Blog #16 Hamlet Blog Assignment #4

I was walking through the halls of Elsinore yesterday, and noticed a book lying off to the side, on the windowsill. I was curious, of course, and walked over to see what it was. As I got closer, I could tell that it was a diary: it belongs to a Peter J. Seng, whom I have never before met. It was a bit difficult to turn the pages while restrained, just as it is to write this, but I managed. Anyway, what I found inside those pages was of great interest to me.

 It seems that Peter J. Seng has been observing me for quite some time: it seems that he has been recording his observations of my behavior in his book, including my recent descent into madness. According to him, I am “mentally deranged” (Seng 217) and a “crazed girl” (Seng 217). He’s very candid, isn’t he? Anyway, I think that his reasoning for my madness is very interesting. I’ve never thought of it this way before. He claims that the reason for my madness lies in the fact that to me, “Denmark has become a prison, and [I am] all alone at Elsinore” (Seng 218). He’s right. I am all alone: Hamlet is in England, Laertes is in France, my father is dead, and the queen avoids me.

I feel so unloved right now. I wish Hamlet hadn’t left me. Like Peter J. Seng said in his diary, my song “explains to [me] the mystery of his disappearance” and “illuminates in [my] deranged mind the few paltry facts [I possess]” (Seng 219).

“How should I your true love know/ From another one?/ By his cockle hat and staff,/ And his sandal shoon” (4.5.22). Hamlet has gone off on his pilgrimage to England, for “he has reason enough to do penance” (Seng 219) and I am left here. My true love has left me, physically and emotionally, and that is why I have descended into madness. I cannot stand rejection, and that is what Seng is saying.

My songs illuminate this, as Seng stated: Hamlet “is dead and gone” (4.5.25) and is not coming back to love me again. On Valentines day, “up he rose, and donned his clothes,/ And dupped the chamber door./ Let in the maid that out a maid/ Never departed more.” (4.5.38). His love has changed me: I’m not the girl I was before. What’s changed? Love has abandoned me. I gave into love and it forgot to give back to me.

But as Seng said, I cannot blame it all on Hamlet. My “father and brother have had their share in the spoliation of [my] mind’s purity” (Seng 220). I remember that just a few days ago, I received a letter from Hamlet in which he told me to “never doubt I love” (2.2.113), and my father read it aloud to the king and queen and used his words of love for me to plot against us by planning to “loose my daughter to him” (2.2.154). I always thought that my father just wanted what was best for me, but he just wants what is best for himself.

In short, Peter J. Seng’s diary has enlightened me to this prison in which I live. The freedom with which I once loved has become a reality in which I am now restrained (literally). I have become lost inside the labyrinth of my mind, in which love has hunted down and killed my sanity.