#bisexual hamlet

first of all, thank you so much for the ask! i’m so sorry it’s taken me this long to answer it. i’ve been in a hell of my own making but i’ve been pondering it nonetheless! 

i believe that ophelia is a very important character to the story and that by removing her from the work you would take out at least a good portion of the heart of the play. she’s not there just to be abused by hamlet and then to later go mad when her whole world falls apart. she’s a person with hopes and dreams and while i do believe that in the text as it is set down she does, at the start, lack agency that this changes over the course of the play to some extent. ophelia is my light, my love, my reason and i just want to say that before i continue. i want the world for her and in the text she gets nothing and my heart breaks for her. 

ophelia is the product of the time and her station as her “father’s daughter”. polonius even reminds us that ophelia belongs to him. she is nothing more than a tool to him. i am not a believer in good father polonius i’m sorry. i think he does want what’s best for his children and he gives some good advice but he’s also just a shitty little weasel of a man (sorry popo i love you as a character muah) and has a very shitty way of going about it because he uses his children as an extension of himself or rather as pieces on a chessboard. 

ophelia is unfortunately his chief piece with laertes gone and he uses her as such with little to no care for her feelings in the matter and as the dutiful daughter she obeys him. what other choice does she have?? she belongs to him, after all and she loves her father and wants him to be pleased with her. in doing his bidding she breaks hamlet’s trust in her and i fully believe that he is heartbroken by this. in his hurt he lashes out at her and more than that, he aims to destroy her as she has destroyed his fragile love. i am in no way excusing his behaviour. what he did to ophelia is wrong and what he continues to do to her even when she’s dead is wrong. but my reasoning behind this is a perceived betrayal that causes him to lash out more so even than any display of madness. yes, he keeps up appearances but i think most of it was actually just him being so lost in his grief and ophelia’s “betrayal” that he seeks to step on her to raise himself up. she betrayed him, after all, she’s worth nothing in his eyes in that moment and he uses her as a stepping stone to keep himself on top of the situation lest he truly fall apart. of course he already has and we’ve seen this. 

after polonius is killed and ophelia learns of the treachery around the situation and is forced to witness her father’s unceremonious burial without deserved rites she only keeps unravelling. she has no one there except horatio and perhaps some ladies to care for her and horatio is distracted and in my opinion slightly exasperated, even, with ophelia. he’s also a horrid reminder of hamlet and what she’s lost and nothing in life has ever prepared her for this!!! death and loss are inevitable but what does she know of that except for her supposed loss of her mother which she may have been too young to understand. it has all crashed down around her and every bit of level ground she’s ever had has slipped out from beneath her and by the time laertes gets there it’s too late. she’s made her decision. i personally think that she did commit suicide. that maybe it didn’t start out as a conscious decision but that she died so peacefully because she had resigned herself to it. i have so many thoughts on her death but this is getting out of hand, i’m sorry haha!

as to whether or not ophelia and hamlet loved one another, i truly believe that they did love each other in secret. i believe hamlet doted upon her and that she gave him just as many flowers as he gave her if not more. i believe hamlet really did intend to marry her and give himself wholly over to her. in fact i think one small part of ophelia’s character is to show just how changed hamlet is after the death of his father. we never SEE the hamlet who wrote poetry and gave gifts and loved with his whole heart. we only ever hear about it. heavenly powers, restore him doesn’t just signify his mental state. ophelia wants her sweet, loving prince back and he’s gone. lost entirely to grief and “madness”. but hamlet only sees her betrayal and denouncement of his love and he stomps all over her heart with everything he has because HE has been hurt, why shouldn’t she hurt too? would the hamlet before the death of his father have been so cruel? i sincerely doubt it. 

i don’t think anything in the play needs to change for hamlet and horatio to be involved romantically. i am a bisexual hamlet truther. that man is bisexual and no one can ever tell me otherwise i am not listening. but i believe hamlet developed feelings for horatio at wittenberg. of course he never acted on them because his love for ophelia was too strong (and he was too much of a coward to suggest the threesome he should have and probably could have gotten around to if his dad hadn’t died but that’s another story) and i don’t believe he would have cheated on her. but his friendship with horatio only grew stronger as every other relationship around him fell apart (either by his own doing or outside influences) and i think the two of them fell into a sort of unspoken romance because let’s face it neither of them are clever enough to be like “haha we’re boyfriends now”. (i actually wrote a fic about this that i’m trying desperately to finish but we’ll see) 

so i imagine that after the breaking off with things with ophelia as time wore on they both saw an opportunity though both of them were like “haha and then what” and fell into this thing. hamlet more so because of the “sin” and his religious ocd plying him with doubts and not allowing him to have a nice fun time and his inability to see that horatio is head over heels for him. he would be questioning himself the whole time. and then there’s that whole grief thing that just gets in the way of EVERYTHING. does horatio love me? yes. as more than a friend? Impossible. unless… whereas horatio is more like “lord hamlet is a prince, out of thy star”.