Ophelia AO5

Question 1

1500’s-1600’s trend

Answer 1

madness was idyllic, in a pretty and fairy-like manner

Question 2

Romantic trend

Answer 2

focus on the uncomfortable reality of her death

Question 3

Hazlitt (Romantic)

Answer 3

‘a flower too soon faded’

Question 4

Jameson (Romantic)

Answer 4

‘Poor Ophelia!’

‘Oh, far too soft, too good, too fair (…) and fall and bleed upon the thorns of life!’

Question 5

Ellen Terry’s Ophelia (19th C Victorian)

Answer 5

more angular and disturbing presentation of madness (instead of pretty)

Question 6

Feminist trend

Answer 6

focus on male control in family dynamics + from Hamlet

Question 7

modern (second wave feminism) trend

Answer 7

more focus on Ophelia, as a victim of male power

Question 8

Peter Hall’s Hamlet RSC production (20thC)

Answer 8

Glenda Jackson’s Ophelia had no sympathy from Hamlet or her father, she cracked under pressure

Question 9

Matthew Warchus’s RSC production of Hamlet (late 20th C)

Answer 9

Ophelia spills pills on the stage in her madness scene.

she takes pills throughout the play, pointing to her distress

Question 10

Linda Welshimer Wagner (modern 20th-21st C)

Answer 10

‘there is no question that he has used her calculatingly’

‘providing a convenient hinge for several of Hamlet’s analytical scenes, and of providing the emotional impact for the audience’

Question 11

Lacan (20th C)

Answer 11

‘she is linked forever, for centuries to the figure of Hamlet’

‘woman is a gap or a silence, the invisible and unheard sex’