Julia Marlowe's Ophelia: a portrait of resistance and failure.

In 1904 Julia Marlowe, already an established American star of Shakespearean drama and romantic melodrama, teamed with E. H. Sothern and played Ophelia for the first time, using a text cut by Sothern to highlight his role as Hamlet (See Figure 1). (1) In exchange for Sothern's performing Romeo to her beloved Juliet, Marlowe supported him by Dortraying Ophelia with what Marvin Rosenberg calls a typically "sweet" Ophelia. (2) A reading of Sothern and Marlowe's 1904 promptbook justifies such a label: unseemly remarks about Ophelia have been excised along with the bawdy song by her. (3) Indeed, Marlowe's desire to depict only good women on the stage, and specifically here a pure Ophelia, can be seen in the textual cuts. However, Marlowe's part book for the role, describing all of her stage business as well as every gesture and facial expression that she used, tells a deeper, more interesting Story. (4) Through nonverbal means, Marlowe added more complexity to the role than the simple cutting of lines reveals. Although famous for her rich voice and musical delivery, Marlowe found nonverbal signs that enabled her Ophelia to speak a stronger language, the language of resistance, the language of one whose tragedy, as Marlowe herself stated, lies in her repeated failure. Marlowe's portrayal certainly could not be labeled a "power" Ophelia although elements of strength, intelligence, and rebelliousness can be seen in her gestures and expressions. It was a performance of its time, a transitional time when Shakespearean performance modes were moving away from the grand style of the nineteenth century with its romanticized portrayals of Ophelia but the modern psychological and naturalistic style had not yet fully emerged and developed. Marlowe's Ophelia could likewise be called transitional: progressive and innovative in its nonverbal transmission of protest and resistance, paving the way for the "power" Ophelias to come, but also traditional in its verbal purity and sweetness, linking her portrayal to the romanticized Ophelias of the previous century. Marlowe clearly believed that Ophelia had a compelling story of feminine strength to tell, but it is the story of a nineteenth-century woman habituated to the cult of true womanhood, a woman whose repeated self-sacrifice and failure lead her into the only space allowed her: childlike delirium. Marlowe tells this story partially with the expurgated text but largely with her own face and body.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

The American theatre in 1904 was making a hesitant transition from the previous century's grand style, characterized by broad gestures, pictorial realism, and meticulous delivery of blank verse, to a more "realistic" style in movement, delivery, and raise-en scene. However, during the first decade of the twentieth century, audiences still applauded and expected the old traditions, a fact lamented by theatre historian Walter Prichard Eaton in 1908:

   This tight old world is in very little danger from revolutionists,
   iconoclasts, new ideas in any form. We are compact of an inherited
   stock of beliefs and ideas, and we adopt as little that is new as
   possible; we hate change, a readjustment.... Old traditions flourish
   just because they are traditions; old conventions, moldy with time,
   still prevail and are accepted by audiences long after every one
   knows they are false and hollow. The stage villain, the stage
   servant, the stage hero, what are they but conventions we lack the
   initiative to give up? (5)

One of those conventions that actors and audiences inherited and cherished was the portrayal of Ophelia as an image of true womanhood: pious, pure, submissive, domestic. Barbara Welter describes the cult of "true womanhood" in her book Dimity Convictions as a "fearful obligation, a solemn responsibility"; the standards "by which a woman judged herself and was judged by her husband, her neighbors and society, could be divided into four cardinal virtues--piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity. Put them all together and they spelled mother, daughter, sister, wife--woman." (6) Mrs. Anna Jameson in her 1833 character study of Ophelia found qualities of the true woman: "modesty, grace, tenderness," without which "a woman is no woman." To Mrs. Jameson, Ophelia can be compared to "a strain of sad sweet music which comes floating by us on the wings of night and silence, and which we rather feel than hear...." (7) In 1884 Grace Latham in an essay entitled "O Poor Ophelia" also expressed this traditional notion, "Ophelia lacks the passion which might have lifted her for the moment beyond her fears"; Latham went on to describe the passive virtues that are both noble and necessary for a beautiful female character, virtues that Ophelia possesses: obedience, gentleness, patience, purity, and quiet endurance. (8) In 1897 Jessie Fremont O'Donnell ostensibly rejected the traditional romanticizing of Ophelia and asserted that Ophelia is merely "a simple shallow girl," but she continued by describing the character as "pure and delicate" and "weak and timid," adjectives traditionally used in the nineteenth century to romanticize Ophelia and place her squarely within the mold of the ideal woman. (9)

Also, in 1897, George Bernard Shaw commented on the audience's resentment of Mrs. Patrick Campbell's innovative and realistic portrayal of Ophelia's madness: "The part is one which has hitherto seemed incapable of progress." The audience preferred, Shaw explained, to see maiden lunacy that evokes beauty and pathos rather than a portrait of true madness that made them "horribly uncomfortable." (10) Mrs. Campbell attempted to break with tradition, attempted to play the mad scene as something more than a pretty interlude, and to Shaw, her performance chilled the blood, giving the scene "its right tragic power and dramatic significance." (11) In Mrs. Campbell's hands, a pretty Ophelia became painful, an interpretation used again in 1905 by Lily Brayton (with H. B. Irving's Hamlet), and Max Beerbohm found it misguided: "Lunacy is a painful thing, and Shakespeare did not mean the mad scenes of Ophelia to be painful: he merely meant them to be beautiful.... The only right way for an actress to interpret these mad scenes is through her sense of beauty." (12) Beerbohm clearly preferred the portrayal of Ellen Terry, whom Rosenberg calls one of the great "sweet Ophelias"--poetical, dreamy, cool, tender, chaste. (13) Alan Hughes describes Terry's Ophelia as "picturesquely pathetic," or "as Victorians liked to put it, she was 'ideally' pathetic and beautiful." Her madness was played as "a mind shattered but nothing squalid and painful." (14) Anthony Dawson also alludes to Terry's Ophelia as "lovely, pathetic, plaintive," a portrayal admired by audiences because she "fit smoothly into this homey patriarchal atmosphere." (15) Other nineteenth-century actresses established this tradition of beauty and pathos: Mrs. Charles Kean, for instance, whose Ophelia was characterized as charming, harmless, pious, full of timid grace; (16) or Helena Faucit, whose portrayal was both subtle and innovative but struck reviewers as revealing "all the poetry in the madness of Ophelia." (17) One reviewer rhapsodized over Faucit's mad scene: "how pale she [was] already with her future death," (18) a comment reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe's declaration that "the death ... of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world...." (19)

The role of Ophelia became a perfect vehicle for exalting the cult of true womanhood; she could be pure and chaste, obedient and submissive, and her madness and death could evoke images of sublime beauty. A. C. Bradley, in his landmark critical study Shakespearean Tragedy, published in the same year as Marlowe and Sothern's Hamlet (1904), echoes the traditional view of Ophelia. He declares that Ophelia should be "merely one of the subordinate characters" since she lacks the "spirit, power or intelligence" of an Imogen, Portia, or Juliet. (20) He states further, "And in the love and fate of Ophelia herself there was introduced an element, not of deep tragedy but of pathetic beauty, which makes the analysis of her character seem almost a desecration," (21) a perspective shared by Mrs. Jameson, who insisted that Ophelia's "sorrow asks not words but tears." (22) Bradley, however, does analyze her character briefly and proposes that she is not a weak woman but rather a simple and infinitely unselfish one, whose madness is a blessing, given her situation. Of her madness, Bradley perpetuates the conventional interpretation: "In her wanderings, we hear from time to time an undertone of the deepest sorrow, but never the agonised cry of fear or horror which makes madness dreadful or shocking. And the picture of her death, if our eyes grow dim in watching it, is still purely beautiful." (23) His view of Ophelia resonates with the romanticized portrayals on the stage, the portrayals that audiences preferred. Pathetic beauty and sorrow could reinforce the audience's desire to see Ophelia as a true woman--unselfish, self-sacrificing, and sublimely beautiful as she crumbles and dies.

