OPHELIA . Her name means ‘Help’, and by the end of the play she commits suicide. She is treated as badly by almost everyone in the play, just as Juliet is by Romeo, (who – for those who need to reminded – was a murderer at one point.)
Opehlia’s gradual move to suicide is not an easy thing for most actors to imagine, because actors are positive people, because they always have something to live for. But all of us have short moments in our lives when everything seems to have gone wrong, when a relative dies, or a lover disappears, and that is the life of Ophelia.
Fortunately for audiences – and for the actor playing her – Ophelia hides most of her feelings. She may even seem the sanest person in the play at times, and occasionally she manages moments of humor. No wonder Hamlet loves her.
The actor playing her needs to realize how full a human being she is. When her father gives her terrible advice she does not have one word of complaint. When her brother scorns her obvious love for Hamlet she seems perfectly calm. She tries to serve everyone, and the play is a ‘tragedy’ not just because Hamlet dies, but because she does.
Her words, if used for an audition monologue, will sound boring, because they can easily all be said in the same patient tone. But there are feelings hidden behind nearly all of her lines, and whoever plays her needs to spend hours, days, some night and weeks, studying her scenes.
And very few actors ever get near to managing her final scene n the play, when she is quite clearly mad. The scene is usually embarrassing to watch because madness is almost impossible to act. But we will believe in her distress if we have seen her before that, gradually losing her faith in any future. We should have at least guessed at her loneliness, fear, loss and despair.
Actors who copy performances of other actors are- of course – making a terrible mistake, because they are not using their own feelings, and every Ophelia must be connected to the person who plays her. The actor needs to write out all her thoughts, to discuss them friends or with a director if she finds one with whom she can be open.
We all know that she is discouraged by her father and brother, but exactly how much? Is she hiding her anger, or exhausted, or already lost? Is there a difference when a woman loves a man who is born to become King? Is she patient or terrified, is she scared or excited? A very clever actor will discover a few lines when she may laugh for a moment. The mountain of possibilities makes the part of Ophelia into one of the ‘great’ roles.
The wonderful Kerry Condon (daughter-in-law to ‘Mike’ in the tv series NEVER CALL SAUL,) was the youngest person ever to play Ophelia with the Royal Shakespeare Company. And in NEVER CALL SAUL we completely believe she still loves her husband despite his being dead, and even though she has very few lines to show it. Somehow we just ‘know’ how she feels from the way she lives the rest of her life. We believe she would have given her own life for her husband’s, – if given the chance – without pausing to breath. And we may wish we had seen Kerry Condon’s Ophelia!
But, of course, every line, every word and thought, must be about ‘you’, – the actor playing her, – not what others may do.
Hamlet and her brother, Laertes, both leap into her grave at her funeral, but too late to help her. She is more alone than Hamlet!
HORATIO
Horatio is Hamlet’s best friend. He is the perfect brother we could all want. When Hamlet does not even recognize him – after a time apart – and Hamlet only half-apologizes, Horatio is not embarrassed, and can still call Hamlet “The best of men”, probably laughing at Hamlet’s confusion. All because this play is a thriller and at the start we need a few moments when people seem relaxed!
When Hamlet involves him in a plot to show that Claudius is a murderer, Horatio fears the plan, but still supports his friend in it, and he hardly even questions Hamlet’s wish to have Rosencrantz and Guildenstern murdered . What a brother!
Near the end, when Hamlet is nervous about fighting a duel with Laertes, Horatio begs him not to, but when Hamlet tells him not to worry Horatio just gives way. He asks for nothing. He may be the man Hamlet would like to be!
Finally, in the last scene of the play, Horatio kneels and holds the dying body of Hamlet in his arms, while his friend breaths his last breath. Loyal to the end. Friendship for Horatio is not just a part of life, it is life .
