For centuries, scholars have debated if Ophelia’s death by drowning is considered a suicide and thus damns her soul (despite the fact that she is buried on holy ground). Hamlet, the Ghost of Hamlet’s father, and Claudius all discuss the importance of confession before death, an act which gives the dying individual a clean conscience and a Heavenly reward. Ophelia’s fate, however, is shrouded in a mystery which places her soul in eternal peril. This is both sad and ironic, given that Ophelia is one of the most honest and obedient of all characters in Hamlet.
Denmark is stained
With bruises of betrayal.
Yet in her agony, she
Mermaid-like
succumbed to the darker abyss,
flowers tangled in her hair,
A song in her throat.
Pale, plundered.
As the bough broke,
hers was the greater tragedy.
Oh woe is me, she lamented
When lovers proved false
And parent cunning.
A neglected player
In a tale of revenge
And fawning fathers.
Abused, insulted,
Robbed of innocence.
The nunnery is a fine place
For one of such pure heart,
And unswerving conscience.
Perhaps she desired the
The wrong Prince?
Or a Father who would not
Parade her as a pawn?
Sought salvation not in the
Rivers of ravaged beauty, broken
But cloistered in the chapel
This isn’t a romance
Where the rapids baptized her.
Thirsty, they consumed all,
swallowing weary wounds:,
an abbreviated life.
If only she had recognized
Reality in the
ragged
seams,
Of Hamlet unbraced.
Or had she awakened from the slumber
of contrariness and corruption,
poison and pantomimes,
lords and liars,
And clung to a different Savior,
Maybe it would have been different.
“God ha’ mercy on . . . all Christians’ souls.”
Especially on those
Worthy of a happy ending —
on her sweet and gentle spirit.

Crystal Hurd is a researcher and poet from Virginia. She has degrees from the University of Tennessee, East Tennessee State University, and the University of Texas at El Paso. She is the author of Thirty Days with C. S. Lewis: A Women’s Devotional and The Leadership of C. S. Lewis: Ten Traits to Encourage Change and Growth, serves as the Reviews Editor for Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal, and, in 2020, won the Clyde Kilby Research Grant from The Marion E. Wade She currently teaches in the Romantic Theology and Faith and Writing programs at Northwind Theological Seminary.
Citation Information
Crystal Hurd, “Ophelia,” An Unexpected Journal: Shakespeare & Cultural Apologetics 5, no. 4. (Advent 2022), 107-108.