of ladies most deject and wretched

[chariestmaid]

The first feeling is fury. When Ophelia wakes from a warbling, uncertain dream like the reedy call of a recorder, there are tears in her eyes, but she can tell they're tears of anger. Ophelia would always cry, whenever she tried to argue on her own behalf, always broke down and bit her tongue before she got another word in. But if something saddened her, she could never summon tears. Her father didn't believe her because of it — she doubted her own feelings, doubted they counted if she couldn't express them appropriately. Hamlet could, he could swear his love with all the holy vows of heaven, before he ripped up his own words and threw them back at her.

And now her father’s left her, to weep herself to sleep. All propriety, all decorum left with him, not that it was been enough to cover her. He put his jacket on her shoulders instead of his arm, and turned his back to her, to go with the king.

Fury fades, and what remains is a drowsy numbness, a sense of wrongness as she sees herself as if from the outside: a missing cog in a breaking-down machine. What should she be feeling now? Ophelia doesn't know.

Hamlet was right, she thinks. She wasn't made to live in a court. She should have been a convent girl. She should have worn a veil, so no man could ever see her face, nor smear the paintings from it.  The chariest maid, her brother once said, is prodigal enough if she unmask her beauty to the moon. She keeps her eyes down, lest the moon catch her crying, or her angry tears unmask her.

When she looks up again, she's still clutching her father's jacket, thinking of the shame she'll bring when she's found out of doors. How did she come to be in these woods? It’s a quiet relief, after the stone walls of Elsinore, to see so much green.

Comments

[chariestmaid]

"I love my father dearly, but," she doesn't know why it's easier to tell him than to admit it in the silence of her own heart, "he is not always easy to like."

[sagramore]

He nods. It probably wouldn't be right to say he neither likes nor loves Ophelia's father. "He has a great many expectations for thee."

[chariestmaid]

You do not understand yourself so clearly it behoves my daughter and your honor -- There's a burning like a live coal in her chest, in her throat. She doesn't dare speak through it. So she nods.

[sagramore]

"He can't see thee here," he says, as he said to Laertes. "Thou canst be what thou wouldst."

[chariestmaid]

"What would I be?" she asks, not of him, but because she feel as if she's forgotten. If I were not a prince, I would be a player. Not only for kings, but for crowds of common people. Hamlet said that to her once, and what did she say in response? She mumbled something about scholarship, about how much she loved to read, and he promised her to write her everything he learned while he was at school.

[sagramore]

"Thou wilt have time to learn for thyself, and try what thou wilt. Thou needst not know now. The future is open to thee."

[chariestmaid]

“My brother,” she says suddenly, as the thought comes to her and wrenches her heart, “will be disappointed. I did not heed his advice.” And now she’s become such a pitiful woman she doesn’t know who she is without the man that she loves. Laertes always told her this would happen, that Hamlet would leave her.

[sagramore]

He reaches for her hands, then, taking them urgently so he can look her in the eyes. "Thou hast never disappointed thy brother. Never."

[chariestmaid]

It's the urgency in his eyes that holds her in place. She can feel herself approaching some frenzy, snatches of old tunes floating through her head -- she could scream, she could thrash away Sagramore's hands and tear at her hair, but somehow she doesn't. Tears prick at her eyes, but her voice when she speaks is calm and even. "He knows it not. He bade me weight what loss my honor could sustain, and I did not." And if Laertes knew -- as Hamlet knew -- that her virtue was false, he'd know she had no honor left to lose. The advice came too late for Ophelia not to listen to Hamlet's songs, not to fall for him and lose her heart. Then up he rose and donn'd his clo'es and dupp'd the chamber door ... let in the maid, that out a maid never departed more ... "Whatever shame comes to our family now will be mine alone."

[sagramore]

"Even so, I swear to thee. He loves thee as thou art, known and unknown, with honor or none."

[chariestmaid]

There's so much more she could say, and it weighs on her tongue, blocking her throat and making it harder to breathe. Was this how Hamlet felt? While the King held court, and the Queen watched him, waiting for him to hide his grief. It was so easy for others to hide. They often spoke of it together, in their secret meetings, how the world was made to be easy for people not like them.

She loves him still. She loves her father still -- why does every love she holds have to hurt? She wants to love her brother, at least, in a way that's uncomplicated, uncolored by shame. "Thou hast come to know him well," she surmises. Or he would not speak with such confidence.

[sagramore]

"I hope I have. I've listened to him speak of thee, and I know he bitterly regrets that he sought to make of thee the daughter thy father wanted and not the woman thou art. He tried to shape himself that way too, and he knows now how unhappy he was. He regrets bending thee towards the same unhappiness. He longs for thee to know the freedom of this place and make for thyself a life that pleases thee and brings thee joy."

[chariestmaid]

"The prince called me false," she murmurs. "In front of my father and the king. I told him not we were listened upon, and for that, he slandered me as worse as maiden has ever been slandered." Do either of them care, Polonius or the king? It felt as though they both forgot in their schemes about what next to do with Hamlet. But if her honor is a thing so trifling, why had Ophelia fought so hard to preserve it all her life, why did she endure so much guilt at being breached? It's Hamlet's trick, to hint at things he can deny later. "Yet I love him still."

[sagramore]

Sagramore lets out a slow breath. He knows well enough what it is to love a man who, when provoked, can turn vindictive, who knows the soft spots of your underbelly and feels no shame for kicking them in a rage. He knows what it is to love that kind of man even after you've seen the worst of the cruelty. "We're not so different, then."

[chariestmaid]

"How can that be?" Her tone is frank and curious, neither a call to self-pity nor an accusation of lying.

[sagramore]

"Ere I came here I loved a man who used me not well. My blood brother, my brother in arms, the man who saved my life, and I would have laid it down for him again gladly, but he had no pride in me. I thought him the great love of my life before I met thy brother."

[chariestmaid]

He had no pride in me. Had she ever challenged Hamlet before, to take pride in her? Wasn't the whole farce a challenge, to see whether Hamlet would take back his letters, would confess he loved her in front of an audience? I lied to him. She knows she did. But the fact remains, with her father, the king, and the queen all approving the match, Hamlet chose to deny her. Some knot untangles in her chest, to hear someone speak that particular pain.

[sagramore]

"It's a lonely thing to be always waiting for a man who may love thee one day and despise thee the next, and I think the loneliness makes it worse. It makes thee his sole protector and the one who must defend him to everyone else. It means--" A little sigh. "When he hurts thee, thou explainest it away, because it would be disloyal to do otherwise."