In this play, the Greek king Agamemnon, who has offended the gods, is struggling to decide whether or not he should offer his young daughter Iphigenia as a religious sacrifice in order to ensure his fleet’s safe passage to Troy. In her role as a dutiful daughter in the beginning of the play, Ophelia strongly echoes the character of Iphigenia from Euripides’s Iphigenia at Aulis. Like Iphigenia, Electra, and Medea, Ophelia becomes representative of her family’s disorder and disruption. Therefore, in depicting Ophelia as the noble-daughter-turned-raving-madwoman, Shakespeare is drawing on a greater literary tradition-that of ancient Greek tragedy-in order to use Ophelia as a visible indicator of the turmoil and tension within the royal household. Thus, Ophelia’s degradation, descent into madness, and eventual suicide are all incredibly clear signs that “something is rotten in the state of Denmark” (1.4.90) indeed, there is something terribly wrong with a world in which the very embodiment of helpfulness and sweetness cannot survive. In this way, from the very beginning of the play, Ophelia’s character is aligned with the idea of kindly assistance she is meant to be a helpmate to the men in her life. In fact, her very name is firmly rooted within the realm of Greek tragedy as the Early Modern literature scholar Cherrell Guilfoyle astutely notes, “in one of the fragments of Euripidean tragedy, there is the saying ‘Woman brings to man the greatest possible succour, and the greatest possible harm.’ The words for ‘greatest possible succour’ are ophelian. For instance, in Hamlet, there are many clear connections between the character of Ophelia and the Hellenistic heroines of the past her relationships with her father, her brother, and her lover all echo those portrayed by the tragedians of old. William Shakespeare is no exception to this trend many of his plotlines and characters demonstrate the influence of Greek drama. The surviving works of these playwrights, combined with the fundamental dramatic principles in Aristotle’s writings about tragedy and comedy, have created certain precedents which have been drawn upon by authors ever since. Much of the canon of Western drama is built upon the foundations set forth by the tragedians of ancient Greece, namely three dramatists from the height of the Golden Age of Athens: Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. The Fogdog Review Author and Editor Profilesīy Lauren Reder John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1851-1852, Tate Britain, London / Public Domain.SPECIAL FEATURE: A Love Letter to the Liberal Arts, a Fogdog Video Project, Including Students’ Statements.Examining the Celtic Knot: Postcolonial Irish Identity as the Colonized and Colonizer in James Joyce’s Dubliners.Networks of Women and Selective Punishment in Atwood’s The Robber Bride.“Climate Change” and How Everything Can Change: An Interview with Dr. Margaret Atwood on “Everything Change” vs.Blood Symbolism as an Expression of Gendered Violence in Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory.New Annual Feature: Profiles of Three Former Fogdog Editors.Ophelia at Elsinore: Hamlet and the Women of Greek Tragedy.Hymns for the Antiheroes of a Beat(en) Generation: An Analysis of Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg.Interview with Poet Paige Lewis: Rock, Paper, Ritual.Struck by Lightning or Transcendence? Epiphany in Mary Oliver’s American Primitive.2019 Issue (Click drop-down arrow) open child menu.A Farewell from The Fogdog Review’s Faculty Advisor.The Fogdog Review Final Issue Editor Interviews.Your Vote Matters: A Fogdog Review Editorial.Politics and Literature: Fogdog Student Survey.
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