Critique of "'I am myself indifferent honest': Hamlet as Ophelia's Seducer"

CRITIQUE OF ‘“I AM MYSELF INDIFFERENT HONEST”: HAMLET AS OPHELIA’S SEDUCER”

Steven Johnson Northern Highlands Regional High School Scholarly Essay

In his article ‘“I am myself indifferent honest”: Hamlet as Ophelia’s Seducer,” David Buck Beliles argues that Hamlet seduced Ophelia. In order to prove his thesis, he examines Hamlet and Ophelia’s relationship throughout Hamlet chronologically and analyzes their characters and personalities, ultimately synthesizing his claims to suggest that Hamlet seduced Ophelia. While Beliles’s argument has some merit, he weakens his argument by relying on assumptions and circular logic, contradicting himself, failing to refute or acknowledge other interpretations, providing insufficient explanation or evidence, and taking focus away from his thesis, all of which ultimately leave the reader unconvinced of his argument.

Beliles does not thoroughly support his claim that Hamlet’s inability to “carve for himself” (I,iii,23) and his higher status suggest “the possibility” that Hamlet is a sexual adventurer who uses his princely status to seduce women (78). To describe and contextualize Hamlet and Ophelia’s relationship, Beliles begins with Act I, scene iii, in which Laertes and Polonius forbid Ophelia from seeing Hamlet. Since both Laertes and Polonius recognize Hamlet’s inability to select his own wife, Beliles asserts the fact’s significance and claims that it signifies that Hamlet is promiscuous. Unfortunately, Beliles leaves this claim mostly unsubstantiated and does not explain the connection between Hamlet’s inability to choose his own wife and his reputation as a seducer, so this claim does not function as convincing evidence of his thesis. Furthermore, Beliles fails to acknowledge and refute other interpretations of Act I, scene iii. Laertes concedes that even though Hamlet cannot choose his own wife, he may love Ophelia (I, iii, 15-24). Hamlet’s potential love for Ophelia, therefore, may have led him to engage in a romantic relationship with her regardless of his ability to marry her, as opposed to the purely sexual one that Beliles argues. Beliles’s claim is not necessarily wrong, but he does leave it open to rebuttal by failing to explain his claim fully and acknowledge other valid interpretations of this scene.

In addition to lacking sufficient explanation, Beliles contradicts himself in his analysis of Polonius’s conversation

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with Ophelia in Act I, scene iii. Polonius tells Ophelia that she has behaved like a “green girl” and should know better than to trust Hamlet (I, iii, 110-112). Beliles argues that this merely notes that there have been “previous tests” upon Ophelia’s chastity, but it does not suggest that Ophelia is the opposite of the “picture of virtue” (78). While Polonius may have legitimate fears about Hamlet wooing naive Ophelia, Beliles’s assertion of Ophelia’s virtue suggests otherwise, contradicting his thesis that Hamlet seduced Ophelia. Ophelia, in Polonius’s eyes, may have had tests upon her chastity, but this does not conclusively prove Beliles’s claim that Hamlet seduced her; it merely suggests a correlation that Beliles does not support with solid evidence. Moreover, Beliles’s claim that Ophelia is, indeed, virtuous seems to contradict his thesis that Hamlet seduced her.

Beliles also acknowledges the unreliability of Act I, scene iii, for interpreting Hamlet and Ophelia’s relationship, as the audience hears about their relationship indirectly. In the introduction to his article, Beliles explains the “dangers” in interpreting something presented to the audience indirectly (77), but he still relies on that evidence he has told the reader not to trust, using the scene to support his argument. Beliles also credits Act I, scene iii, with setting up Hamlet and Ophelia’s relationship at the beginning of the play (78); however, Laertes and Polonius present Hamlet and Ophelia’s relationship indirectly, and Beliles has warned his audience against trusting this presentation. The reader, now skeptical of this evidence, should be less willing to agree with Beliles’s conclusion. Because of this warning, Beliles has invalidated his own interpretations.

