Neither Accident nor Intent: Contextualizing the Suicide of Ophelia

South Atlantic Modern Language Association

Neither Accident nor Intent: Contextualizing the Suicide of OpheliaAuthor(s): Barbara SmithSource: South Atlantic Review, Vol. 73, No. 2 (Spring 2008), pp. 96-112Published by: South Atlantic Modern Language AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27784781 .

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Neither Accident nor Intent: contextualizing the

Suicide of Ophelia

Barbara Smith College of Mount Saint Vincent

"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and

that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philoso

phy. All the rest?whether or not the world has three dimen

sions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories? comes afterwards." (Camus 3)

Wh en the priest at Ophelia's funeral expresses his reluctance to pro vide her with full burial rites, Laertes angrily responds, "A minist'ring

angel shall my sister be" (5.1.241).1 While this is a theologically naive

position?human beings do not become angels?it presents an alter

native view to that implied by the priest: Ophelia is not damned as a

suicide and will reside in heaven. The exchange ends there, but the

issue of suicide2 is raised at several points in the drama. In fact, the

morality and consequences of suicide are discussed thematically in

Hamlet as they are in no other Shakespearean play. Hamlet himself contemplates and rejects the idea, regretting the

divine sanction against "self-slaughter" (1.2.132) and dreading the

unknown "from whose bourn no traveler returns" (3.1.78-79). But

someone has returned, and though not a suicide, his father died with

out religious rites, as suicides must, and so suffers the fires of purga

tory "for a certain term" (1.5.10). Suicides suffer the far worse fate of

eternal damnation. Are we to assume this is Ophelia's fate or will she, as Laertes asserts, go to heaven? Her death, says the priest, was

"doubtful," that is, a possible suicide, but surprisingly, this finding does

not take into account the crucial mitigating factor of madness, a mad

ness brought about by the psychological realities of Ophelia's exis

tence as they are carefully limned in the drama. I hold that while mad

ness is not the cause of Ophelia's suicide, the play, sympathetic to

Ophelia's mental state, rejects the simplistic rigidity7 of canon and civil



South Atlantic Review 97

law, and allows Ophelia salvation.

The propensity toward suicide is embedded in the textually revealed

strata of Ophelia's personality, shaped by her father and to a lesser

extent by her brother. Despite his neglect of her psychological needs,

Ophelia regards Polonius as a wise protector and moral compass whose demands for submission and compliance, especially in light of

her own perceived inadequacy, must be heeded. But carefully pro

grammed into her psyche by Polonius is the fear of autonomy and sex

uality so that Ophelia is unable to navigate her own way once the "pro tective" custody of her father is unavailable to her. These fears and

this inability propel Ophelia toward a suicide that is neither accidental

nor intentional. This essay explores that apparent paradox.

I. The Erosion of Wit and Will

In the atmosphere of intrigue, suspicion, and treachery that per vades Elsinore, Ophelia's perceptions and expectations which would

otherwise have been valid and realistic, turn out to be misplaced. They are dismissed and shattered by her brother and father, whose opinions, for the wrong reasons, carry weight. For example, Ophelia's percep tions about Hamlet's feelings for her, which her father deems infantile

and foolish, are borne out: "I did love you once" (3.1.114) and "I lov'd

Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers / Could not with all their quantity of love / Make up my sum" (5.1.269-271). The viability of marriage to Hamlet so vehemently repudiated by Laertes and Polonius is later

affirmed by Gertrude: "I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's

wife. / I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid, / And not

have strew'd thy grave" (5.1.243-45). Under the pressure of irrespon sible paternal demands and because of the larger political issues unbe

knownst to her, Ophelia's faith in love and sincerity is crushed. She

knows nothing of Hamlet's conversation with the Ghost in which

Claudius is exposed, and so cannot begin to understand Hamlet's tor

ment. He has not confided in her about his anger at and condemna

tion of Gertrude's "incest," and so she is shocked and confused by the

accusations of disloyalty and "wantonness" he displaces onto her. The

already unbearable loss of her father is exacerbated by the mystery sur

rounding his death. Deprived of the information that would help

explain if not palliate Hamlet's bizarre behavior and harsh rejection of

her and concretize Polonius' death and disappearance, Ophelia experi ences an unsustainable amount of anxiety. The reality she experiences



98 Barbara Smith

is murky and overwhelming. The loss of her father?her link to emotional security7 once she can

no longer trust in her own perceptions?is the final, fatal assault on

her tenuous mental stability7 and survival instinct. The issues of per

ceptual and emotional dissonances, lover's rejection, paternal loss, and

the deprivation of knowledge with which Ophelia struggles through out the play, combine explosively, engendering?pitiably but not sur

prisingly?madness and suicide.