Even though the role of Ophelia was a small one, generally played by "the second juvenile of the company," Julia Marlowe assumed the role in 1904 as a concession to her new stage partner, E. H. Sothern (See Figure 2). (24) She came to the role at the age of thirty-nine and approached it with her customary scholarly meticulousness, and in many ways her portrayal invigorated the traditional image of Ophelia. After all, Marlowe was the foremost romantic actress of the day, called the "epitome of womanly virtue and feminine loveliness." (25) Nevertheless, she saw more in Ophelia than many of her contemporary actor-managers had and certainly more than contemporary scholar-critic A. C. Bradley, who did not perceive the strength and "deep tragedy" in Ophelia's story. Marlowe clearly disagreed. In 1905 Marlowe gave an interview to the Washington Post regarding her portrayal of Ophelia, and she mentions that perhaps her "conception differs somewhat from others" since she sees Ophelia as smart and strong, not the "feeble-minded ingenue" frequently offered to audiences. Marlowe explains that Ophelia is "most assuredly" intellectual: "it is because of the very force of her intellect that she goes mad. If she were less great her mental fall would be less." She goes on to assert that Ophelia ought to be viewed as "the pivotal character of the play.... Insignificant as she is sometimes made to appear, she really dominates everything." (26) Marlowe's proof of Ophelia's intellect and centrality rests on her relationship with Hamlet: "Hamlet is thirty and a remarkably intellectual man. Ophelia would have to be a strong, well-poised woman to hold such a man, no whining and piping ingenue, no woman of ordinary attainments. I take it she was intellectually the most attractive woman in the Danish court." (27) Her claim that Ophelia's story is tragic and substantial in its own right is repeated again in a 1906 interview with Elizabeth McCracken: "She failed; that was her tragedy that she always failed. She tried to save the persons she loved, and she could not." (28) Marlowe's Ophelia repeatedly tried--tried to assert her own desires, tried to resist being used as a political pawn, tried to comfort and restore the man she loved--and repeatedly she failed. Marlowe's view that Ophelia's tragedy is caused by failure is provocative given a nineteenth-century explanation of failure offered by John Ruskin in his 1864 lecture "Of Queen's Gardens." In a thoroughly romanticized perspective of gender roles, a perspective that fueled the cult of true womanhood, Ruskin describes the "separate spheres" of men and women as being the natural way: "Man's power is active, progressive, defensive.... But the woman's power is for rule, not for battle and her intellect is not for invention or recreation, but sweet ordering, arrangement and decision.... Her great function is praise.... The man, in his rough work in the open world, must encounter all peril and trial--to him therefore must be the failure, the offence, the inevitable error; often he must be wounded or subdued, often misled, and always hardened." (29) Failure, a possible result of doing, acting, creating, lies in the masculine sphere. Marlowe's Ophelia, attempting to bridge the two spheres, experiences the rigidity of their separation, gaining an awareness of the masculine world of doing and failing and of the impossibility of entering and succeeding in that world. Marlowe herself knew much of the failure that comes with trying, risking, doing; she had made her own way in the world since she was a young teenager, deciding for herself the career path she would follow, managing her own Shakespearean productions and tours (prior to her collaboration with Sothern in 1904), and she had not always succeeded. Marlowe, like her Ophelia, was strong yet feminine and delicate, assertive yet virtuous, and ultimately she conformed to the patriarchal order of the day.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

The following description of Marlowe's performance, based largely on her own part book, reveals that the actress found an important tragedy to tell, a tragedy of a nineteenth-century woman who attempts to resist and fails.

Act 1, Scene 3

Marlowe's first appearance as Ophelia occurs in 1.3, set in a room in Polonius' house. Seated at a table, Marlowe's Ophelia reads a scroll, presumably a missive from Hamlet because she secretly kisses it before Laertes enters, at which time she hides the scroll behind her. Although her affection for the scroll reveals a young girl in love, attempting to hide the letter from her brother suggests fear or possibly even defiance. Ophelia's first line, "Do you doubt that?" in response to Laertes' request that she write to him (1.3.4), has been described by Charles E. Russell, Marlowe's business manager and biographer, as sounding unsuspected profundities in Ophelia's nature. Marlowe's simple delivery of the line conveyed loneliness and a sense of troubles; inexplicably, Russell contends, Marlowe allowed the audience to understand that Ophelia's mother is dead and that Ophelia seemed wistfully conscious of "tragic boding." (30) Her loneliness alters quickly, however, as Laertes begins to warn her away from Hamlet. Laertes points to the scroll as he mentions "the trifling of his favour" (1.3.5), causing Ophelia to turn resentfully to him (part book). Her resentment shifts quickly to slight fear at his next comment that Hamlet's "favour" is a "toy in blood" (1.3.6), and then fear alters to wonderment as she hears that Hamlet "may not ... Carve for himself" (1.3.19-20). Sothern and Marlowe cut the intervening thirteen lines in which Laertes refers to "the youth of primy nature" (1.3.7) and to "nature crescent" (1.3.11). As Laertes explains that "the health of this whole state" (1.3.21) depends on Hamlet's choice of a bride, Marlowe's Ophelia shows a thoughtful realization of Hamlet's inability to choose freely. Her apparent understanding shifts immediately to pain as Laertes warns her to "weigh what loss your honour may sustain" (1.3.29), the pain appearing at the mention of "honour." As he cautions her to ignore Hamlet's love songs, Ophelia takes a couple steps away from her brother. The next passage from Laertes, with its references to Ophelia's "chaste treasure" (1.3.31) and to "contagious blastments" (1.3.42), has been cut by Sothern and Marlowe, but Laertes' repeated admonition, "Fear it" (1.3.33), remains along with his comment about the "chariest maid" unmasking "her beauty to the moon" (1.3.36-37). Although the unseemly references to Ophelia have been cut, Marlowe still has sufficient opportunity to unveil a range of thought and emotion in Ophelia. Already moving away from her brother, she then sinks into thought, stating forward as he refers to unmasking "her beauty"; she begins her clear response still looking forward, "I shall the effect of this good lesson keep/ As watchman to my heart. But good my brother ..." (1.3.45-46), at which point she turns to him and places her hand on his shoulder, an unexpected gesture of authority, confidence, perhaps equality or even dominance, as she then instructs him, "Do not ... Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven ..." (1.3.47-51). Laertes immediately softens with "O, fear me not" (1.3.51) as their father enters. Marlowe's Ophelia steps away, stealing a glance at the scroll she still holds in her hand, her mounting confidence fading in her father's presence.

