Hamlet is my favourite shakespeare, and not without good cause; there is so much to say about its representation of madness in different characters, and the way women are viewed and treated, that I got 100% on my final A2 exam which asked about women in the play. I wrote this poem when I was 19 for a collection; it wasn’t perfect then (or accepted into the collection) and isn’t now, but I have adjusted it very slightly. The italicised parts are extracts from Ophelia’s song in IV.v.
Enjoy.
.
Ours were not vows;
There were no Gods involved.
In this ungodly house, in this ungodly place,
I met hand-to-hand with heretic belief.
In this bed, this ungodly bed, we made love.
We spoke our oaths with our forked tongues –
You hissed your way into my dreams.
*
“How should I your true love know
From another one?”
*
The boa constrictor, you wrapped me in words
Which struggled to cushion my fall from grace.
Undeniable, unreliable, breath defiantly concretes me.
The plush red carpet was swept out from underneath.
My words were fractured promises, like broken bones,
Alabaster utterances in an unfamiliar tongue.
I am tuneless wails. You are melodic interludes.
*
“Then up he rose, and donn’d his clothes,
And dupp’d the chamber door;”
*
And so I’m broken down. And so I’m shattered now.
And so I’m the body lying in the pit you left me in.
I am the drowned in the sea of nervousness;
I am the driftwood over the falls of security.
There was a small, sick part of me
That expected you to catch me as I sank.
I was mistaken: You are unphased by angels without wings.
*
“Young men will do’t, if they come to’t,
By cock they are to blame.”
*
And so whatever words you said,
Though they laced my ears with beautiful sounds,
I know they were incorrect for me now.
I am the inconsequential singing girl
To your feigned madness. I drown,
I drown, I drown, singing my merry song.

