Brawling Love (Hamlet, 4.5)

Today is Valentine’s Day, and yesterday, the fair Ophelia might have spoken these words:

To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day,
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine.
Then up he rose, and donn'd his clothes,
And dupp'd the chamber-door;
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more.

No one has expressed or will express love better than Shakespeare.  The reality of love, which is so often wonderfully depicted in the works of Shakespeare, is that it will drive you mad.  Here, Ophelia, with the wildflowers of the field in her hair (in a state resembling Lear in 4.6), has snapped as a result of the death of her father.  It is not evident that she knows that her father has been slain by the man to whom she’s been romantically inclined, Hamlet, but in her dirge here, the memory of Hamlet in his doublet all unbraced (her own balcony scene) seems to be crossing her mind.  There is a connection, here.

The intensity of the love that she has for the three men in her life—a trinity, so to speak, of father (Polonius), son (Laertes), and son of a holy ghost (Hamlet)—drives her to this.  She is either crazy or in the heat of a spiritually ecstatic experience.  A transition to her own death, with Gis (Jesus) and Saint Charity also in her sights.  Tripping the light fantastic on her way to the netherworld.