Hamlet and 'unfulfilled love'
There are some who say that Hamlet is about revenge. It is actually about love and Hamlet dealing with "manic" adolescent feelings which make him unable to have a fulfilling, loving relationship with Ophelia. In his words, "Achilles’ greatest foe may be Achilles".
Hamlet’s Soliloquy
How be this, that in this most wretched state of self-loathing and pestilent unfulfilled duty, that my withered and dishevelled heart can feel such vibrant and relentless affection for another? That when my head doth feel its unanswered accountability, it can yield to my heart’s deepest desires and fantasies?
Ophelia. Ophelia. Her name doth canter from mine tongue through my resistant lips as such the horse doth through the field. Yet how may she be known, that in my spleen vented t’ward her vivacity, ‘tis my heart I wish t’offer. Ophelia. To perchance the swiftest glance at her is the greatest gift a prince may receive. But to be granted the chance to stare. To gaze upon sweet Ophelia. It would be that I were Narcissus whence first seeing mine own reflection, and I warrant that it would be a kindest sentence to like he, sink unto roots by the river’s bed, just to stare, for eternity. To love her, to be granted to be near her, to be bestowed the honour of hers.
But O unwelcomed guilt of reality. Mine own sense of duty is deeply conflicted by mine own selfish and distinguishing flaws. Is it th‘demon that resides so relentlessly resting upon mine back? Or be it that I am th’putrid and accursed creature that will not act for one but mine own self? Ay, marry, ‘tis my duty, and that I am destined to take it alone, to act for others. Alike to the Son having to crawl and struggle, but with no cross to bear, nor no father to watch o’er and draw strength upon. Alike to the Son, as mine duty is thrust upon me from the sins of others. The snake. And that I am to share its blood. Slithering its way into th‘garden, of which I used to reside, and poisoning all that ‘twas holy, causing their fall. O fie! And that I am to shed its blood. Is it that I am doomed to misery? That I to avenge a lost love and not to advance to a new? That in my e’er growing antic mind I am to push away the one for whom I long, for whom I burn and yearn? That by practising my manic mode I can be perhaps to push her to madness? Is it this that is’t to make it so? Or is it she that is already maid? Hither? In this rotting state? Can it be that one so sweet could be of the same sex of one that could be so sour?
She. She that gave me life and now sucks all reason and moral from it. She that smothers, suffocates, the pain that is my armour’s *beep* one that I might heel from by th’cutting away at its most rotten roots. Maybe this ‘twill be what we shall have to come together upon? The cutting of roots so that we may blossom. For she verily is suffocated by the breed of roots of which I speak. But e’en a rose of such sweet scent and succulent sight may be susceptible to weeds. And there is no other rose that I might tend to in more compassionate fashion than she. O what pain can come through my ambition. But to act. To accomplish. To anticipate and take to arms. I fear that Achilles’ greatest foe may be Achilles.