In her songs, Ophelia for the first time gives voice to and interprets her own thoughts, now possible for her because her affect life is such

a void that social restraints no longer have inhibiting power. She sings a bawdy song of lost virginity and painful double-standard, exactly those issues that were the subjects of Laertes and Polonius' warning, and on which she has unconsciously fixated and fantasized.

Tomorrow is Saint Valentine's day, All in the morning betime, And I a maid at your window, To be your Valentine.

Then up he rose, and donned his clo'es, And dupp'd the chamber door, Let in the maid, that out a maid

Never departed more.

[...]

By Gis and by Saint Charity, Alack and fie for shame!

Young men will do't, if they come to't;

by Cock, they are to blame. (4.5.48-55; 58-61) A "maid," i.e., "virgin" (Schmidt 680) positioning herself at her lover's

window so that upon rising he will see her, adopts the "custom of the

first girl seen by a man on the morning of [St. Valentine's Day] being considered his Valentine or true love" (Halliwell qtd. in Furness 333). But when she enters the chamber of her would-be true love and has

sex with him believing that they will be married, unrevealed to her at

the time, his attitude toward her changes. Despite the maid's assertion

that "young men" are to blame, it is she who suffers the consequences of rejection:

Quoth she, 'Before you tumbled me, You promis'd

me to wed.'

(He answers.)




'So would I 'a' done, by yonder sun,

An thou hadst not come to my bed.' (4.5.62-66)

Ostensibly the promise would have been kept except for her accept ance of his invitation to enter his chamber and engage in sex, but just as likely is the possibility that the young man never intended to marry

her, his "promise" being no more than a cheap but successful seduc

tion scheme. The sexual double standard leaves him with impunity,

unfazed, but ruins her. That Ophelia identifies with the maid of the

song is more than likely due to 1. Laertes' caution, "[. . .] weigh what

loss your honor may sustain / If with too credent ear you list his songs

/[...] or your chaste treasure open" (1.3.29-31); 2. Hamlet's change of attitude and rejection: "I lov'd you not" (3.1.118), his sexual innu

endo: "That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs" (3.2.118-119), and the dashing of any hopes that she, like the maid, had of marriage: "I say we will have no moe marriage" (3.1.147); and 3. Polonius' cyni

cal, lengthy diatribe on his belief that when men feel lust, they will say

anything to seduce a woman: Their "vows," uttered in the heat of the

moment, "You must not take for fire" (1.3.120). Polonius, unlike the

persona in the Valentine song does not place the burden of blame on

the man for his duplicity, but rather on his daughter for her gullibility. The bawdy lyrics of the Saint Valentine's Day song suggest her inter

nalization of Hamlet's accusations; his lewd treatment of her; the fear

of male lust inculcated by all three men in her life; the pain and humil

iation caused by her love and credence in Hamlet's "holy vows"; and

her sexual feelings for Hamlet who, like the young man in her song, has abandoned her.

The sexual double standard was a significant contributive factor in

women's social and psychological vulnerability (Skultans 77). This dou

ble standard assumes that premarital or extra-marital sex is a mild

offense and pardonable for men. That Polonius subscribes to this dou

ble standard is indicated in his instructions to Reynaldo before dis

patching him to spy on Laertes:

Pol: [. . .] put on him

What forgeries you please: marry, none so rank

As may dishonor him, take heed of that, But sir, such wanton, wild, and usual slips As are companions noted and most known

To youth and liberty.



100 Barbara Smith

Rev: As gaming, my lord.

Pol: Ay, or drinking, fencing, swearing, quarreling,

Drabbing [i.e., whoring]?you may go so far.