Neither is Beliles’s analysis of Polonius’s interpretations of Hamlet’s vows to Ophelia completely justified. Beliles argues that the “almost” in Hamlet giving Ophelia “almost all the holy vows in heaven” (I, iii, 123) echoes “Hamlet the quibbler” and indicates that Hamlet is a seducer, but one with a bit of honor, as he woos Ophelia but is careful not to promise marriage (78). Beliles, however, does not explain how Hamlet is a quibbler, which weakens his analysis of the word “almost.” Better to support his claim, Beliles could have drawn the readers’ attention to Hamlet’s perfectionism in his revenge, as he takes meticulous steps to prove Claudius’s guilt and to ensure that Claudius would go to Hell by not killing him while he prays. Beliles also could have cited examples evident throughout the play of Hamlet’s precise word choice, his careful wordplay in scenes where he feigns madness, such as when he discusses the location of Polonius’s body with Rosencrantz and Claudius in Act IV, scenes ii and iii. Beliles is correct in his description of Hamlet as a quibbler, as Hamlet does pay attention to trivial details. By leaving this claim unsupported, though, Beliles diminishes his analysis of the word “almost,” as he does not show the reader the Hamlet who would carefully avoid promising all of the holy vows in heaven. Beliles relies on the assumption that his reader knows and agrees with this description of Hamlet, but this is not satisfactory to prove his point.

Beliles fails to acknowledge other possible interpretations of Polonius’s conversation with Ophelia in Act I, scene iii. Beliles points to Polonius’s suggestion that a young man like Hamlet is more interested in sex than romance (78). When watching or reading this scene, the audience must remember that Polonius is protecting his daughter and her chastity from a man he does not trust. Polonius may have presented a distorted view of Hamlet in an attempt to convince her to stay away from him; after all, Polonius similarly claims his own son is interested in sex and not romance (II, i, 29-69), so this represents his general, paternal opinion about young men. As a result, it is possible that Hamlet is truly interested in Ophelia romantically, which would negate Beliles’s interpretation of Hamlet as Ophelia’s seducer.

Beliles persuasively argues that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s laughter in response to Hamlet’s statement that “man delights not me” (II, ii, 322-324)—the laughter that prompted Hamlet to explain his seriousness by adding “no, nor woman neither” (II, ii, 323)—suggests that Hamlet is a “notorious womanizer” (79). Contrary to Beliles’s previous arguments, this one is a justified interpretation that indicates that Hamlet has a history of being a seducer, and, combined with Beliles’s other description of Hamlet and Ophelia’s relationship, this functions as effective proof of his thesis. The laughter of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, both of whom are childhood friends of Hamlet and thus know him well, at Hamlet’s comment shows that the Hamlet they know is not delighted by men, but women certainly delight him. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's implications of Hamlet and Ophelia’s sexual tendencies might support Beliles’s thesis that Hamlet seduced her; however, this moment alone is not enough to

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completely prove his thesis.

While Beliles’s interpretations of Hamlet in Act II, scene ii, accurately demonstrate the possibility of Hamlet having seduced or intending to seduce Ophelia, he further weakens his own argument by contradicting himself. Beliles claims that Hamlet’s comment that Polonius not let Ophelia walk “i’ the sun” and his warning to Polonius to “look to ’t” (II, ii, 201-203) indicate Hamlet’s willingness to “take advantage of Ophelia’s affection” (79). As Beliles correctly explains, this is a reference to Hamlet himself and his relationship with Ophelia, as shown by the comment from Act I, scene ii, that he was “too much in the sun” himself (I,ii,69). Hamlet warns Polonius that he is a threat to Ophelia’s chastity, which supports Beliles’s thesis that Hamlet is Ophelia’s seducer. Countering his own argument, Beliles claims that in Act II, scene ii, “we are almost certain” that Hamlet is pretending to be mad (79). This claim is accurate—Hamlet asserts his madness by calling Polonius a fishmonger (II,ii,190)—but Beliles does not include this explanation. Instead, he relies on the assumption that his reader either knows that Hamlet is doing so in the scene in question or that the reader will automatically agree with him.