Such is our first view of Ophelia. The cutting of the text allows Marlowe to highlight the purity and sweetness that surround Ophelia, but the revelation of many distinct emotions--girlish love, loneliness, fear, wonderment, pain, independence, pensiveness, confidence, all in a twenty-five-line span (the same exchange in Shakespeare's text is fifty-two lines)--suggests the latent power and intelligence within Ophelia, noted by the New York Herald reviewer, "Marlowe invested [Ophelia] with more mentality than usual." (31) In this brief opening scene with Laertes, the audience could catch a glimpse of Ophelia's inwardness, her mystery. Marlowe found silent ways to unveil qualities of a "power" Ophelia, qualities that Marlowe's contemporaries found new and interesting. Oscar Firkins in 1913 commented that Marlowe's Ophelia was "less drooping and spiritless than the majority of the lacklustre sisterhood"; he saw in this Ophelia a woman who "submits rather than succumbs; she obeys with decision; she keeps her heart, if not her will, in her own custody." (32) Charles Russell perceived the complexity of Marlowe's portrayal, "... she suggested dignity, worth, a self-respect, without loss of sweetness and innocence." (33) Furthermore, Russell believed that in Ophelia's scene with Laertes, Marlowe conveyed "a wistfulness in the voice and an undertone of tragic foreboding that clutched at the sympathies and held them afterward." (34)

The scene continues with Polonius' admonitions to Ophelia, his advice to Laertes having been cut. Polonius gestures for Leartes to leave, and Ophelia quickly crosses to her brother, bowing to her father as she moves; she lays her hand on Laertes' arm, and he responds by grasping both of her arms with "... remember well/What I have said to you" (1.3.84-85), causing Polonius to shoot a quick glance of inquiry in their direction. Laertes kisses her forehead as he bids her farewell, and she stands motionless watching him depart. Polonius then asks, "What is't, Ophelia, he hath said to you?" (1.3.88), prompting her to turn, to respond with "... something touching the Lord Hamlet" (1.3.89), and timidly to hold out the scroll. Her inner turmoil grows as Polonius chastises her for being too "free and bounteous" (1.3.93) with her time with Hamlet and for not understanding herself and her "honour" (1.3.97), a word that elicits a cry of exclamation from her. She certainly does understand herself, her honour, and the dilemma that her father is introducing. Marlowe's part book directs that she "extend hand holding scroll, in gesture of expostulation," an earnest but unspoken protest to her father's taking and reading the letter. She attempts an explanation as he reads, "He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders/ Of his affection to me" (1.3.99-100), and then extends her hand appealingly for the letter. When he questions her, "Do you believe his tenders, as you call them?" (1.3.103), her protest shifts to bewilderment as she responds, "I do not know, my lord, what I should think" (1.3.104). As he berates these "tenders," all confusion fades, and she again attempts to protest, reaching out for the scroll with the insistent declaration, "... he hath importun'd me with love/ In honourable fashion" (1.3.110-111), causing Polonius to turn away from her, which in turn causes her to move a couple steps toward him. All that remains in Sothern and Marlowe's production of Polonius' subsequent explanation of Hamlet's deceptive ardor and vows is, "Ay, springes to catch woodcocks, I do know/ When the blood bums, how prodigal the soul/ Lends the tongue vows" (1.3.134), a suggestion that shocks Ophelia, prompting her to cover her face with horror. She removes her hands from her eyes only when he forbids her to "give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet" (1.3.134). Still holding the scroll, he demands, "Look to 't" and "Come your ways" (1.3.135). Marlowe's Ophelia glances at the scroll and crosses expectantly to him, but then realizing the hopelessness of retrieving her love letter, she submits tearfully, "I shall obey, my lord" (1.3.136), and exits in front of him.

Although she ultimately submits to her father's command, Marlowe's Ophelia clearly exhibits signs of protest and independent thought; in repeatedly reaching for her love letter and in covering her face, blocking out her father's unpleasant pronouncements, this Ophelia shows that she has chosen to believe Hamlet's vows over her father's warnings. However, she must obey. Polonius is not only her father but also a high-ranking official at court, a fact that Marlowe considered in her interpretation of Ophelia. According to Charles Russell, Marlowe's Ophelia "felt a sense of place in the court as a daughter of the lord chamberlain of the kingdom of Denmark, the man next to the king himself." (35) Whereas the reality of her father's position lends her the dignity and strength to protest her father's assessment of Hamlet, it also dooms that protest to failure. By the end of this short scene, then, Marlowe has laid her character's foundation: sad but not pathetic; pure and chaste but certainly not ethereal; independent in her thought and desires but incapable of little more than nonverbal protest because of her keen awareness of her family's court position; deeply emotional and deeply in love but not confused or puzzled by her emotions as many "sweet" Ophelias have been. While Marlowe's Ophelia could satisfy a 1904 audience's entrenched expectation of feminine loveliness and virtue through an expurgated text, the actress could quietly subvert those expectations and offer a fresh insight into Ophelia's mysterious interiority by enhancing and illuminating her few lines with gestures, facial expressions, and movements, many of which suggest resistance, protest, independent thought, qualities that certainly stretch, even challenge, the notion of ideal womanhood.

Act 2, Scene 1

The consequence of Ophelia's obedience soon becomes clear to her as she reports to her father her encounter with an apparently crazy Hamlet in 2.1 (Act 2 is one continuous scene in the Sothern-Marlowe version). Ophelia runs into the castle's throne room where Polonius has been giving spying instructions to Reynaldo (very abbreviated in this production), and she glances back over her shoulder as she approaches, "betraying alarm" (part book). She again looks back over her shoulder as she begins, "... as I was sewing in my closet" (2.1.77); Marlowe's Ophelia describes Hamlet's unbraced, hatless, pale, knee-knocking demeanor, eliminating the unpleasant reference to his fouled, ungartered stockings. Polonius hypothesizes that Hamlet is "Mad for thy love?" (2.1.85), to which Ophelia agrees and begins to imitate Hamlet's gestures, with observable force and precision in Marlowe's portrayal. During her speech, she seizes Polonius' wrist at 2.1.87 ("He took me by the wrist"); backs away arm's length from him; raises her hand to her brow and slowly nods her head up and down; releases her hold on Polonius, throwing his hand from her at 2.1.96 ("he lets me go"); turns from him, glancing back over her shoulder at him; and on "to the last, bended their light on me" (2.1.100), she crosses toward Polonius with her eyes fixed on him. Marlowe's gestures reveal an Ophelia who is deliberate, even forceful; she is not weeping, and she does not seem to be struggling to understand what happened. Some Ophelias, as reported by Rosenberg, run through the speech smoothly; others cannot look at Polonius during the speech; many have wept and sobbed. (36) Marlowe's Ophelia defiantly re-enacts Hamlet's gestures, suggesting instead a nonverbal accusation of her father (i.e., "See what you've made me do?"). At the end of the speech, she sinks down on a stool and covers her face with her hands, a gesture that speaks loudly after the preceding defiance. Clearly, there is much she does not want to face, much that she would rather not see: Hamlet's growing madness, her unwilling rejection of Hamlet's attention, and her necessary but resistant obedience to her father.