(2.1.19-26) But for a woman premarital sex is ruinous. The idea that women are

the property of men and that their value as commodities decreases

enormously if they are thought to be unchaste accounts not only for

the socially-constructed double standard, but also for "women's

alleged proneness to nervous disorders" (Skultans 78). Claudius, who

surmised that Ophelia's mad utterances are a "Conceit upon her

father" (4.5.45) is correct, for the presence of sexual thought and

desire which Ophelia had been taught to repress is for her a betrayal of her father who had so emphasized the importance of chastity. She

associates Polonius with purity: "White his shroud as the mountain

snow"; "His beard was white as snow, / [All] flaxen was his pole"

(4.5.36, 195-96) perhaps in contrast to her own impure thoughts. In

her second appearance in this scene, her songs focus only on her

father's death. She refers to his corpse lovingly as "my dove" (4.5.168), and reveals her unconscious death wish in relation to the void caused

by Polonius' death:

And will 'a not come again? And will 'a not come again?

No, no, he is dead

Go to thy death-bed

He never will come again. (4.5.190-194)

Interesting because ambiguous and inconsistent is her use of the

imperative "Go to thy death-bed." In the fourth line of her song

Ophelia shifts to the second person pronoun and imperative form.

Consistent in person and form would have been "Gone to his death

bed," but instead she substitutes "Go" for "Gone" and "thy" for "his."

She is not reporting a death, but commanding one. Whom is she com

manding to die? Polonius had already been buried as she knows: "And

in his grave rain'd many a tear" (4.5.167). Why this shift in person and

form? Because this command is meant for herself. The fact that she

must face the world alone sinks in. Ophelia's utterance, "No, no, he is

dead / Go to thy deathbed" provides us with the primary motivation

for her suicide and a glimpse into the dichotomous thinking that pre ceded it. The guilt-ridden Ophelia believes that rejected by her lover, and more significantly, bereft of her father, death is her only option.




According to the prevailing religious and cultural beliefs, there

would be no hope of salvation for a suicide. Hamlet, however, has a

morality that transcends social and religious convention.

The sections that follow take up, in order, these topics regarding the

religious, common law, and moral aspects of Ophelia's drowning: 1.

the omission of the Elizabethan emphasis on diabolic agency in sui

cide in connection with Ophelia's death; 2. the reason that despite the

fact that most Christian theologians of the early modern period and

before are consistent in their absolute condemnation of suicide,

Shakespeare presents alternative points of view, i.e., those of the coro

ner, Laertes, and, albeit indirectly, Hamlet; 3. why the gravediggers

attempt to analyze the legalities of the coroner's ruling; 4. why non-com

pos mentis, recognized in the law as a mitigating factor, was generally

ignored in practice and absent from the ruling on Ophelia's drowning; and 5. what moral position the play takes on Ophelia's suicide.

II. Diabolic Agency in Madness and Suicide

The prevalent religious and cultural attitudes toward suicide that

informed early modern English sensibilities, in this play, also apply to

the religion and culture of Denmark. Christian theologians and

preachers agreed that those who take their own lives are damned, and

for many, suicide was literally diabolical. Richard Greenham asserted

that "Satan doth make many now adais" succumb to misery, "make an

end of themselves and hasten their own death," an act which instead

of ending the suicides' torments, makes them eternal in hell (239). And Richard Gilpin wrote in 1677 that Satan seeks the ruin of our

bodies and souls, and tempts us often to self-destruction. He then list

ed eight ways the devil tempts people to suicide including exacerbat

ing their discontent, then offering death as the sole remedy; and draw

ing on self-destruction as a cure for despair, a troubled conscience, and

a wounded spirit (108-116). For Martin Luther, the devil causes seem

ing suicides by intervention, especially those induced by madness

which is never "natural" because it is always caused by demonic pos session.3

The fear of diabolic inducement to madness and death is expressed

by Horatio when Hamlet declares that he will follow the ghost. Horatio cautions him:

What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord, Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff



102 Barbara Smith

That beetles o'er his base into the sea,

And there assume some other horrible form

Which might deprive your sovereignty- of reason,

And draw you into madness? (1.4.69-74) Hamlet later agrees that "The spirit that I have seen / May be a [dev'l]"

(2.2.598-99) disposing him to murder. Hamlet, desiring to be sure that

his own action?that of avenging his father's murder by killing Claudius?is righteous and self-driven, must have "grounds / More

relative" (2.2.603-04) than an accusation by a possible devil.