Additionally, if Hamlet were acting mad, then it is unclear whether his warning to Polonius should be taken seriously. If the audience is meant to dismiss Hamlet’s behavior in this scene, Beliles’s claim about this scene would be invalidated. Hamlet may be attempting to mock and confuse Polonius again, as he had just done a few lines earlier by calling him a fishmonger (II,ii,190). Beliles establishes that Hamlet pretends to be mad in this scene, so Hamlet’s warning to Polonius may not have any substance behind it at all. This would effectively invalidate this line of argument.

The danger from these warnings, according to Beliles, supports Laertes and Polonius’s warnings to Ophelia in Act I, scene iii: Because he cannot marry her, Hamlet merely wants to seduce Ophelia. Although he uses their warnings to support his thesis, Beliles diminishes his claim further by attacking the credibility of Laertes and Polonius. Beliles says that while neither of them is “a good judge of character” and that, throughout the play, Polonius’s advice “ranges from questionable to laughable,” both of them grasp the “practical fact” that Ophelia is not of Hamlet’s estate and can not marry him (79). By criticizing the ethos of Laertes and Polonius, Beliles suggests that his audience should not trust their views, which weakens his claim about Ophelia’s inability to marry Hamlet. In addition to discrediting Polonius and Laertes’ view of Ophelia marrying Hamlet, Beliles discredits what Gertrude says at Ophelia’s funeral, that she hoped that Hamlet would have married Ophelia (V, i, 255) without explanation. Although she is of lower status than Hamlet, Ophelia has Gertrude’s posthumous approval, and her father is the chief counselor to the King, which suggests a union between Hamlet and Ophelia seems feasible. Beliles further alleges that any child of Hamlet and Ophelia “is bound to be a bastard” (79), based on his claim that Ophelia is already pregnant. This, however, assumes that Beliles’s thesis is true and that Hamlet and Ophelia have already engaged in sex, which he has not proven.

Beliles reinforces his argument of Hamlet as Ophelia’s seducer by explaining that Hamlet’s behavior with Ophelia is clearly not part of courtship, so he is not a prince seeking a wife but one seeking a private seduction (79-80). Yet Beliles does not acknowledge that Hamlet sent love letters to Ophelia (II, ii, 117-132), which are part of courtship and provide evidence of a romantic relationship. While his analysis does support the possibility that Hamlet could have seduced Ophelia, Beliles is still unsuccessful in achieving his goal of proving that Hamlet is Ophelia’s seducer, and his failure to mention Hamlet’s love letters to Ophelia detracts from his argument.

Beliles makes the assumption that his own thesis is true once more while analyzing Hamlet and Ophelia’s interaction in Act III, scene i. Beliles claims that Hamlet acknowledges his guilt and the sins he has committed when he says to Ophelia, “Nymph, in thy orisons / Be all my sins remembered” (III, i, 97-98). Beliles asserts that the sin Hamlet has committed is seducing Ophelia, which has created the guilt he expresses towards her, but this interpretation of Hamlet’s guilt only works if it is true that Hamlet has indeed seduced Ophelia, a point Beliles has not yet proven. Nor does he show that, upon seeing Ophelia enter reading her prayer book (III, i, 49-52), Hamlet's statement constitutes anything beyond a polite greeting. By relying on the assumption that his thesis is true, Beliles invalidates his argument. In his examination of Ophelia and Hamlet’s conversation in Act III, scene i, Beliles explicitly tells the reader he will assume that his thesis is

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true in order to “reconstruct the scene” (81) to fit his argument. The interpretations that follow this announcement to the reader still do not prove his thesis because of Beliles’s admitted employment of circular logic, accepting his own thesis to be true to prove the truth of his thesis. Consequently, his arguments are ineffectual.

