SOURCE: “‘Ower Swete Sokor’: The Role of Ophelia in Hamlet,” in Shakespeare's Play within Play: Medieval Imagery and Scenic Form in Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear, Western Michigan University, Medieval Institute Publications, 1990, pp. 7-19.

In the following essay, originally published in 1986, Guilfoyle traces Ophelia's character to the legend of Mary Magdalen as developed in medieval drama.

The virtuous disguise of evil in woman is described most bitterly by Shakespeare in King Lear (IV.vi.120-29): “Behold yond simpering dame / Whose face between her forks presages snow … / But to the girdle do the gods inherit, / Beneath is all the fiends'.” If she can be separated from sexual considerations, for example in royalty or in comedy, woman can appear on a level with, if not equal to, man; but where his feelings are most deeply aroused, in love and veneration, or in lust and frustration, the writer finds her angel...