M. D. Faber rightly asserts that the conflict between "accidental"

death as implied by Gertrude's description and "doubtful" death as

stated by the priest skirts the issue of Ophelia's mental condition. He

speculates on why Ophelia's madness is not discussed in relation to her

suicide: her madness was not the type "which automatically excused

self-murderers from punishment according to Christian doctrine"

because it was caused not by diabolical agency, but by overwhelming

grief. This distinction, he claims, would be perceived by Elizabethans:

"her madness is produced by grief, not Satan, and takes a form which

could hardly have spoken to Elizabethans of vexing demons" (105). Andrew Dickson White disagrees with Faber's distinction in noting that all forms of madness were considered to be produced by Satan:

"Martin Luther maintained that 'Satan produces all the maladies which

afflict mankind'" including madness which, to the vast majority of the

populace, until the end of the seventeenth century, was always diabol

ically generated (2).4 John Calvin disregards grief and indicates that

without diabolic possession no one would ever resort to suicide (Watt

469). Faber concludes that the characters in Hamlet "remain conspicu

ously silent about Ophelia's mental condition" because they would

have realized that without diabolic causation she would not be "cus

tomarily excused" from the penalties of suicide (105).5 The problem with Faber's theory is threefold. Mental derangement was for the gen eral population and some theologians always the work of the devil.

Satanically-induced suicides were not as Faber asserts, "customarily

excused." Faber is right in that any mention of madness in connection

with Ophelia's suicide is conspicuously absent from the text,6 but this

is not because it would incriminate her. As will be shown below, her

madness is de-emphasized for reasons that bear not on her criminali

ty, but on the need to stress the psychological reality7 that led to her sui

cide. Faber is right too in that diabolic influence plays no part in




Ophelia's madness or suicide, but not for the reason he gives. No ref

erence to the devil exists because it is important to understand that the

horrors she experienced did not unaccountably spring from occult ori

gins. They were caused by human agency, by the profound negative effects on her psyche perpetrated not by Satan, but by those closest to

her.7

Neither St. Augustine nor St. Thomas Aquinas speaks of diabolic

intervention, but both categorically condemn suicide. For St.

Augustine self-murder precludes salvation (I, 25-26) and St. Thomas

argues that suicide is always a mortal sin not only in that it goes against God who controls life and death, but also because it is against nature

and charity, and damages the community (2a2se64, 5).8 In keeping with

traditional religious practice, Ophelia's death receives harsh ecclesiasti

cal disapproval: "She should in ground unsanctified been lodg'd / Till

the last trumpet; for charitable prayers, / [Shards,] flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her (5.1.229-231)9 and "We should profane the

service of the dead / To sing a requiem [. . .]" (5.1.236-237). The pos

sibility of damnation is not discussed directly, but is implied by the

priest when he contrasts Ophelia with "peace-parted souls" (5.1.238). Yet the priest, at Claudius' intervention, reluctantly provides a

Christian burial, although with abridged obsequies (5.1.226-234). The

priest's statements regarding Ophelia's burial rites might themselves

have served as an explanation of the play's attitude toward Ophelia's suicide. But Shakespeare included a far more detailed discussion on

this subject, one that is comic yet based on historical precedent, both

of which highlight the differences between accidental and intentional

death.

III. Intent, Accident, or Insanity?

The gravediggers provide the audience with the conflicting issues

of the case, including the irrelevant issue of self-defense and the rele

vant possibility of accidental drowning: /. Clo. Is she to be buried in Christian burial when

she willfully seeks her own salvation?

2. Clo. I tell thee she is, therefore make her grave.

straight. The crowner hath sate on her, and finds it

Christian burial [. . .] /. Clo. How can that be, unless she drown'd her

self in her own defense? (5.1.1-7)



104 Barbara Smith

The first clown is right to question the coroner's ruling to allow a

Christian burial. The coroner's finding is in opposition to the coroner's

"[injquest law" (5.1.22) disallowing burial in consecrated ground for

suicides. Puzzled, the clown cites self-defense as the only justification for self-murder. The question seems senseless because the coroner did

not make a self-defense finding, and while self-defense excuses homi

cide, there is no such defense for suicide. Yet the second clown con

firms his original statement: "Why, 'tis found so," (5.1.8) that is, the

coroner found for Christian burial despite the law. The first clown tries

to make sense of the coroner's finding seemingly by answering his

own question affirmatively: "It must be [se offendendo], it cannot be else"

(5.1.9). "Se offendendo" is glossed by editors and critics as a blunder for

se defendendo, & term used in verdicts of justifiable homicide.10 But se

defendendo is inconsistent with the clowns' conclusion that Ophelia's social status and not self-defense accords her Christian burial:

2. Go. Will you ha' the truth on it? If this had not

been a gentlewoman, she should have been buried out

a' Christian burial.