Even with this rhetorical trick, Beliles’s discussion of this scene does not prove his thesis. Beliles returns to the discussion of Hamlet acknowledging his sinfulness and claims that it contradicts his self-identifying as “indifferent honest” (III, i, 132). Again, Beliles assumes that Hamlet feels guilty about his sin of seducing Ophelia; however, Beliles has conveniently overlooked the sins that Hamlet confesses to in the same speech. While Beliles believes that Hamlet is guilty of seducing Ophelia, Hamlet explicitly admits to being “very proud, revengeful, ambitious,” among other sins (III, i, 135). Although Hamlet leaves his sinfulness open-ended, he does not mention nor even imply seduction, making it unreasonable to accept him as “indifferent honest” when it comes to sex. Beliles interprets Hamlet’s question of “What should such fellows as I do” (III, i, 138) as Hamlet’s awareness that he has wronged Ophelia (82), but he does not prove that Hamlet has done so by seducing her. The reader can simply accept Hamlet’s explanation that he fooled Ophelia into love or his admission of other sins instead of Beliles’s assumption that Hamlet seduced Ophelia. Beliles’s discussion of this scene and his arguments rely on Hamlet’s guilt; however, Beliles still attributes this guilt solely to Hamlet seducing Ophelia.

In a similar use of circular logic, Beliles claims that, when Hamlet discovers that Polonius is listening to his and Ophelia’s conversation, he no longer feels guilty and proclaims that women absolve themselves of “sexual desire and activity by claiming they are deceived by men” (83). This is Hamlet’s way of shifting the blame onto Ophelia for having desire. Hamlet does, in fact, condemn female sexuality, but, coupled with his supposed sexual indifference, Hamlet could be criticizing Ophelia for being fooled into his false love, not for allowing herself to be seduced by him. Beliles shows how this scene could be interpreted if his thesis were true; although his interpretations seem somewhat reasonable, the reader must not fall into the trap of accepting this circular logic as legitimate proof of Beliles’s claim.

Beliles’s interpretations of Ophelia’s mad song in Act IV, scene v, do effectively support his thesis that Hamlet seduced Ophelia; however, Beliles could have utilized more evidence to prove his claim. Beliles argues that her songs reveal that she has been seduced and is a sexual being. Ophelia’s lyric about a man taking a woman’s virginity and then abandoning her (IV, v, 55-60) reflects her own situation: “seduced and then abandoned” by Hamlet (83). Because Ophelia is grieving Hamlet’s departure for England—as well as her father’s death—it is logical to believe that Ophelia is referring to her relationship with Hamlet. Although his claim that Ophelia’s mad songs suggest she was seduced and abandoned by Hamlet support his thesis, Beliles could have further strengthened his argument by citing more evidence from Ophelia’s song that shows she was actually talking about Hamlet. Though her song can be partly attributed to grief over her father as she sings about a man being “dead and gone” (IV, v, 35), Ophelia does reference her “true love” (IV, v, 28) and being taken advantage of by “young men” (IV, v, 65-66), which could be a direct allusion to Hamlet’s actions claiming that she should not have believed his pledges of love (III, i, 125129). Beliles also argues that Ophelia highlights her own sexuality in her songs (83) as she declares that “bonny sweet Robin is all [her] joy” (IV, v, 210). Her joy in “Robin,” which, according to Beliles, is an Elizabethan slang term for penis, shows how she “celebrates her sexuality” (83) and suggests that she is unchaste. While this could be an effective argument toward proving his thesis, he never demonstrates that it is Hamlet who seduced Ophelia. Beliles’s analysis of Ophelia’s flowers may be his strongest argument in support of his thesis that she has been seduced by Hamlet. Beliles asserts that Ophelia’s handing out of flowers has meaning beyond the symbolism of the flowers and their recipients; Ophelia is deflowering herself with flowers that an Elizabethan audience would recognize as abortifacients, suggesting that she has not only lost her virginity, but she may be pregnant, as well (84). Considering that Ophelia has just sung a song about a young man taking advantage of her and seducing her, this interpretation of the “deflowering” effectively supports Beliles’s thesis. Furthermore, Beliles explains that the flowers’ abortive uses would be widely known among Hamlet’s original audience, citing the popular 1597 book The Herbal or General History of Plants by John Gerard (84). Beliles’s claims show that Ophelia believes that she is

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pregnant and, based on her song about him, has been seduced by Hamlet.

