaced regret here now I leave behind
sinking dust along with yon debris
to be from hence swept out by endless sea.
Into the Lethe I unbounded flee
to rest forevermore, enveloped by
the infinite repose, that dreamless sleep.
[Ophelia gazes into the water, looking at her reflection. Silent tears trickle down her face. She turns away and looks up at the sky. With her back to the water, she rises on the branch and tips herself backwards, eyes firmly fixed upon the sky as she falls.]
[Beat]
[Muffled, hazy sound of splash]
FIN
Author’s Note:
The song that Ophelia sings at the soliloquy’s start is called “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes,” based off a poem called “Song. To Celia,” written by Ben Johnson. The words of the poem were put to tune somewhere between the late 1700’s and early 1800’s.
Nerdery & Nostalgia 