The realization that she has contributed to Hamlet's madness, that she has probably driven away their love and hope for marriage, could commence a softening or weakening of Ophelia, but not in Marlowe's hands. As the scene continues with Polonius' plan to reveal her encounter to the King, Marlowe's Ophelia continues to resist. On his first command, "Come, go with me; I will go seek the king" (2.1.101), she removes her hands from her face, recoils, then moves away, sitting in Hamlet's chair, an action that intimates her desire to disobey, to follow her own heart. However, when Polonius accusingly asks if she has given "any hard words of late" (2.1.107) to Hamlet, she begins to weep, "No, my good lord" (2.1.108); his question suggests that she is to blame entirely for Hamlet's instability, but they are tears of frustration, perhaps even anger, because almost immediately she wipes them from her eyes on "... denied/ His access to me" (2.1.109-10). Polonius repeats his command, "Come, go we to the king" (2.1.117), and starts to move off but hesitates, waiting for her. Marlowe's Ophelia rises and starts to follow but thinks again and stops, prompting her father to insist, "This must be known ..." (2.1.118). Her choice has been made clear, but she dare not resist further. She crosses to Polonius and exits in front of him. Once more, her father's position at court takes precedence, so her resistance can end only in failure. A London Sunday Times reviewer of Marlowe's 1907 performance of the role believed that in Ophelia's resistance to Polonius, Marlowe showed "almost too much forcefulness for Ophelia," (37) an indication that Marlowe's portrayal in some ways undermined the audience's traditional expectations despite the sanitizing of the play text.

Act 3, Scene 1

As the third act begins, Gertrude is sitting in Hamlet's chair (again in the throne room) with Ophelia sitting on steps beneath her, holding her hand. A small silver book hangs from Ophelia's belt, and Polonius holds a small jewel casket. After Claudius dismisses Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, he turns to Gertrude, "Sweet Gertrude, leave us too" (3.1.28), at which Gertrude rises and Ophelia, too, stands with her father's assistance. But the assurance and protection she feels with Gertrude quickly fade as Claudius reveals his plan: Hamlet has been sent for in order that he "may here/ Affront Ophelia" (3.1.30-31). At this suggestion, Marlowe indicates with her expression "the shock which your sensibilities suffer by such a plan" (part book). According to The Times reviewer in 1907, Marlowe's Ophelia demonstrates her unwillingness "to play decoy. She ran to tell her father that she would not, came back crestfallen and disgusted at the task." (38) She must listen as Claudius explains that he and Polonius will spy on the two to determine "If 't be th' affliction of his love or no/ That thus he suffers from" (3.1.35-37), a statement that clearly reminds Ophelia of her complicity in the "affliction" and that causes her to "show pain" in Marlowe's portrayal. Gertrude crosses to her, takes her hands as she wishes "That your good beauties be the happy cause/Of Hamlet's wildness" (3.1.39-40), and finally kisses Ophelia's brow before departing, leaving Ophelia utterly abandoned with two masculine authority figures. Her isolation and vulnerability are intensified by her prior closeness with Gertrude, her only ally and source of hope. Polonius approaches his daughter and thrusts the jewel casket toward her, but Marlowe's Ophelia refuses to take it, a weak attempt (but an attempt nevertheless) to resist any further interference in her love for Hamlet. However, Polonius taps the box commandingly, and "seeing the futility of further refusal, Ophelia reluctantly takes it" (part book), as he instructs her, "walk you here" (3.1.43). The nonverbal exchange between Ophelia and Polonius is intended to show that Ophelia does not initiate the return of Hamlet's gifts, contrary to A. C. Bradley's assertion in 1904 that she originates the idea. (39) Clearly, Marlowe draws attention to the jewel box as further evidence of Ophelia's unwilling participation in what is entirely her father's plan. As Polonius and Claudius hide themselves, Ophelia paces, "showing great distress" as she hears Hamlet's approach; she extends her hand "indicating great tenderness toward Hamlet" and then, according to the part book, "with an expression of regret at the scene you know is to follow, you hurriedly exit R.3.E. still glancing back in the direction from which Hamlet approaches." The extending of her hand towards Hamlet suggests a desire to reach out to him, to help him, a gesture of great sympathy and anguish that she will repeat later in the scene.

At the end of the "To be" soliloquy, Polonius shows himself in an archway because he must force Ophelia back into the room: "Ophelia looks at Hamlet and recoils from her task, turning appealingly to Polonius who points to Hamlet, and directs her to enter" (promptbook). Realizing again the futility of her protest, she lifts the book hanging from her belt and pretends to read as she moves toward Hamlet. When he notices her and asks to be remembered in her prayers, she responds "with an assumed indifference" (part book), even walking away as she asks, "How does your honour for this many a day?" (3.1.91). Sothern's Hamlet is surprised by Ophelia's tone and immediately "adopts a formal attitude" with her (promptbook), which, in turn, causes Ophelia to indicate "grief at Hamlet's sudden coolness" (part book). Quickly, however, she recalls her task and glances up toward the balcony where Polonius and Claudius hide. Resuming her indifferent demeanor, Ophelia attempts to return the casket, but first she opens it, takes out a few pearls, fondles then replaces them: "Take these again" (3.1.100). She extends the jewel box tenderly, and Hamlet takes it, walking away from her, an action that elicits a small sob from her. The conflict between duty to her father, who watches from above, and love and pity for Hamlet becomes excruciating; a sob escapes, but it quickly turns to embarrassment as Hamlet turns and attacks, "... are you honest?" (3.1.103), and the embarrassment increases as Hamlet refers to beauty transforming honesty "to a bawd" (3.1.112), causing Ophelia "to shrink" at one of the few blatantly unseemly words used in her presence in this production. (At some point during the "honest/fair" exchange, Sothern's Hamlet must have thrown the jewel casket down although the 1904 promptbook doesn't indicate the action. Later gestures, however, depend on his having cast the box away.) Ophelia then turns toward him as he turns away to admit, "I did love you once" (3.1.115), and having lost her facade of indifference, she responds, "Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so" (3.1.116), accompanied by a "hardly heard cry" (part book). Charles Russell describes this moment in the production, "The whole history of her love, her hope and its irretrievable rain seemed to be told in the single line, so simple and so moving, 'Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so' and 'I was the more deceived.' It seems impossible to make five words convey more than these five words conveyed as Miss Marlowe spoke them. A new drama opened in them; for the time we lost all thought of the problem laid upon Hamlet, and saw, in a flash, the whole course of his wooing and the sombre tragedy of its end." (40) In a handwritten note in her part book, Marlowe instructs herself to "cry" and to turn her back to Hamlet at this point, allowing him a moment of hidden and unspoken tenderness. As he says, "... for virtue cannot so innoculate our old stock but we shall relish it" (3.1.117-18), he takes a lock of Ophelia's hair, presses it to his lips tenderly then puts it down and resumes his formal attitude: "I loved you not" (3.1.118-19).

