Ophelia and the Baker's Daughter
A previous entry:
Hamlet did not make the fair Ophelia mad. She did it to her ownself when she cleft her heart from her reason and thus bereft herself from herself. That action, in denying Hamlet, that was what that did it.
It came to me out of the blue - additional support for my take on things - mark you this: "They say the owl was a baker's daughter. Lord, we know what we are but know not what we may be." 4.5.42-44 This statement by Ophelia is in reference to a folk-tale in which a baker's daughter refused bread to the begging Jesus, who turned her into an owl. The Arden Shakespeare mentions that, "it is not clear why Ophelia should allude to this, though Edwards points out that it is a story of transformation; Jenkins (LN) suggests and allusion to the loss of virginity, and Hibbard cites Dent, who provides a 1555 reference to bakers daughters and such other poore whores' (B54.1)" however, I agree with none of them. It's not merely transformation or the loss of her virginity that she is alluding to, but that she denied her love, Hamlet, like the baker's daughter denied Jesus, (her love & support would've been like bread to a starving man,) and thus she was transformed by her own doing from sensible to senseless. The second line - Lord we know what we are but know not what we may be - that is just a reference to the fact that just a few short months ago she would not have believed that she could ever fall into madness. Perhaps the concept would've been as strange to her as the idea that one could be transformed into an owl.
Hamlet did not make the fair Ophelia mad. She did it to her ownself when she cleft her heart from her reason and thus bereft herself from herself. That action, in denying Hamlet, that was what that did it.
It came to me out of the blue - additional support for my take on things - mark you this: "They say the owl was a baker's daughter. Lord, we know what we are but know not what we may be." 4.5.42-44 This statement by Ophelia is in reference to a folk-tale in which a baker's daughter refused bread to the begging Jesus, who turned her into an owl. The Arden Shakespeare mentions that, "it is not clear why Ophelia should allude to this, though Edwards points out that it is a story of transformation; Jenkins (LN) suggests and allusion to the loss of virginity, and Hibbard cites Dent, who provides a 1555 reference to bakers daughters and such other poore whores' (B54.1)" however, I agree with none of them. It's not merely transformation or the loss of her virginity that she is alluding to, but that she denied her love, Hamlet, like the baker's daughter denied Jesus, (her love & support would've been like bread to a starving man,) and thus she was transformed by her own doing from sensible to senseless. The second line - Lord we know what we are but know not what we may be - that is just a reference to the fact that just a few short months ago she would not have believed that she could ever fall into madness. Perhaps the concept would've been as strange to her as the idea that one could be transformed into an owl.