Although Beliles makes a persuasive claim about Hamlet’s reaction to Ophelia’s death, his argument ultimately is irrelevant to his thesis. Beliles argues that Hamlet’s reaction to Ophelia’s death proves that he did not love her—Hamlet is angry because Laertes expresses a greater amount of sorrow that Hamlet believes he should feel but does not (85). Whether Hamlet loves Ophelia or not does not, however, have any bearing on whether he seduced her or not. During his discussion of Act I, scene iii, Beliles explains that we can not judge whether Hamlet loves Ophelia at that point, and “in a way it’s not important” (80). This holds true for the rest of his argument, as Hamlet could have loved Ophelia or not and still have seduced her either way. As a result, Beliles wastes time showing that Hamlet did not love Ophelia, because it does not matter; neither option would be adequate evidence of his thesis.

In his analysis of Act II, scene i, when Ophelia recounts the story of Hamlet coming to her closet with his clothes in disarray, Beliles claims that Hamlet’s feigned madness in the scene intends to convince someone of his madness, so that word of his madness will eventually reach Claudius, and to make rejected love the understood reason for his madness (86-87). Beliles uses this to support the suggestion that Hamlet would know that he can deceive Ophelia with his fake madness since he has deceived her before by seducing her without intending to marry her (87). This is insufficient evidence; both Laertes and Polonius understand Ophelia’s naivety enough to warn her against Hamlet’s approaches, so Beliles can not say that Hamlet understands her naivety merely by having already seduced her without intending to marry her.

In his article, Beliles seems to analyze every instance of Hamlet and Ophelia’s relationship throughout the play; however, he does not comment on their interaction in Act III scene ii, thus weakening his argument with his incomplete evidence. He fails to cite Hamlet’s crude jokes about lying in Ophelia’s lap and his three joking references to her genitalia (III, ii, 119-128). Beliles should have shown his audience this image of Hamlet making crude sexual jokes to Ophelia because this would have supported Beliles’s depiction of Hamlet as Ophelia’s seducer. Beliles completely undermines his argument in his conclusion. Throughout the rest of his article, Beliles argues that Hamlet seduced Ophelia, but he takes a much more passive stance on their relationship in the conclusion. While he should be using his conclusion to drive his point home, Beliles instead insists that he does not mean to portray Hamlet as “a swaggering Don Juan,” but merely that a “coherent understanding” of Hamlet and Ophelia’s relationship emerges if “we consider that possibility that he has seduced her” (87). Beliles’s description of Hamlet here does not match the earlier suggestions that Hamlet is a promiscuous seducer, and Beliles’s assertions in this paragraph lessen the impact of his argument on his audience.

Reflected in the ambivalence he shows towards his argument in the conclusion, Beliles overall does not convincingly prove that Hamlet is Ophelia’s seducer. In his article, Beliles often assumes his thesis is true when trying to prove it. He also wastes time making claims that are irrelevant to his argument, such as when he argues that Hamlet does not love Ophelia. He previously states that whether or not Hamlet loves Ophelia is unimportant (80), thus blurring the focus of his argument. Furthermore, Beliles contradicts himself multiple times and frequently does not adequately support his claims. Finally, he does not attempt to acknowledge and refute other interpretations of the scenes he analyzes, allowing for his claims to be rebutted. While some of his arguments are logical and persuasive, Beliles undermines his claims far too much to ignore. By the conclusion of Beliles’s article, the reader has little choice but to disagree with Beliles and admit that Hamlet is “indifferent honest.”

Works Cited

Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.

Simon & Schuster, 1992. Beliles, David Buck. “‘I Am Myself Indifferent Honest’:

Hamlet as Ophelia's Seducer.” Hamlet Studies, vol. 21, 1999, pp. 77–88..

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