Still with her back to Hamlet, Marlowe's Ophelia moves away a few steps until he says, "... it were better my mother had not borne me" (3.1.123-24), at which she turns with an "exclamation of protest" by placing her hands on Hamlet's shoulders (part book). Earlier she had asserted control and confidence with Laertes with this same gesture--her hand on his shoulder--and despite her own conflicted emotions now, she is attempting to steady what she thinks is an increasingly mad, self-destructive lover. She is trying to solve a problem, one to which she contributed, by offering sympathy, compassion, and strength. Marlowe explained in her 1905 Washington Post interview that at this moment Ophelia's "one idea is to help him, to restore him and save him ... she believes him to be mad, and that is the controlling note of her attitude toward him--an attitude of deep pity and concern." (41) Sothern's Hamlet takes her hands and continues railing, "What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven?" (3.1.128-29), at which Marlowe instructs herself, "You remonstrate with same business" (part book). Again she protests nonverbally; again she offers to balance or anchor him with her hands on his shoulders, and again, her efforts fail. On "believe none of us" (3.1.130), Hamlet takes Ophelia's hands and "throws them away from him" (part book), and in a handwritten note Marlowe directs herself, "Try to put arm up higher" at which he again throws her arms down, causing her to turn slowly from Hamlet (part book) as he commands, "Go thy ways to a nunnery" (3.1.130). At this point, Marlowe's Ophelia catches a glimpse of Polonius, eliciting a slight cry and a sudden movement of her upraised hand; Hamlet, noticing the gesture, takes her hands, turns her toward him, and looking directly into her eyes, asks, "Where's your father?" (3.1.130-31). "Avoiding Hamlet's glance guiltily and speaking falteringly" (part book), she lies ("At home"), prompting Hamlet's outrage at her deception. Russell describes the effect Marlowe's Ophelia created when she lies: "the lie seemed wrong out of her by an invisible racking; she hated to say it and still that knowledge was heliographed to us and not to Hamlet." (42) Marlowe believed that Ophelia was trying to save Hamlet by lying to him because she "understood that if Hamlet were to know that Polonius was at hand he would be projected into one of his violent attacks. Hence it is for his own good, as she conceives it that ... she replies untruthfully ... and the sacrifice of truth in a woman as pure and good as Ophelia is itself a tragedy. Her one idea is to help him, to restore him, and save him from despair." (43) At several points during Hamlet's angry speech--"Let the doors be shut upon him" (3.1.133)--she "turns appealingly to him" with outstretched hands (part book), but her attempts to reach out and help with him only enrage him further. To C.E. Russell, her plea "O help him, you sweet heavens" (3.1.135) seemed "tom out of a stricken soul and from that time her disaster was foreshadowed upon us not as the weakness of a commonplace intellect overthrown, but as the inevitable and only possible ending of a great and shattered life." (44) Hamlet takes her outstretched left wrist on "no more marriages" (3.1.149) then throws it down and paces away on "the rest shall keep ..." (3.1.151), leaving her behind him, still with extended arms. Before his exit, Sothern's Hamlet stops in front of Ophelia and covers his face with his hands, "as if to vanish her from his thoughts" (promptbook), a gesture she earlier exhibited with her father, a gesture suggesting a desire to protest present reality by denying it. Marlowe's Ophelia watches Hamlet's exit, and Russell chronicles this moment as Ophelia realizes the loss of Hamlet's love: "she made a tragic passage of an astonishing compulsion. For the first time one felt how much of an exalted passion lay latent in this neglected character." (45) She opens her speech, "O, what a noble mind ..." (3.1.152), crossing to the throne area and sinking on the upper throne step midway through the lament, back to the spot where she received some small support from Gertrude; as she recalls that she "suck'd the honey of his music vows" (3.1.158), she picks up the casket, which Hamlet had previously dashed to the floor, and rises on "O, woe is me..." (3.1.162), exiting alone, leaving the jewel box behind. Polonius and Claudius do not re-enter until she is gone, so she receives no consolation from her father. Clearly, this Ophelia expects none. (46)

Marlowe's part book never indicates that her Ophelia breaks down sobbing, and the Daily Telegraph reviewer of a 1907 performance even refers to the fact that "her eyes swimming with unshed tears, touched us to the heart." (47) Marlowe non-verbally enunciated Ophelia's inner struggle, which as Rosenberg notes, was considered "something new" to observers (48): her desire to reach out and reform her bond with Hamlet, her awareness of her guilt, her attempt to bolster his mind and spirit with shows of strength, her fear of betraying her father. According to the New York Herald reviewer in 1904, "Here was not a gentle lady going daft to slow music, but a woman of strong passions and fine intelligence who succumbs to a terrible catastrophe." (49) However, Marlowe did not sacrifice Ophelia's womanly tenderness and beauty despite her visible efforts to take control and shore up Hamlet's frantic mind; a Chicago Tribune reviewer noted in her 1910 performance of the role, "There was sounded a note of sorrow at the loss of Hamlet's love which has not before been found in any other impersonation of the part." (50) The outstretched arms created an image of sad and lyrical beauty but not of fragile instability. Julia Marlowe herself commented on this scene, "Polonius was annoying to Hamlet, under any circumstance. Ophelia couldn't have lived all her life at the court of Denmark without having discovered that. How unendurably it would have nettled Hamlet to hear that Polonius has been listening behind the arras to his so personal, so private words to Ophelia! She knew that; and she tried both to protect her father and to spare Hamlet. She failed; that was her tragedy that she always failed. She tried to save the persons she loved, and she could not." (51) Marlowe's Ophelia is not a passive victim; repeatedly, she tries to repair the wrongs surrounding her by sacrificing her own desires and well-being, and repeatedly, her actions fail to make any difference.

Act 3, Scene 2

Ophelia's presence in the Mousetrap scene (3.2) is greatly diminished in Sothern and Marlowe's version since the indelicate banter between Hamlet and Ophelia has been excised. However, her presence is felt. Prior to Ophelia's entrance, Hamlet is on stage with a Jester, who picks up the jewel casket Ophelia left behind. He offers it to Hamlet, as Ophelia had previously done; Hamlet takes it then throws it back to the Jester and walks to his chair. According to the Sothern-Marlowe promptbook, "the Jester shows disappointment at Hamlet's treatment, stands looking at Hamlet. Hamlet turns and beckons the Jester to him ... and puts his arm around his shoulder." The dumbshow provides a visual echo of Hamlet's unforgiving treatment of Ophelia earlier; the audience knows that she had attempted the impossible--returning his gifts while extending a sympathetic hand--and that her gesture found bitter anger. Repeating her gesture now, with the opposite response from Hamlet, certainly draws attention to Ophelia and the sorrow she feels, sorrow that leads to her tragic breakdown in the next act. The connection between her madness and her earlier actions becomes clear; Ophelia's breakdown occurs not because she has a fragile, passive spirit that cannot survive in a corrupt world but rather because her repeated and active struggles to love and be loved are thwarted--all misunderstood, all falling. Marlowe's Ophelia enters for "The Mousetrap" escorted by Horatio. Marlowe directs herself, "You notice Hamlet and give a slight indication of pain" (part book), before proceeding to sit next to the throne. When Hamlet makes his way to her and asks, "Lady shall I lie in your lap?" (3.2.110-11), her response is only "You are merry, my Lord" (3.2.120), the intervening eight lines regarding "country matters" having been cut. As Hamlet rants about his father's death only two months before, Marlowe's Ophelia glances at Horatio, "conveying your pity for Hamlet's condition" (part book). Later in the scene, when Hamlet comments on the Player who is "one Lucianus, nephew to the King" (3.2.239), Ophelia responds to him, "You are as good as a chorus, my lord" (3.2.240), and while the entire court watches the player, Ophelia keeps her gaze fixed on Hamlet, a small attempt to reconnect with him that he quickly brushes off. He responds, "I could interpret between you and your love if I could see the puppets dallying" (3.2.241-42), but their subsequent exchange at 3.2.243-45 ("You are keen, my lord" ... "It would cost you a groaning to take off mine edge") is decorously cut. When the King ends the play by shouting for lights, in the chaos of everyone's running off stage, Ophelia hurries off with the Queen. Again, the audience sees Ophelia associated with Gertrude, her only source of feminine guidance and sympathy in the play. Marlowe's Ophelia is not entirely isolated; however, her alliance with the Queen, visually established in two scenes, represents yet another attempt by Ophelia to save herself, mend Hamlet, and rescue their love, but the attempt is doomed to fail because of Gertrude's own powerlessness.

