ABSTRACT
According to critical history, Hamlet is Shakespeare’s quintessential play about suicide. After all, “To be, or not to be,” the most famous of all speeches, apparently ponders the question of whether suicide is acceptable. For centuries, scholars have discussed the play’s perspective on religion, which Stephen Greenblatt has so succinctly boiled down to the formula that “a young man from Wittenberg, with a distinctly Protestant temperament, is haunted by a distinctly Catholic ghost.” 1 Accordingly, a plethora of scholarly research has focused on the religious debates surrounding suicide. If this were the end of the discussion, it would be perfectly justified to conclude that Hamlet alone conditions critical interest in suicide in Hamlet. Yet, the more interesting character to look at when investigating this topic is Ophelia, unjustly degraded by critics who often suggest that she gains momentum only by her madness. 2 While herein scholars have reaffirmed, or rather complicated, the ways in which the play itself silences and ostracises her, the connection between her suicide and the play’s gender ideology has so far remained understudied.