/. Go. Why, there thou say'st, and the more pity that great folk should have count'nance in this world to

drown or hang themselves, more than their even

Christen. (5.1.23-29)

Additionally, when read in the context of the clowns' dialogue that fol

lows, se defendendo is clearly the wrong term, inconsistent with the first

clown's explanation of willful (intentional) drowning. He provides an

example of a man wTho deliberately seeks out water with which to

drown himself as opposed to a man who accidentally drowns because

the water overtakes him; we may presume that he means through nat

ural disasters. His explanation supports the appropriateness of the

term he coins, se offendendo: 1. Go. Give me leave. Here lies the water; good.

Here stands the man; good. If the man go to this water

and drown himself, it is, will he, nill he, he goes, mark

you that. But if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself [. . .]. (5.1.15-19)

He (Clo. 1) concludes, "[. . .] he that is not guilty of his own death

shortens not his own life" (5.1.19-20), that is, one who drowns in a

storm or flood (the wTater coming to him) is not guilty, but one who

shortens one's own life by seeking out wTater and drowning (as in




Ophelia's case according to the clown) is guilty of one's own death

(hence the felo de se [self-murder] verdict required by the inquest law). He "offends" himself by taking his own life; he does nothing in self

defense. "Se offendendo" is fitting since the self-murderer is both the

perpetrator and victim of the crime.

R. S. Guernsey provides "literal extracts" from the case of Hales v.

Petit Plowden, asserting that the issues of the case are so similar to

those of Ophelia's that Shakespeare had to be familiar with them.11 In

the extract,

Lord Brown of the Court said: "Sir James Hales was dead, and how came he to his death? It may be answered by drown

ing?and who drowned him? Sir James Hales?and when did

he drown him? In his life time. So that Sir James Hales being alive caused Sir James Hales to die! And the act of the living man was the death of the dead man. And then for this offence it is reasonable to punish the living man who committed the

offence, and not the dead man. But how can he be said to be

punished alive when the punishment comes after his death."

Lord Chief Justice Dyer said among the things to be con

sidered were: "1. The quality of the offence of Sir James Hales.

2. To whom the offence is committed. 3. What shall he forfeit?"

(10-11; emphasis added) The finding was that Hales' property would be forfeited in relation to

his act, "the throwing of himself into the water" (11). Note that the

word "offence" is used four times in the proceedings that likely pro vided the model for the first clowTn's explanation. The term presumed to be the correct one by editors, se defendendo, would be the wrong term

to describe what the clown says in reference to one who, like Ophelia, does nothing to save herself; it contradicts the "gentlewoman" ration

ale; and it is the wrong term for the crime of suicide, since it is appli cable only to homicide. The clown is a low character, comic, and

sometimes (as below) simplistic, but more often clever and right. Lest

we think him too knowledgeable for a gravedigger/clown, he muddles

his explanation of voluntary death. At the time of the hearing of the

Hales case, a "Sergeant Walsh argued that the act of suicide consisted

of three parts," the imagination (pre-meditation on the method), the

decision to do it, and the execution (Guernsey 10). The clown misses

the distinctions between the steps of this procedure when he declares,

"[. .

.] an act hath three branches?it is to act, to do, to perform"



106 Barbara Smith

(5.1.11-12), offering only synonyms rather than describing a process. He cannot recite the analysis of the act, but deft with words and puns, he creates an opposite to se defendendo. If one insists on attempting to

understand suicidal motivations in terms of binary oppositions, then

se offendendo is the only applicable choice. As is the case with so many of Shakespeare's scenes of "comic relief," the gravediggers illuminate

a larger issue of the play. Shakespeare makes the problem of attempt

ing to force complex psychological behaviors (especially those com

mitted in madness) into terms of blanket legal and moral absolutism

comically manifest.

Gertrude's account of Ophelia's drowning presented conflicting details:

There is a willow grows askaunt the brook, That shows his hoary leaves in the glassy stream,

Therewith fantastic garlands did she make

Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,

But our cull-cold maids do dead men's fingers call them.