Act 4, Scene 5

Her repeated attempts to save her lover's soul and mind while protecting her father's position at court leave Marlowe's Ophelia lost, unconsoled, and nearly unnoticed by either man. Marlowe chose to portray Ophelia's resulting madness in Act 4 as many of her nineteenth-century predecessors had done--with pathos and beauty as audiences preferred; however, her particular interpretation of the insanity grows logically out of Ophelia's previous self-sacrificing struggles (See Figure 3). Phyllis Chesler in her book Women and Madness describes the role that self-sacrifice plays in the cult of true womanhood:

   Women are impaled on the cross of self-sacrifice. Unlike men, they
   are categorically denied the experience of cultural supremacy,
   humanity, and renewal based on their sexual identity.... In
   different ways, some women are driven mad by the fact. Their madness
   is treated in such a way as turn it into another form of
   self-sacrifice. Such madness is essentially an intense experience of
   female biological, sexual, and cultural castration, and a doomed
   search for potency. (52)

In the first three acts, Marlowe portrays Ophelia as caught between the masculine and feminine spheres, searching for, often attempting, potency through resistance, protest, and support, and each attempt leads to self-sacrifice and then failure. This inevitably doomed chain of events leads to her final sacrifice: her adult will and intellect. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg explains that among nineteenth-century women, the hysterical fit "must have been the only acceptable outburst--of rage, of despair, or simply of energy--possible. But as a form of revolt it was very limited ... hysterics don't unite and fight." (53) Having failed at all efforts, albeit non-verbal ones, either to fight back or to nurture, Marlowe's Ophelia sublimates her anger, her despair, her energy and reverts to childhood, a place outside the masculine and feminine spheres. Her entrance early in Act 4 (the first four scenes of Act 4 having been cut in this production) is described in her part book, "The entrance of Ophelia should strike, at once, the key-note of the scenes to follow: her hurried entrance and inquiring glance from side to side, her childlike simplicity should all suggest the shattered mind." While Marlowe's interpretation has a psychological reality and coherence based on her previous scenes, it never approaches the startlingly painful and naturalistic portrayals of some of her contemporary actresses (Mrs. Patrick Campbell, for instance).

She enters with a delicate white scarf draped over her left arm and a lute in her right hand, searching for the only ally she has had, the Queen, who agrees immediately to speak with her. (In Shakespeare's text, Gertrude initially refuses to speak with her.) Many of the Gentleman's lines (transferred here to Horatio) regarding Ophelia's madness are cut; the audience hears nothing of her hemming and beating her heart or of her "winks and nods and gestures" (4.5.11) so that Marlowe can create her own image of the true woman-turned-child. As she sings, "How should I true love know" (Shakespeare's text is "your true love know"), her face is bright, and she strikes a chord on the lute at the end of each line. Marlowe then describes in her part book how she intends to portray this childlike insanity: "One of the most effective means of suggesting insanity, in this scene, is by rapid transition of mood; from brightness to sadness and vice versa." Her idea for this image of feminine insanity certainly is derived from Ellen Terry's portrayal, which itself was based on Terry's visit to a madhouse where she observed a young woman whose vacant stare suddenly shifted to excitability as "she sped across the room like a swallow." (54) An instance of Marlowe's use of this effect is in the transition from her bright inquiring glance and almost bird-like utterance of the words "Say you" followed immediately by a despairing look and low wail of "Nay, pray you mark" (4.5.28), at which point she resumes her singing and strumming of the lute. In the middle of the song's line, "At his head a grass-green turf" (4.5.31), Marlowe glances down, suggesting a grave at her feet, and a small sob escapes here and again in the middle of the next line, "At his heel a stone" (4.5.32). At the conclusion of this line, Marlowe instructs herself, "As you moan, pass your hand over your brow. Add 'oh, oh'" (part book). The Queen moves toward her, showing great sympathy, but Marlowe's Ophelia "pays no attention to the Queen," shifting back to brightness on "Pray you, mark" (4.5.35) then immediately back to a plaintive mood as she continues her song, "White his shroud as the mountain snow" (4.5.36). Claudius enters, and he and Gertrude watch as Ophelia sings and strums her lute, but his presence adds a new emotion to her poignant vacillation between brightness and sadness. When he speaks to her, "How do you, pretty lady?" (4.5.41), Marlowe's Ophelia turns toward him about to respond; then "instinctively shrinking from him" (part book), she pushes her lute at him. This "shrinking from him" and the proffering of her lute suggest a childlike fear, certainly, but also intimate a deeper revulsion or horror, an emotion that she displays again later in the scene. In her next short speech, her mood shifts several times. She begins by addressing Claudius in a bright but confidential tone, "They say the owl was a baker's daughter," but then her tone changes to sadness on "Lord, we know what we are," at which point she shudders before continuing, "but know not what we may be" (4.5.42-44). She glances down at the imaginary grave at her feet, turns and brightly curtsies to the Queen with "God be at your table" (4.5.44). Claudius mentions the dead Polonius at 4.5.45 ("Conceit upon her father"), causing her to snap back harshly at him, "Pray, you, let's have no words of this" (4.5.46). At this moment, according to Marlowe's part book, "occurs a marked contrast of manner; your mood changes to one of excessive gaiety, which expresses itself a moment later in song." However, Marlowe's Ophelia sings only the first stanza:

   Tomorrow is St. Valentine's day,
   All in the morning betime,
   And I a maid at your window,
   To be your Valentine. (4.5.48-51)

Marlowe eliminates the bawdy stanzas to preserve the purity of her Ophelia and to sustain this image of delirium as a reversion to simple juvenile emotions. (55)

After her brief Valentine song, Claudius tries to move toward her as he asks Gertrude, "How long hath she been thus?" (4.5.67), but Ophelia again recoils from him then shoves him away from her. Her fear and anger shift quickly to sadness with "I hope all will be well" (4.5.68), the sadness further deepening on "I cannot choose but weep" (4.5.68-69), at which she kneels and spreads her white scarf before her, suggesting a grave, a piece of stage business used by several actresses in the nineteenth century. To this imaginary but now explicitly depicted grave, she speaks her next line, "To think they should lay him i' the cold ground" (4.5.69-70), causing her to break down crying. But this touching picture of beauty is brief because Marlowe's Ophelia rises suddenly and while both glaring at and recoiling from Claudius, she angrily addresses him, "My brother shall know of it" (4.5.70), her emphasis on "brother." Just as quickly, her manner changes again to "one of extreme courtesy as you address the Queen" (part book): "and so I thank you for your good counsel" (4.5.71). Marlowe's Ophelia curtsies several times and beckons imaginary attendants as she makes her way toward an archway for her exit. Just as she crosses through the archway, the audience hears "a burst of half delirious laughter" (part book).

In describing Marlowe's Act 4 Ophelia in 1913, Oscar Firkins makes particular mention of her "aspen-like mobility and variability" and categorizes this depiction of madness as "drifting," a sort of "helmlessness of the uncontrolled mind." (56) He chronicles Marlowe's Ophelia not as heartbreakingly sad but rather as heartbreakingly cheerful: "She nestles into her grief, she makes bereavement a playfellow, she comforts herself with laments; we are touched with the immeasurable sadness of her not being immeasurably sad." (57) Arthur Symons reports similar impressions of this mad Ophelia: "she suffers and is pitifully unaware of it...." revealing "the very soul naked and shameless with an innocence beyond innocence." (58) Her reversion to childlike innocence is the greatest self-sacrifice this Ophelia could make because while evoking sympathy in her observers, she does not cause discomfort, pain, or suffering in them.

