AN: Our class recently read Hamlet, and I've always had a soft spot for Ophelia, so I wrote this. All the different theories about Ophelia are so fascinating, so I wanted to try to put them all in one story. As usual, I do not own the characters or the plot of The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.
Summary: Ophelia dies in many ways. Only one of them matters. (Ophelia/Hamlet)
Rhinemaid
Ophelia dies by the water, wrapped in garlands of flowers woven by weak and shaking fingers. The water is cold. (She does not feel.)
She is up a tree on the bow that hangs out over the water, swinging her feet to and fro, humming a simple song.
The sunlight is dappled through the trees, casting golden beams down onto the rushing brook. A flower is crushed into her fist, the stem crumpled and sticky. She looks down to see it is a daisy.
The song inside her head twists and mutates into something new. She runs the words over her lips in silence, and then puts them to a tune she knows well. It's one her mother sang to her when she was a child, soft and airy. She lets her eyes slip shut. Doubt thou, the stars are fire; Doubt, that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love.
She swings her legs faster until they are hopelessly at odds with the gentle rhyme of the song, and she has to stop singing. More words flow, silently this time, a mantra of want. I do not doubt, I do not doubt, I do not doubt…
The light shifts out in front of her, almost as if a figure is approaching, cloaked in the sun and wind. His outline is nebulous, growing and shrinking on whim, but it looks like…it appears to be…
Ha! It is Hamlet, it must be. Who else has such a distinct statue, regal yet unassuming? How could she mistake the angles of his frame for another one? He has come back to her to explain these terrible occurrences, to assure her that it has all been a mistake. Yes, that is it! She smiles and laughs in delight, letting some of the flowers tumble out of her lap and into the bubbling stream.
But as she watches his approaching form, heart soaring, it shifts yet again, becoming someone shorter, broader, hand clasped over stomach, stooped as if in pain. The figure lets out a groan and before her horrified eyes; he falls, dissolving into nothing.
Her fingers twist with agony into the flowers in her lap, but when she brings them up in her hands, they have turned to weeds; broken, limp, dripping things that hang pitifully off her fingers, staining them green. I do not doubt, I do not doubt, I do…
She screams and then sobs, burying her face into the plants. The tree branch shakes as she wails and curls into herself, the rest of the plant matter slipping away from her and into the stream. And then, suddenly, she is weightless, floating, falling, the sky above her, and perhaps I will see him, just one more time, to say-
She doubts no more.
She holds the newborn babe to her breast, singing gently as tears threaten to escape the confines of her eyes. But she will not let them. She has cried too much of late, over someone who will never hear her, who will never respond. She steels her heart to stone; she has other things to worry about, other things to delight in, such as the bundle in her arms. The child flails, cooing softly to itself and in its eyes she can see its father. They are sharp, intelligent eyes, but distanced, as if a whole other world is filling the space between its face and hers. Hamlet t'was the same, she thinks, a dreamer, a lover, lost in waking worlds of the imagination. She clutches her child tighter, as if to save it from a similar fate, and presses her lips to its forehead. Not you, oh never you, I would die before I let you slip away.
She has been waiting here for years. Nay, just one, but it weighs upon my heart as a thousand. And you said a woman's love is brief? She stayed to wait for the child to be born, away from the corruption and deception of court. Now she lingers on, not leaving, but not waiting, because she has realized there is nothing left to wait for. He is not coming.
Of course she heard the news of Prince Hamlet's death, but was not pierced by grief. It was all part of the overarching plot. She would die first, him second, and then they would abscond in secrecy, leaving behind the rotting garden that was Denmark. He had begged of her to do this, to trust him in his endeavor, and she had agreed.
Get thee to a nunnery!
And now here she is, standing in a cold stone tower of the sister's house overlooking the rolling hills and shadowed vales of Denmark, sheltering her babe from the nipping wind. She will wait here six months more, in hope, in loyalty, in desperation, before she flees. Six months more. She will not be a poor depiction of Gertrude.
But she cannot be Ophelia.
There is a madness to the method. What had he said?
We are arrant knaves all: believe none of us.
But oh, now she sees, she sees.
"He is dead and gone, lady, he is dead and gone," she sings and flings a flower up into the air, arms spinning. "At his head a grass-green turf, at his heels a stone." She follows the line of song with a dance, round and round in a circle, as he, they, once danced with her. Both gone.
She dances out of the main hall, but only to lose the two guards dogging her every step. She turns them about in the cold stone hallways, and she arrives back at the start, alone. The queen and king are still there. She skips in.
And there sits King Claudius, appearing so concerned. Her father helped this man, for he thought it was his duty. And she in turn did hers. But I t'was only a pawn, a fool. So let me be a fool now, shall I? Let me fool you.
"O, how the wheel becomes it! It is the false steward that stole his master's daughter." She sees his face pale, his frame become deathly still, and she knows she's got him. Yes, I know, your Majesty. I know. She twirls around, and laughs in surprise at the familiar face that greets her. When did Laertes arrive here?
But it doesn't matter. It's all drawing to a close anyway. The final acts are upon them.
They are talking, speaking of things that have no worth. Pretty Ophelia! She dances around the group, back to her brother. How long it's been! She smiles and is disappointed when he does not return it. Instead his face is ceased with lines. Tears run down one cheek.
"There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember," she whispers, taking his shaking hands into her own and pressing flowers to his fingers. She does not want to see him hurt so. "And there is pansies. That's for thoughts." She stretches onto her tip-toes to press a kiss to his wet cheek. He tastes like salt.
But there are still more to give out. She closes his unwilling hands into a fist around the flowers and leaves him for the King. The man is a statue, pale eyes wide at her approach. She picks a few flowers out of her bunch. "There's fennel for you, and columbines," she says, and shoves them into his veined hands. She watches in carefully concealed glee at the emotions that flicker over his face: first pride, then comprehension, then anger. She moves quickly onward to avoid his wrath. "There's rue for you; and here's some for me," she calls and presents the Queen with a single stem, who takes it gingerly. She slides the other behind her own ear.
It is time for her to take her leave. The court stands before her, the brook behind. Or is it the other way?
"And of all Christian souls, I pray God. God be with you," she sings softly, and skips for the exit.
Perhaps she hears a name being called behind her? Ophelia!
A pretty name, she decides, but does not turn back to see who it might belong to. The brook is calling.
(And perhaps this is the most famous one, the most well-known.)
She sobs salt water tears as she sings, a smile breaking across her cheeks. The flowers are bunched up in her arms, daisies and pansies and rosemary, that's for remembrance. She slips down the muddy bank to splash into the stream and cries out at the cold, bone deep and bright, but the sound gives way to laughter. She can feel it, she can feel it all, and so she gives into the water, lets the gentle current rock her in a lullaby.
And there is a choice, there has always, will always, be a choice. To breathe or not to breathe, that is the question. She inhales, sucking water up into her nose, opening her lips to let it fill her throat. It burns, and the heat causes her body to react violently, to try and expel the liquid invading her lungs. But mind over matter, as he once said. He taught her so much. So many things she did not wish to know. How should I your true love know from another one?
And will he not come again? And will he not come again? No, no, he is dead: Go to thy death-bed, He will never come again.
But the choice to not swim is much easier, so she sinks.
Ophelia dies by the water, wrapped in garlands of flowers woven by weak and shaking fingers. (It is the only death that counts.)