The Last Step

This is sort of ironic because I've never liked Hamlet, I originally read it when I was fourteen and thought that the puffery was just that, a lot of... more

by C Nick

Original - Not For Sale

Price

Not Specified

Dimensions

14.000 x 11.000 inches

Title

The Last Step

Artist

C Nick

Medium

Painting - Watercolour On Paper

Description

This is sort of ironic because I've never liked Hamlet, I originally read it when I was fourteen and thought that the puffery was just that, a lot of puffery. Now I've recently reread most of Hamlet and some of my views changed, even if my overall outlook on the play remains much the same.

GERTRUDE:

"There is a willow grows aslant a brook
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do "dead men's fingers" call them.
There, on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering 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 a while they bore her up,
Which time she chanted snatches of old lauds
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element. 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."

There is some speculation about Ophelia's death, if it was a suicide or an accident. Many support the view that it was an accident, but Shakespeare's tendency toward writing feminine suicide makes the suicide theory still legitimate. To sum it up the Queen, Ophelia’s brother Laertes, and everyone else in the royal house call it an accident, but there is doubt and big enough suspicion for one of the character to say to the gravedigger:

"Will you ha' the truth on 't? If this had not been a
gentlewoman, she should have been buried out o'
Christian burial."

and at her funeral the priest says:

"Her obsequies have been as far enlarged
As we have warranty. Her death was doubtful,
And, but that great command o'ersways the order,
She should in ground unsanctified have lodged
Till the last trumpet. For charitable prayers
Shards, flints and pebbles should be thrown on her.
Yet here she is allowed her virgin crants,
Her maiden strewments, and the bringing home
Of bell and burial."

I am not going to go into the finer points of one view over the other, because that's not what my painting is about. In my painting I was inspired by the idea of suicide because Ophelia has always been portrayed as a passive character, very submissive to the other characters’ demands and wants. There was something about the idea of that last moment of free will where there is no turning back, the moment where she takes that step, to go over the edge and into the water that just would not leave me alone. I wanted to depict her actually doing something for herself, even if it was the last -and possibly the first- thing she has ever done. Drowning by accident would not have achieved that.

Uploaded

January 13th, 2012