For she sings without smirching a single petal of the daisies and pansies, which she so softly distributes, with such an appeal of forlornness, to bid their fragrance disinfect her language, or to speak for her in the natural key of her wonted maidenhood. So every heart exhales in the pity that plays the magic of distance and softens the unsightliness of her ruin.
Shakspeare has given most touchingly rational applications to her distribution of the flowers. The flowers themselves are culled in fancy: she holds no actual nosegay in her hand. She recalls, together with the long-unheeded songs, all that she learned in girlhood about the symbolic meanings of flowers; and a light irony invests some of them. It is plain that the rosemary, for remembrance, is ideally bestowed upon Laertes, with pansies too: "A document in madness; thoughts and remembrance fitted." Rosemary was supposed to have the quality of strengthening the memory. The volatile Laertes will have need of it, and of as many thoughts as he can muster. The fennel ought to be handed to Horatio, and the columbines should be intended for the king: the one is a symbol of flattery and is exchanged among courtiers, but Horatio never learned the useful trade; the others are expressive of ingratitude and cuckoldom. Was Hamlet's father slain because of that? The columbines were earned betimes! There's rue for the queen; for she has great need of repentance. There's rue for herself too. Both need it; but the queen with a difference, as her moral condition differed from Ophelia's. We may call it an herb that leads to grace. There's a daisy. She recognizes it, but ought not to keep it for herself. And there is no other maiden present. It represents frivolous and light-thoughted girls. She would give Laertes some violets, if they had not all withered when his father died. These delicate allusions make us think that before the distraction set in Ophelia had inklings of the foul concerns around her. All the more hopeless, then, became the overthrow of reason.
Hamlet is too finely endowed to sport with her inclining maidenhood. She has no more calculation than a flower. She lets her beauty bend towards him without timidity; for she likes that he should sip the chalice which he will not rudely shatter. After every visit he used to leave behind him a sense of honor which occupied her heart when his lips had ceased protesting. Yet she will defer to the father, with the instinct, perhaps, that more favorable dispositions will transpire. Polonius, the old stickler for the conventions of royalty, is thoroughly possessed with the idea that the Prince, from that point of view, cannot be intending marriage. Some over-subtle critics will have it that the old schemer is secretly chuckling over the idea that a match may be made, but that he dreads the king. If Hamlet can only be brought to the decisive point, and held there, the temper of the court will be of little consequence. But what method shall be employed with a prince who so loves to push off upon his moods of feeling to let them get unhitched and float him from corresponding facts? A double contrivance occurs to Polonius,—to protect his daughter from the possible waywardness of a prince, and to pique him into making a declaration of alliance. This is a delicate operation; for the king will jealously scrutinize his movements. It seems as if he was merely protecting his daughter, and keeping faith with his king, when he urges her not to receive the letters which besiege her door, nor to admit him any longer to her presence. Then the sly old rat, not yet gone to burrow behind the arras, hopes to gnaw into the King by attributing Hamlet's strange behavior to love for Ophelia. And he has so nicely arranged matters, by prohibiting letters and visits, that when the King, bending severe brows upon him, asks, "How hath she received his love?" he can reply, with a flush of honor, "What do you think of me?"
I cannot find that the context will justify this theory. It is contradicted by the evident alarm and sorrow which the old man displays when Ophelia describes the piteous plight of Hamlet after his repulse; for what does Polonius know about a "father's spirit in arms" laying waste the Prince's soul? No: he must be deep in love; and Polonius must hasten to report it to the King.
We recur to the plain theory that Polonius supposes that a king's son is out of the star of her unaspiring thought, and that such a match would be against the stomach of the Court. He will cling to his lord chamberlain's staff and totter with it to the end. The daughter, respecting his fears, inflicts this harsh repulse upon Hamlet. How we pity the Prince, who is turned away from her dear house whither he would have longed to repair, weighed down with his awful secret, to place his heart upon her restfulness, and let its rhythm soothe the cracking nerves! Yet she "did return his letters, and denied his access," perhaps the very morning after he had sworn the platform oath. There's nothing to depend on left in Denmark. Who next is false? What truth or feeling escapes the monstrous irony?
But mark how quickly Ophelia's love jumps at the father's plan to bring them again together, as if by accident, in order that the King and he may observe, by the nature of the interview, whether he is mad from love of her. And when he thrusts a book into her hand, that she may have the pretence of reading when Hamlet enters, she gladly adopts the whole device; for has she not just heard the Queen confess that she hopes Hamlet loves her?
"For your part, Ophelia, I do wish
That your good beauties be the happy cause
Of Hamlet's wildness; so shall I hope your virtues
Will bring him to his wonted way again,
To both your honors."
Can she believe her ears? Hamlet's own mother hopes, as she afterwards confessed directly above Ophelia's grave, that she may become the wife of Hamlet. Then all the scruples of Laertes and her father are groundless. However indisposed the King may feel to such a match, she has a suitor in the heart of the mother. Welcome the opportunity, welcome any stratagem, even that of taking his remembrances from her bosom, to have them returned to her,—a woman's wile to receive them back more rich than ever with smiles of a recovered love.
The more common theory is that Ophelia does not suspect the mother's inclination for such a marriage. The Queen's language is guarded, and capable of two interpretations; but she spoke in the presence of the King. Measure the extent of her meaning by the depth of Ophelia's grave. Still, it is commonly thought that Ophelia understands the Queen to expect of her to make Hamlet realize the hopelessness of his passion, trusting to have his disorder dismissed with his love. In that case, she is merely yielding to the father's suggestion that these remembrances of his shall be returned; and the old plotter has arranged this for the King to witness. Filial deference cannot stoop lower than this sad enforcement; but her whole life has been the non-assertion of a will. She,
"Of ladies most deject and wretched,
That suck'd the honey of his music vows,"