Preceding Ophelia's re-entrance later in 4.5, shouts and screams are heard offstage. She enters through an archway, humming a tune she later sings, carrying an armful of flowers, and trailing a garland in her right hand; Russell specifies that Marlowe chose to use all white rose petals. (59) She shows no sign of recognition towards a stunned Laertes because, as her part book directs, "your attention [is] being given entirely to the flowers in your arms, with which you toy." Laertes attempts to draw her attention to him by calling out, "O rose of May!/Dear maid--kind sister--sweet Ophelia" (4.5.157-58), and for the first time Marlowe's Ophelia glances up from the flowers and stares "abstractedly" at Laertes. Her part book further instructs, "Your glance leaves no doubt in Laertes' mind of your madness." After Laertes laments the mortality of both their old father and her young wits, she returns to the imaginary grave--her scarf spread out on the floor earlier--and begins to sing sadly, "They bore him barefac'd on the bier,/And on his grave rains many a tear" (4.5.164-65). In the middle of the second line, she drops flower petals onto the grave, and Russell describes this moment, "The manner of it was beyond all words pathetic; nothing could have brought home to us so intimately the sense of Ophelia's infinite disaster and wrecked mind." (60) She breaks off her singing, and as she speaks "Fare you well, my dove" (4.5.166), her glance wanders from the grave; she extends her hand as if following "the flight of an imaginary dove" (part book). Still lost in her imaginary funeral rites, she enlists the participation of her onstage listeners. To Laertes, she brightly instructs, "You must sing 'A-down, a-down-a"'; then turning to Claudius but in a higher register of voice, she directs, "You call him a-down-a" (4.5.169-70). Marlowe's part book spells out that the last note ("down-a") should fade away to a faint echo at which Ophelia should cup her ear as though listening to the refrain. Suddenly, however, she seems to recognize the man before her--the King--and she shrinks in fear, directing her allusion ("It is the false steward, that stole his master's daughter" at 4.5.170-71) to him. The word "daughter" seems to soothe her, and she returns to toying placidly with the rose petals she still carries in her arms.

With Laertes' commentary "This nothing's more than matter" (4.5.172), Marlowe's Ophelia turns to him and offers a rose petal, "There's rosemary, that's for remembrance,--pray you, love, remember" (4.5.173-74), looking into his face and caressing his brow. She selects another petal and handing it also to Laertes, says, "and there is pansies, that's for thoughts" (4.5.174-75). In this production, the thoughts and memories that Ophelia seeks to share with her brother are not altogether bad because they seemed to have a sort of equality in their earlier scene. However, as she gently caresses his brow, she offers him sympathy, probably for their father's death, offers to share his pain, but his response is not a return of pity and love but simple astonishment: "A document in madness, thought and remembrance fitted" (4.5.176-77). Marlowe's Ophelia then turns her attention to the King, crossing toward him, holding out some rose petals, but as she speaks ("There's fennel for you, and columbines" at 4.5.178) and as he reaches out to take the flowers, she quickly pulls them back "with repulsion, dropping them" (part book). She shifts immediately to Gertrude, to whom she offers a petal, "There's me for you" (4.5.178-79); her manner and tone are "entirely sympathetic," and she takes a petal for herself "with evidence of pleasure" (part book) as she says, "and here's some for me; we must call it herb of grace o' Sundays" (4.5.179-80). Her gesture makes Gertrude uncomfortable, so Marlowe instructs herself, "assume a sympathetic tone to make amends" (part book) as she continues to address Gertrude, "O, you must wear your rue with a difference" (4.5.180-81). Sinking back into herself for a moment, she holds a rose petal before her, "There's a daisy" (4.5.181), and her private thoughts precipitate hysterical laughter followed by a tossing of the flower in the air. (61) As the rose petal falls, her laughter turns into "tears and passionate sobbing" (part book), and her grief reminds her again of Laertes, to whom she crosses on "I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died" (4.5.181-83). She turns then to the imaginary grave, made visible with her scarf, and begins to toss petals over it and sing brightly, "For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy" (4.5.184). Marlowe's part book instructs her to "sink down above imaginary grave and begin to croon first few lines, body swaying to the rhythm of the music. As you sing, form outline of cross with flowers which she has let fall." The song "becomes crescendo" (part book) at the beginning of the second verse, and no doubt Marlowe's well-trained contralto voice enthralled both the onstage and offstage audiences. At the song's end, her Ophelia starts to rise, and Gertrude crosses to help her; the part book directs that the Queen "places her arms sympathetically about you, to assist you: you shrink from the touch but glance at her, and recognizing the Queen you are reassured and accept her assistance." Before exiting, Marlowe's Ophelia bends over the grave and addresses it, "God be wi' ye" (4.5.197), and Gertrude must begin to move her away. With one last act of resistance and protest, this Ophelia turns back to the grave, with extended arms, and repeats "God be wi' ye" a couple times; however, realizing for the last time the futility of resistance, she turns away and with a low wail buries her face in her hands, "moaning piteously" as she exits.

In many ways, Marlowe's mad scene summarizes the progress of her Ophelia: her attempts to reach out and support others at the cost of her own needs and desires; her attempts to be seen and heard and understood, all failing; and her realization of her failures in her final gesture of covering her face--the clearest non-verbal expression of protest to the realities around her that she could make, even in lunacy. Charles Russell describes the effect of Marlowe's performance in this scene, "... when she went out a sound arose in the theatre like the long-drawn sigh of many persons, an echo of a pent-up feeling too deep for applause." (62) Although Marlowe certainly saw Ophelia's story as more than a lovely and lyrical interlude in Hamlet's tragic tale, she never "played for points," a nineteenth-century practice that Marlowe deplored. Instead, she played the mad scene, according to John Corbin, with "admirable restraint," and with "full recognition of the scene's essential connection with the entire play, disregarding the temptation to stress her own moments at the expense of the unity of the whole." (63)

Conclusion

Marlowe's Ophelia struggles but ultimately fails to break the mold of tree womanhood. She had only two spaces in which to reside: silent, submissive womanhood or childlike delirium. While she desired the purity and gentleness of the feminine sphere, she tried to incorporate the energy and problem-solving action of the masculine sphere. Failure was inevitable. Julia Marlowe places her Ophelia squarely within a tradition, both critical and theatrical, while simultaneously and subtly subverting that tradition. According to Anthony Dawson, "The theatre is shaped by, and helps to shape, the cultural needs and meanings of a particular historical moment. Hence, though tradition generally plays a conservative role, participating in the reproduction of cultural orders, there is always some kind of negotiation between tradition and innovation, ways that what is known is re-shaped into new forms that speak to new imperatives." (64) Marlowe's Ophelia is precisely such a "negotiation." Just as Marlowe herself was an actress caught between traditions in the early years of the twentieth century, her Ophelia is equally transitional. (65) Despite Marlowe's friendship with Susan B. Anthony, whose battle cry for women was "failure is impossible," Marlowe's Ophelia struggles to assert herself yet indeed fails, caught between old and new cultural ideals and expectations.