There on the pendant boughs her crownet weeds

Clamb'ring to hang, an envious sliver broke, When down her weedy trophies and herself

Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide, And mermaid-like awhile they bore her up, Which time she chaunted snatches of old lauds, As one incapable of her own distress, Or like a creature native and indued

Unto that element. But long it could not be

Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay To muddy death. (4.7.166-82)

In a state of despondency and madness, Ophelia put herself in a pre carious position by climbing a tree to hang garlands, then fell into the

brook when "an envious sliver broke" (4.7.173), suggesting accidental

death.12 But Ophelia did nothing to save herself despite the fact that

she had time to do so (the time spent "chaunt[ing] snatches of old

lauds" before her clothing became saturated), and so the priest is, like

the clowns, skeptical that her death is accidental. Freud, for a different

reason, would concur. He sees even inadvertent actions, including

falling or slipping, as carrying out an unconscious death wish rather




than as an accident (174). Even a conscious intention of committing suicide chooses its

time, means and opportunity; and it is quite in keeping with

this that an unconscious intention should wait for a precipitating occasion which can take over a part of the causation and, by

engaging the subject's defensive forces, can liberate the inten

tion from their pressure. (181)13 The presence of an unconscious death wish argues against mere acci

dent, but not intent. It is madness that precludes intent (as Burton

asserts below). However, the mitigating factor affecting Ophelia's bur

ial site and "obsequies" is neither accidental death (which is addressed

and rejected by the clowns) nor the fact that she was mad and there

fore not morally responsible, but as the second clown correcdy per

ceives, that she was a "gendewoman." Ophelia's social status alone

accords her interment in consecrated ground, but the privilege stops there.

According to established religious norms, as a suicide Ophelia's fate

in the afterlife is sealed. In the sixteenth century, even when insanity was considered in relation to suicide, it was no excuse. John Case, a

professor at Oxford in 1585 taught that the penalties for suicide pro vided no exception even for children, idiots, or the insane (Sprott 8) and in 1586 Timothy Bright saw no mitigating circumstance, including

melancholia, for self-murder (205). The various points of view regard

ing suicide in general and Ophelia's in particular suggest the inadequa

cy of a unilateral attitude toward suicide, and question the cogency of

the obdurate attitude reflected in canon law. Such dogma is inadequate because it is insensitive and abstract. It considers neither the psycho

logical pressures that induce madness nor the role of madness in sui

cide. Shakespeare does.

Then why, when Ophelia was insane and oblivious according to

Gertrude's account, and with a non compos mentis option in place in the

legal literature was Ophelia held responsible for her death, receiving

only maimed rites? Perhaps the answer lies in the idea that despite the

legal requirement of pre-meditation and sanity for a felo de se verdict,

suicide was so repugnant, that the legalities were ignored (Sprott 2).14 In early modern England, specifically during the years 1500-1660,

"suicide was punished more severely than ever before or afterwards"

(MacDonald and Murphy 75). Despite the difficulty of determining whether a drowning was a suicide, juries often declared drowned bod



108 Barbara Smith

ies, even those of "patent lunatics like Ophelia" to be fe/o de se.

(MacDonald "Ophelia's Maimed Rites" 311-12). There is, however, a much more striking dramatic purpose in de

emphasizing Ophelia's madness in connection with her death. It sug

gests that Ophelia's "doubtful" suicide is not dismissible as the ran

dom, unmotivated act of a lunatic; that there were in fact, plausible reasons embedded in her unconscious for the action she took (or did

not take to save herself); and that we ought to look at them. Her sui

cide is not crazy. It is the outcome of a neglected, fearful psyche con

fronted by impossible demands and unbearable emotional trauma.

And her madness, although different in quality and duration from

Hamlet's, like his, had method in it. Laertes observes: "A document in

madness, thoughts and remembrance fitted" (4.5.179). Madness gave voice to her struggles and played midwife to her suicidality.

IV. An Unconscious Death Wish

Anticipating Freud, Shakespeare's depiction of Ophelia's suicide

shows neither conscious intent (she is mad) nor accidental drowning

(she makes no attempt to rescue herself). Her unconscious suicidal

motivation is indicated by the grammatical shift her song, "Go to thy

deathbed"; and freed of its conscious restraints, it comes to fruition in

her fall. But the critical point is this: Ophelia's suicidal impulse is acted

on only in madness. While both canonical law and the inquest verdict

assert Ophelia's guilt, the play's morality does not. Gertrude's account

of Ophelia's drowning evokes pathos, sadness, and empathy, not con

demnation. These lines are a poignant and lyrical description of a vul

nerable young woman insensible to danger. During the innocent, child-like activities of crafting and draping garlands, she drowns, a

guiltless victim of her own mad oblivion.

