e world can do thee good. In thee there is not half an hour’s life. The treacherous instrument is in *thy* hand, unbated and envenomed. Hamlet: I am dead, Horatio…things standing thus unknown, shall I leave behind me! If thou didst ever hold me in they heart, absent thee from felicity awhile and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain to tell my story (V.ii. 344-348, 365, 379-384).Ophelia’s dependency on her father, Polonius, is her flaw. She will do whatever he asks her to: “I shall obey, my lord” (I.iv.145). She also refuses to receive anything from Hamlet because her father told her to do so: “As you did command I did repel his letters and denied his access to me”(II.ii.120-12). When Polonius wants her to help King Claudius and Queen Gertrude and himself, she willingly does it: Polonius: Ophelia, walk you here… Read on this book, that show of such an exercise may color your *loneliness.* -- We are oft to blame in this (‘tis too much proved), that with devotion’s visage and pious action we do sugar o’er the devil himself.After Polonius dies, Ophelia becomes crazy because she has no one to depend on anymore. She gives up hope and drowns in a brook:Queen: There is a willow grows askant the brook that shows his *gray* leaves in the glassy stream…There on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds clamb’ring to hang, an envious sliver broke, when down her weedy trophies and herself fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide, and mermaid-like awhile they bore her up, which time she chanted snatches of old lauds, as one incapable of her own distress…but long it could not be till that her garments, heavy with their drink, pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay to muddy death (IV.vii. 190, 197-208).Polonius’ fatal flaw is sneakiness. Polonius hides behind a rug in Gertrude’s bedroom while Hamlet tries to talk to her. Hamlet hears...