Julia Marlowe continued to play Ophelia until her retirement at the end of the 1924-25 season, when she was sixty years old. To her the age of Ophelia was irrelevant; she never tried to look as Ophelia might have looked but rather tried "to be as she was, do as she did." (66) Also irrelevant to her was this production's diminution of an already small role. The number of lines did not matter because as Marlowe herself wrote, "Great acting ... does not depend upon the voice solely.... A look often speaks volumes and reveals what the tongue could not." (67) In Marlowe's hands, Ophelia's story was deep and tragic, a tale of protest and failure, and she told much of that brief tale with her eyes, her gestures, her movements. Charles Russell likened her Ophelia to a great Italian portrait: "masterful, compact, intense ... still looking out of the canvas when the canvas is gone." (68)

NOTES

All references to the text correspond to the Arden Hamlet, ed. Harold Jenkins. London: Routledge, 1990.

(1) Marlowe debuted as Ophelia 4 October 1904 in Chicago. Marlowe and Sothern then took this production, along with Romeo and Juliet and Much Ado About Nothing, to the Knickerbocker Theatre in New York, stopping to perform in Pittsburgh along the way.

(2) Marvin Rosenberg, The Masks of Hamlet (Newark: Univ. of Delaware, 1992), 244.

(3) The promptbook for this production is Folger: Hamlet 34, dated 1904 by Charles Shattuck.

(4) Julia Marlowe's part book for Ophelia is held at the Museum of the City of New York: 43.430.683.

(5) Walter Prichard Eaton, The American Stage of To-Day (Boston: Small, Maynard and Co., 1908), 59.

(6) Barbara Welter, Dimity Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1976), 21.

(7) Anna Jameson, Shakespeare's Heroines: Their Moral, Poetical and Historical Characteristics (Philadelphia: John E. Potter, n.d. [1833]), 62.

(8) Grace Latham, "O Poor Ophelia." Read at 94th Meeting of the New Shakspere Society, 8 February 1884. Rpt. in Women Reading Shakespeare 1660-1900, ed. Ann Thompson and Sasha Roberts (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1997), 166-67.

(9) Jessie Fremont O'Donnell, "Ophelia." The American Shakespeare Magazine, March 1897. Rpt. in Women Reading Shakespeare 1660-1900, ed. Ann Thompson and Sasha Roberts (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1997), 241-42.

(10) George Bernard Shaw, Review of Hamlet in The Saturday Review, 8 April 1905. Rpt. in Shakespeare in the Theatre: An Anthology of Criticism, ed. Stanley Wells (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2000), 149.

(11) Shaw, 149.

(12) Max Beerbohm, Review of Hamlet in The Saturday Review, 8 April 1905. Rpt. in Shakespeare in the Theatre: An Anthology of Criticism, ed. Stanley Wells. (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2000), 180.

(13) Rosenberg, 246.

(14) Alan Hughes, Henry Irving, Shakespearean (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1981), 68.

(15) Anthony B. Dawson, Hamlet, Shakespeare in Performance Series (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1995), 64.

(16) Rosenberg, 241.

(17) Carol J. Carlisle, Fire and Ice: Helen Faucit on the Victorian Stage (London: Society for Theatre Research, 2000), 135.

(18) Carlisle, 135.

(19) Edgar Allan Poe, "The Philosophy of Composition," Graham's Magazine 28 (April 1846). Rpt. in Edgar Allan Poe: Selected Prose, Poetry, and Eureka, ed. W.H. Auden (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1950), 425.

(20) A. C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy, 2nd edn, 1905. (Rpt. New York: St. Martin's, 1978), 160.

(21) Bradley, 160.

(22) Jameson, 62.

(23) Bradley, 164-65.

(24) E. H. Sothern, Julia Marlowe's Story, ed. Fairfax Downey (New York: Rinehart, 1954), 169.

(25) Garff Wilson, History of American Acting (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1966), 148.

(26) Washington Post (5 February 1905).

(27) Washington Post (5 February 1905).

(28) Elizabeth McCracken, "Julia Marlowe, Including Comment By Her on Characters She Has Played," The Century 51 (November 1906): 52.

(29) Kate Millett, "The Debate Over Women: Ruskin vs. Mill," Suffer and Be Still: Women in the Victorian Age, ed. Martha Vicinus (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1972): 126.

(30) Charles E. Russell, Julia Marlowe: Her Life and Art (New York: Appleton, 1926), 324.

(31) Rosenberg, 244.

(32) Oscar Firkins, "Sothern and Marlowe--An Estimate," Theatre 18 (October 1913): 32.

(33) Russell, Julia Marlowe, 322.

(34) Russell, Julia Marlowe, 324.

(35) Russell, Julia Marlowe, 322.

(36) Rosenberg, 365-66.

(37) Rosenberg, 244.

(38) Rosenberg, 462.

(39) Bradley, 165.

(40) Charles E. Russell, "A Notable Achievement: Miss Marlowe and Mr. Sothern in Shakespeare," Critic 45 (December 1904): 531.

(41) 5 February 1905.

(42) Russell, Julia Marlowe, 323.

(43) Washington Post, 5 February 1905.

(44) Russell, Julia Marlowe, 323.

(45) Russell, Julia Marlowe, 323.

(46) Rosenberg reports that Marlowe's promptbook reveals that Ophelia returns after Claudius and Polonius exit in order to gather up her trinkets and weep over them, an added bit of business giving Marlowe the scene-end (543). Neither the 1904 promptbook nor Marlowe's part book shows this addition, which must have been used in a later production.

(47) Rosenberg, 244.

(48) Rosenberg, 244.

(49) Rosenberg, 244.

(50) Rosenberg, 244.

(51) McCracken, 52.

(52) Phyllis Chesler, Women and Madness (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1972), 71.

(53) Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, Complaints and Disorders: The Sexual Politics of Sickness (New York: Feminist Press, 1973), 41.

(54) Ellen Terry, The Story of My Life: Recollections and Reflections (New York: McClure, 1908), 169.

(55) Rosenberg reports that the bawdy stanzas were usually censored "to preserve the 'decency' of Ophelia and the ears of the spectators." He describes Helena Modjeska's treatment of the song in her production with Edwin Booth: "At the end of the first stanza she breaks into a wordless song, to the music of which she dances up the stage and down again to the King" (785).

(56) Firkins, 121.

(57) Firkins, 121.

(58) Sothern, 190.

(59) Russell, "Notable," 531.

(60) Russell, Julia Marlowe, 323.

(61) In later productions, Marlowe must have altered the presentation of the flowers. In an interview as early as 1905, she commented on the scene: "It does not seem to me natural that an insane person could discriminate between different kinds of flowers.... To her all flowers must seem alike. Then how much stronger and better to have her give the flowers to imaginary instead of real persons ! How much more in keeping with the state of her mind" (Washington Post 5 February 1905).

(62) Russell, "Notable," 531.

(63) John Corbin, New York Times (30 October 1923).

(64) Dawson, 24.

(65) See Patty S. Derrick, "Julia Marlowe: An Actress Caught Between Traditions," Theatre Survey 32.1 (May 1991): 85-105.

(66) McCracken, 52.

(67) Julia Marlowe, "The Eloquence of Silence," Green Book Magazine 9 (March 1913): 398.

(68) Russell, Julia Marlowe, 325.

Patty S. Derrick is Professor of English at University of Pittsburgh-Johnstown, where she teaches Shakespeare, Shakespeare and Film, and Renaissance Literature. She is currently editor of the New Variorum edition of Two Gentleman of Verona and is writing a book on Julia Marlowe's Shakespearean interpretations and portrayals. She has published other articles in Theatre Survey, Theatre History Studies, Shakespeare's Sweet Thunder (ed. Michael Collins), Two Gentlemen of Verona: Critical Essays (ed. June Schlueter), and Analytical and Enumerative Bibliography.