The ideas of Robert Burton and John Sym are rare exceptions to

the prevailing attitude. In 1621 and 1637 respectively, they voiced their

views that melancholy and madness should be an extenuating factor in

the condemnation of suicides. However, Shakespeare takes this posi tion earlier, providing evidence of both the psychological turmoil that

preceded Ophelia's suicide and a sympathetic depiction of her mad

ness and subsequent drowning.15 John Sym was a pastor who called for

a distinction between "self-murder" and "self-killing," a term he

applies to the suicides of lunatics, describing the condemnation of

such persons as "inhumane," and calling instead for compassion. He




reasoned too that it followed logically that the insane "cannot in char

ity be denyed...the happiness of salvation" (290-291). Burton was a

radical thinker when in 1621 he suggested that madness or "melan

choly" is a disease and that its presence should temper the censure of

violent behavior toward self or others:

Those hard censures of such as offer violence to their own

persons, or in some desperate fit to others, which sometimes

they doe...are to be mitigated, as in such as are mad, beside

themselves for the time, or founde to have beene long melan

choly, and that in extremity, they know not what they doe,

deprived of reason, judgement, all, as a ship that is void of a

Pilot, must needs impinge upon the next rocke or sands, and

suffer shipwreck. (Burton I. 438) 16

Burton's enlightened view emerges some twenty years after Hamlet'was

written, but Hamlet too is cognizant of madness as a defense against homicide. He invokes exactly that defense when asking forgiveness of

Laertes:

Give me your pardon sir. I have done you

wrong,

[. . .] What I have done

That might your nature, honor, and exception

Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness.

Was't Hamlet wrong'd Laertes? Never Hamlet!

If Hamlet from himself be ta'en away, And when he's not himself does wrong Laertes, Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it.

Who does it then? His madness. (5.2.226; 230-237) If madness can be understood as a defense against homicide, it fol

lows that it should also exculpate the suicide. The "pale cast of

thought" (3.1.84) preventing suicide and the "conscience" that "does

make cowards [of us all]" (3.1.82) were not operative in Ophelia's psy che at the time of her death. Hamlet expresses the play's morality.

Madness, as the "doer," abrogates the guilt, rendering the afflicted per son innocent of wrongdoing.

Ophelia's madness is not mentioned directly in connection with her

death so as not to obscure the psychological validity that underlies her

suicidality while simultaneously serving two other purposes. It at once

enables her suicide?by overriding the hurdles of rational thought and

conscience?and excuses it. Ophelia's suicide is a sad but credible



110 Barbara Smith

response by her own impaired psyche. It invites us to re-examine the

worsening psychological hell brought on by the abuse and neglect she

suffered at the hands of those she loved most. It recalls the damage done by the paternalistic undermining of autonomy and perception that cost a young maid her wits and her life, but?as Laertes asserts

and Hamlet implies in his apology to Laertes?not her soul.

Notes 1 Textual references are to G. Blakemore Evans, Ed. The Riverside Shakespeare. Boston.

1974. 2 The word "suicide" is never used in the play. The earliest usage of the word "suicide"

was in 1651 and was "not in Johnson 1755." The word came to mean either "self

killing" or "self-murder" (OED). In its application to Ophelia's death, I use the word

to mean the former; the latter, unlike "self-killing," denotes intent, maturity, and san

ity (Sym 290-291). 3 "I know many [. . .] instances [of suicide], but have commonly supposed the suffer ers to have been killed simply and immediately by the devil, as a traveller is slain by a

robber. For when it is evident that the suicide could not have taken place naturally; when we hear of a string, or a girdle or, [...] of a loose veil [...] we ought, in my opin ion, to conclude it to be some fascination of the devil's, binding the sufferers to sup

pose they are doing something else, for instance, praying,?and then he kills them

[. . .] The crazed, the halt, the blind, and the dumb, are all possessed with demons.

