Let’s explore the moments within the text where Hamlet actually used his smarts to trick the other conniving characters into thinking that he didn’t love Ophelia and was going insane instead. Throughout Act 3 and 4, the play leads readers to believe the Hamlet does not love Ophelia. He is constantly saying contradicting statements and in a way mistreating her. Hamlet says “I loved you once,” and then four lines later he says “I loved you not.” What’s going on with the mixed messages? Well Polonius, Ophelia’s father does not approve of their courtship and Hamlet know this.
Hamlet was trying to be clever with Polonius as he kept asking him questions that he already knew the answers to such as “…have you a daughter” pretending that he does not know that Ophelia is his daughter. Hamlet was trying to confuse Polonius, making him think he was mad and trying to make Polonius look like a fool in front of the audience. Polonius then asks “…what do you read my lord?” and Hamlets response was “words, words, words.” Then he completes later on saying “Slanders sir, for the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging think amber and plum-tree gum, and that they have a plentiful lack of wit…for yourself sir should be old as I am, if like a crab you could go backward”, here we see Hamlets cleverness in insulting Polonius as he calls him old and he has a lack of understanding. Hamlet seems to be scaring the Polonius as Polonius starts stepping back as Hamlets steps near him. Then at the end, Hamlets says “These tedious old fools” which is calling Polonius directly an old fool without trying to hide it as he did before.
Hamlet portrays falsity when using rage against Ophelia after discovering she has been apart of a plot of revenge. He uses this as an opportunity to deny his love for her and degrade her until she felt horrible about her self. “I did love you once but you should have not belived me; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not.”(3.1.114-119). It becomes clear that Hamlet did truly love Ophelia, yet hid it because he was a coward.
She cannot sacrifice her children and cannot bear of not being with Robert. Edna's father and husband control her and they feel she has a specific duty as a woman. Alcee Arobin, also attempts to control Edna in his own way. Edna knows she wants freedom. She realizes this at the beginning of the book.
A tragic hero will effectively gain our fear and pity if he is a good mixture of good and evil. Ophelia can be viewed as a tragic hero in this play. We first meet Ophelia in Act 1, Scene 3 where she is warned by her brother Laertes that Hamlet is playing with her and that she should not keep her "chaste treasure open" suggesting that his sister has no 'worth of her own except in her sex'. Ophelia hears her brother but sticks up for herself and defends her relationship with Hamlet. She even turns Laertes' lesson around to focus on him and how he is doing exactly what he is telling Ophelia not to do.
If it be so (as so’tis put on me, / And that in way of caution), I must tell you/ You do not understand yourself so clearly/ As it behooves my daughter and your honor.”(I, iii, 99-106) Even Ophelia’s brother and father warn her about Hamlet, and how he may be using her but she does not listen because she is in love with Hamlet and does not believe he would use her. “Perhaps he loves you now, / And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch/ The virtue of his will; but you must fear, / His greatness weighed, his will is not his own,” (I, iii, 17-20). After finding out that Hamlet murder her father and left for England, Ophelia is shock and goes mad because she thinks Hamlet
Creon cares about his son so much he doesn’t want Haemon to marry Antigone just because she broke the law. Creon says, “You will never marry this side of death.”(646) Creon cares mostly about his family and don’t Haemon to marry a women that did something bad. Creon is doing the right thing for his son so he can live a better life than marrying a woman that broke the law. Creon also says, “No son of mine shall web so vile a creature.”(486) Haemon tries so hard to convince her father to let him marry her but Creon is stopping him. He cares about her wife, Eurydice, as well because Creon wanted to suicide when he saw his son and wife died in scene 8.
Following the revelation from the Ghost, Hamlet assumes an “antic disposition”, in order to distract those surrounding him from his suspicious behaviour. This in itself is a lie to the people around him, who, before being told otherwise, are convinced of his madness. “My uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived”. Despite being only “mad in craft”, Hamlet’s madness becomes a cover up for his rash actions, and becomes a means for Gertrude to protect her
He insults Polonius calling him a Whore-Monger. After this exchange Polonius remarks “Though this be madness, yet there is method in't” (II, II, 204). Meaning that Hamlet could be mad but that there seems to be intent behind his madness. When Rozencranz and Guildenstern visit Hamlet he receives them kindly until he learns they are spying for his mother. He then increases his feigned madness.
Hamlet in his first soliloquy demonstrates his disgust that his mother has allied herself in love and in politics with her late husband’s brother, so soon after his death, “frailty, thy name is woman... to post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets”. Claudius is clearly established as the villain in Hamlet, murdering his own brother and then plotting to kill Hamlet. He lies and is deceitful toying with the notion that the appearance of things is not their reality. The audience is privy to the ‘reality’ of Claudius ‘deed’, and of his guilt, through an aside, climactically stating, “then is my deed to my most painted word. O heavy burden!”.