Hamlet (Vol. 59) | Cherrell Guilfoyle (essay date 1986)
Cherrell Guilfoyle (essay date 1986)
SOURCE: “‘Ower Swete Sokor’: The Role of Ophelia in Hamlet,” in Shakespeare's Play within Play: Medieval Imagery and Scenic Form in Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear, Western Michigan University, Medieval Institute Publications, 1990, pp. 7-19.
[In the following essay, originally published in 1986, Guilfoyle traces Ophelia's character to the legend of Mary Magdalen as developed in medieval drama.]
The virtuous disguise of evil in woman is described most bitterly by Shakespeare in King Lear (IV.vi.120-29): “Behold yond simpering dame / Whose face between her forks presages snow … / But to the girdle do the gods inherit, / Beneath is all the fiends'.” If she can be separated from sexual considerations, for example in royalty or in comedy, woman can appear on a level with, if not equal to, man; but where his feelings are most deeply aroused, in love and veneration, or in lust and...
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