Physicians who treat these infirmities as arising from natural causes are fools, who

know not the mighty power of the devil" (Luther 221). 4 White cites Luther, Martin. Table Talk. Trans. William Hazlitt. London, 1872. 250

256. 5 Luther implies that because the devil is responsible for "unnatural" suicides, clerics

may permit Christian burial: "Let the pastor not be troubled in conscience at having buried the woman who killed herself, if, indeed she did kill herself." However, this was

not the position of all theologians and was not customary. 6 Ophelia's derangement is referred to implicitly in Gertrude's account of Ophelia's

drowning, but missing from all discussions of suicide that follow.

The distinction between diabolic inducement by external means (as in Horatio's

warning) and by possession should be noted. Shakespeare elsewhere uses the concept of madness as diabolical possession, so he was obviously aware of it. He uses it com

ically (as a joke on Malvolio) in Twelfth Night-, Sir Topas "exorcises" the devil ("Sathan")

by whom Malvolio is supposedly possessed (4.2.25-33). 8 Aquinas, Summa Theologian, 64, 5. The Catholic Church has since revised its doctrine.

The Second Edition F^nglish Translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, "Grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or

torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide" (Article 5, I.

"Respect for Human Life: Suicide," 2282). 9 For more on the practice of throwing shards, flints, and pebbles on the corpse see

Martin Puhvel, "The Background of 'Shards, Flints, and Pebbles,' Hamlet, V.i."

English Language Notes, Mar. 78, Vol. 15, Issue 3, 164-167. 1(1

See, e.g., Bevington, The Complete Works of Shakespeare, 1107; Caldecott (quoted in

Furness, ed.), Hamlet, 375; Greenblatt, et. al., The Norton Shakespeare, 1740. 11 Frank Kermode agrees. He glosses V.i. 15-20: "Alluding to a very famous suicide

case, that of Sir James Hales, a judge who drowned himself in 1554 [. . .]" Harold

Jenkins also cites this case, discussing it more fully, and he asserts that Shakespeare's

familiarity with it "seems beyond question" (574). 12 Harold Jenkins sees the breaking of the sliver as the dramatist's refutation of suicide

(546), but he fails to mention Ophelia's troubled psyche at the time of her drowning.




13 Freud, in a letter to James Bransom in 1934, stated that poets perceive unconscious

forces "more strongly than other people" (Jones 457), and granted that "the poets before me discovered the unconscious" (qtd. in Berman 304, note 40). (Berman cites

the long-illusive source of this quotation as Philip R. Lehrman's interview with Freud

in the Hebrew journal, Harofe Haivri 1 [1940]: 161-176). And Freud referred to

Shakespeare as "the greatest" of poets ("Some Character-Types" 313). Harold Bloom

asserted that Shakespeare was Freud's "precursor" (60), that "Freud is essentially

prosified Shakespeare" (371). 14

"[. . .] self-murder was commonly abhorred beyond the plague, confronted by a

thousand-year-old prejudice of society, and condemned in stern propositions of reli

gion, philosophy, and morality" (Sprott 1-2). 15 I do not mean to suggest that Shakespeare was unique in his unorthodox attitude

toward certain suicides. Thomas Kyd, for example, portrays Isabella and Bel-Imperia's suicide in The Spanish Tragedy as admirable and deserving of sympathy rather than con

demnation. 16 De Tegibus et consuetudinibus Anglia credited to Henry de Bracton held (c. 1230) that

madmen cannot commit a felony (including suicide) de se since like brute animals, they are without reason (4:424). However,

the number of surviving manuscripts (over fifty) shows that it circulated

very widely in the thirteen and fourteenth centuries; but has failed to have

a deep and lasting impact because it was written too soon. The compiler was

able to survey the whole of common law with confidence only because it

had not yet become clogged with sophisticated detail [. . .] The obsoles cence of Bracton [. . .] left the common law without systematic exposition for the next five hundred years. (Baker 201-202)

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Baker, J. H. An Introduction of English Legal History. London: Butterworths, 1971.

Berman, Jeffrey. The Talking Cure: Literary Representations of Psychoanalysis. New York:

New York UP, 1985.

Bevington, David, ed. The Complete Works of Shakespeare. 4th ed. New York: Harper Collins, 1992.

Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. New York:

Harcourt Brace & Co., 1994.

Bracton, Henry de. On the Imws and Customs of England. 1579. Trans, and Ed. Samuel

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Bright, Timothy. A Treatise of Melancholy. London, 1586.

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Neither Accident nor Intent: Contextualizing the Suicide of Ophelia