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Fiction. © Copyright 1998, Jim Loy
I was on a missing jewels case, and I met this high-class dame. She was the spoiled daughter of my client. And I fell for her, head over heels, as they say. We had nothing in common. And it didn't last. But, it was good while it lasted. I miss her, every once in a while.
Once, she took me to see a play, Hamlet, by Shakespeare. I went because I wanted to be part of her world, which sounds kind of pathetic, I suppose. Anyway, I expected to hate the play. But it was pretty good, damned good actually. Shakespeare can really tell a story. This one had lots of murders. I couldn't understand half the things they said. But it was good.
As far as I was concerned, there should have been more mystery. It's pretty obvious who kills who. I suppose it's possible to argue that we don't know that Hamlet's uncle, the present king, really killed Hamlet's father, the old king. The ghost of the old king says he did. But, we never see the ghost for ourselves. And the word of a ghost probably wouldn't stand up in court, even back then.
I was sure that Hamlet's uncle (I can't remember his name) did it. It seemed to me that Hamlet should have been the rightful king. So, Hamlet's uncle is at least guilty of stealing the throne. But, every once in a while, I thought, "What if he didn't do it? Then Hamlet's really digging himself into a hole." And, I guess there's some mystery about whether Hamlet's mother had anything to do with the murder.
Anyway, as I was saying, all those murders are straightened out nicely, in the end. There's lots of action. A sword fight, with poison on the sword, is pretty dramatic.
But one thing didn't make sense to me, Ophelia's death. OK, she's in love with Hamlet. Hamlet seems to have come unhinged. He tells Ophelia to get lost. Hamlet kills Ophelia's father. And Ophelia goes crazy and drowns herself. Suicide? Accident? Murder? It doesn't seem like murder, does it? I mean, nobody had a motive. I can see Hamlet marrying her and killing her years later. But, he doesn't have a motive, yet. Suicide? Accident? It's pretty pathetic, either way. I got the impression that she fell into a brook, and drowned. She must have hit her head. I guess weirder things have happened.
I got to thinking, what if Ophelia had seen something that she shouldn't have? What if she knew something? Maybe she had proof that Hamlet's uncle killed Hamlet's father. Then maybe Hamlet's uncle killed her. The problem with that theory is that Shakespeare never follows up on that. Shakespeare doesn't even seem to realize that was a possibility.
Shakespeare. Shakespeare? He had no reason to cover up a murder, did he? I mean, he shows us who committed all of the other murders. What's one more murder? I guess the play is based on real events. But, Shakespeare wrote it hundreds of years after the real events. All the real characters are long dead, by Shakespeare's time. In fact, I saw them all die. Shakespeare doesn't need to protect Hamlet, because he's dead too. But Shakespeare has to protect his precious play. If we knew that Hamlet murdered Ophelia, then it might ruin the play. So Shakespeare covers up the crime.
Why would Hamlet murder Ophelia? Not a lot of clues there. Shakespeare wouldn't show us any clues if he were covering up the crime. Maybe she was going to foil Hamlet's plans of revenge.
The only clue I can find is this. Early in the play, Hamlet's mother says that a woman's story doesn't ring true, because she "doth protest too much." At Ophelia's funeral, Hamlet ridicules Ophelia's brother's grief, by protesting that he loved her 40,000 times as much. That does not ring true, in my opinion. If anyone ever protested too much, it was Hamlet. I think he killed her.