Sarah+Rees-Knowles

Dear diary,

I do not want to live anymore! Up until I gave my remembrances back to Hamlet, I believed he loved me. I had no idea he would unleash his rage against me as he did, instructing me to “get…to a nunnery” (3.1.131)! I only did as my father, and the king and queen instructed me. I really don’t understand how this has happened. The man who professed to love me through his actions and his words has abandoned and destroyed any hope for my present or future happiness. Hamlet “had of late made many tenders of his affection to me” (1.3.8-9). He “…hath given countenance to his speech…with almost all the holy vows of heaven” (1.3.122-3)!

However, he attacked my integrity, questioned my honesty, and accused me of using my beauty to betray him by breaking up. Although he admitted to loving me once, he has ruined me. I believed he did love me – but then, how can one who claims to love so brutishly abandon his promise to marry me, and moreover, to “give me [the] plague for a dowry” (3.1.146-7)? He called me a seductress, as if the whole of our relationship was a game.

I don’t think this is all about me. Although he hasn’t told me, I sense that Hamlet is angry at his mother. When he told me I “jig, …amble, and …lisp” (3.1.156-7) he accused me of committing sexually immoral and provocative acts through my movement and speech. And it’s not only me. Hamlet has suggested he feels this way about all women by saying “I have heard of your paintings…God has given you one face and you make yourselves another…” (3.1.154-5). You see? He doesn’t only mean ‘me’ – he seems to hate //all women//. He uses the word “yourselves,” and this is plural. How can the man I have focused all my life’s devotions be such an enemy of women?

When he told me to go to the nunnery, was he referring to our sexual relationship? For, oh, we have had such intimacy between us. He has shown me such “tenders of his affection” – especially of “late” (1.3.108-9). Is there any chance he suspects I might be pregnant? Is he trying to protect me from the embarrassment of having our child out of wedlock? Or, did he mean that I should go to a nunnery because I am no longer a virgin and of no use to any other man? I hate to think of the third option – that he sends me to a brothel! O, cursed lover! Could he really think of me as a whore? He wrote me the most beautiful poems, what could have changed? This one is my favourite:

//Doubt thou the stars are fire// // Doubt that the sun doth move,  // // Doubt truth to be a liar,  // // But never doubt I love. (2.2.124-7) //

Oh Hamlet. How can I not doubt you? What will become of me now?

- Ophelia